[dporan]

What an engagingly written interview with a thoughtful designer. Two points stand out:

1. Unlike Apple, which apparently eschews formal user research, Google relied on "ethnographic research" to shape Android 4.0.

2. In between Apple's hyper-realistic UI and Microsoft's Spartan aesthetic, Google is trying to find a middle ground in Android 4.0 that facilitates new approaches and new experiences.

From the screenshots alone, it's hard to tell what it actually will be like to use Android 4.0. But it's great to see that Google is thinking so deeply about user experience.

[nchlswu]

> 1. Unlike Apple, which apparently eschews formal user research, Google relied on "ethnographic research" to shape Android 4.0.

I definitely think this idea has began to take a life of its own so to speak. I've read that Apple doesn't do Usability testing, doesn't do market research or user research. All of the points can be summed up with the "Apple knows best" idea. But, I'm sure Apple does user research - just not with a consultancy, or by asking users what they want. They focus on users' behaviour and their needs and incorporate it into their vision.

I don't think Google's core approach this time around is that much different from (what I presume is) Apple's approach. Google is using their ethnographic research to figure out what users do and what users need. I'd wager that Apple's own 'research' has focused on that all along.

[saturdaysaint]

It's quite a stretch to call Apple's UI "hyper-realistic". The core interface and main apps (safari, mail, phone, messages, camera) mostly consist of non-textured gradients. There's a hint of glass on the lockscreen and a fabric texture used at the "edges" of the UI (in the notification center and multitasking tray) and that's about it. If anything, it looks like they're aping Apple with the icon animations, text selection, abandoning their menu buttons and attention to system fonts.

[ricefield]

i wouldnt claim that apple's UI is hyper realistic, but there are parts of its design which are intended to be realistic. sometimes good, sometime bad. a few examples:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.a... http://pttrns.com/woodenshelfs http://pttrns.com/profiles#/detail/5e8603b7b0c551b85fcade3d1... http://pttrns.com/calculators#/detail/697d4e1cf6b7561bffcbbf... http://pttrns.com/widgets#/detail/4f83d8375a7f0a8a079dac5dd1... http://pttrns.com/widgets#/detail/6b5f0e73657ddaca447f84f73c...

[saturdaysaint]

Well, you're lumping a lot of things under the term "UI".

As a rule, Apple minimizes these kinds of things in the core interface and often moves quickly to reduce them as new features become common knowledge. For example, the "dock" in the original iPhone looked like a speaker grill - it was probably a useful convention to denote to people that had never used OSX that it was a special section at the bottom of the phone/screen. Now it's a glassy reflective surface that subtly denotes the dock area and nicely borders the screen (much more subtly than the ICS dock, IMO). The scrollbars in OSX were once colorful and rounded, but steadily and gradually became flatter, grayer, and then basically invisible. I wouldn't be surprised if the now prevalent "fabric" pattern sees a similar fate.

Apple tends to make the metaphors glaringly obvious and keep them around in a certain class of very simple apps (the compass and calculator fall under this). It's funny that Duarte mentioned wood because Apple nerds have been arguing about the wood trim in Garageband (a spinoff from the sleek, German designed Logic app) since it launched. For power users, these things are a stupid distraction, but for the %90 of the population that is boggled by the idea of using a completely new class of software, they denote that this is fun, easy-to-use software. Google, who've made plenty of great products that have gone relatively unused, could probably learn a few things here.

There's a certain logic to the anti-skeutomorph thing, but it gets weird when it leads to dismissing Apple offhandedly. Mastery of these metaphors is a good part of the reason Apple are where they are today. It's amazing how consistent these textures, gestures and animations are across three platforms (and how smoothly they reached this point) while the other platforms are having identity crises.

I should add that I'm enormously tempted to get the Galaxy Nexus, so please take this as pro-Apple, not anti-Google.

[magic_haze]

Interesting how things change. Just a few years back it would have been impossible to associate the word 'spartan' with any tech company other than Google, let alone Microsoft (which more often than not ended up alongside 'gaudy' and 'tacky'. Like this, unfortunately: http://youtu.be/-F_ke3rxopc)

[Raphael]

You know, Windows 7 has a task bar that does everything. Most operating systems end up with 2 or 3, and somehow they do it in one.

[foobarbazetc]

They might be thinking deeply, but they execute poorly and it still looks like crap.

Matias should be replaced ASAP and the weird fascination with black/dark themes should be tossed into the trash.

[joebadmo]

I couldn't disagree more. I think the visual execution is great, and really cohesive with the rest of Google's re-design. I also prefer the black/dark themes. I imagine it has the functional benefit of using less power on OLED screens, as well.

But the visual stuff is almost beside the point. I've been an Android user for a couple of years now, and the sense I always got was that the OS was very engineer-driven, with plenty of interesting features piled on, but no real sense of user experience. Duarte is clearly bringing a lot of focus on UX, by optimizing real usage patterns, making them fast and delightful.

I'm actually pleasantly surprised at where Android is going.