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by mighty
6143 days ago
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Pressing a button is an action that a gestural UI can communicate visually, but there are a number of other actions that have no visual cue. Direct manipulation gestures such as tap (on something other than a button), double-tap, tap-and-hold, swipe, and pinch/zoom are far more difficult to communicate. These rely on user experimentation and memory. Even worse are the modal gestures such as shake to undo and swipe to delete. If users discover them at all it’s usually by accident. They don’t map to anything (outside of an Etch-a-Sketch) and there are no clues to indicate that they’re available. Being mentioned in a WWDC keynote does not count as a clue. I have a lot of experience critiquing user interfaces, especially from a Norman-esque viewpoint, and would like to point out that while the above criticisms have some merit, they are practically negated by the fact that nearly every iPhone commercial puts these gestures front and center. Because the ads effectively serve as tutorials, people who've never owned or used an iPhone can nevertheless walk into an Apple store knowing how to use it. You can even just walk into a store and watch one of the videos they have running--one hardly has to consult a WWDC keynote, for crying out loud. It is also vastly easier to show a computer illiterate person how to zoom, undo, etc. using these gestures than it is to do the same on a desktop. You can't get much better than this, frankly. That there is a literacy requirement at all is not evidence of bad design: you still have to learn how to hold a pencil, after all. It's astounding that Apple's managed to reduce the literacy requirements as much as they have. |
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My three year old picked up how to manipulate the planet in Star Defense[1] straight away after seeing a friend of mine play it on his iPhone. Also Shape Builder[2] (some kid's puzzle game) was immediately obvious.
She had a little harder time figuring out how a mouse works.
[1] note: I'm sort of affiliated since that friend's company made that game
[2] not connected to this game