Hidden iPhone UI Features

Even though we all love using our iPhone and iPod Touch devices, I'm struck by how many features in the user interface aren't readily apparent. Let say you wanted to delete some app icons or to move them around - you're stuck - unless of course you consult the manual (only one of the people I polled on Twitter used this method) or you somehow happen to hold your finger on an icon a bit longer than usual and see the the screen changes to the look like the one you see on the right. If the latter happened, you then have a clue that pressing the icons with the Xs on them might delete them and if you also happen to touch the icons and notice that they move, you have a clue as to how to move icons. Of course, you won't know how to get out of this delete/move state with the icons wiggling unless you happen to press the home button and notice that the wiggling stops. If you also happen to press the home button twice in quick succession, you'll see music controls come up in a beautiful transparent pop-up window no matter where you are in the system. Similarly, if you'd like to move rapidly to the top of a scrollable list, you might randomly hit the status bar at the top of the screen and notice that the list was reset to the top. Amazingly useful features but none of them, I would suggest, obvious to find in the user interface, nor all that easily discoverable either (unless you consult the manual, Google or Twitter it).

When we rave about the beauty of the design and the exemplary user experience of the iPhone/Touch, we often forget the difficulty we initially had in learning how to do some basic tasks. In fact, some of you may not have been aware of some of the features that I pointed out above. We've likely forgotten those difficulties for the same reason as I pointed out in my last post, we're more forgiving of designs that are otherwise really engaging and enjoyable.

It does make me think though that we need to find better ways of familiarizing users with hidden user interface features. As the iPhone/Touch type user interface becomes more commonplace, users will again raise the user experience expectation bar and likely won't be as forgiving as they struggle in finding out how to carry out the most basic tasks.

Comments

[Dr Kim Wyman]

Starting again, my first comment having disappeared half way through. It began:

Exactly so. Here I am on Easter Saturday trying to figure out how to configure my brand new iPhone to do what what my previous Mobile Windows PAD phones did well : synchronize with my PC-based Microsoft Outlook (Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, optionally Mail). After the beginning UUUh and AAAhs, isn't it intuitive, I'm now agitated but not quite ready (perhaps bevause it cost me AUD800) to chuck iPhone into the garden.

Where have I got to ?

1 CONTACTS appeared to sync without any adaptation. I've now synced them twice but ... you probably guessed it. Every contact now has a duplicate in the iPhone, 1500 of them !

2 CALENDAR also synced without intervention. Alerts come on etc. The problem here seeme to be that a new calendar entry made on the fly on the iPhone is NOT SYNCED BACK to the PC

3 TASKS. I gathered quickly that this feature has not yet been implemented. Couple of hours later Googling around (like C Columbus just out of Gibraltar / Pillars of Hercules tacking about in a sudden calm) I discovered not America but Toodledo. Paid USD5.99 for the ToodledoSync in the iStore for it. Installs lovely. There's my first tick icon on the iPhone ... but won't sync !

Yes, "we need to find better ways of familiarising users..." I leave the "we" hanging and add AND NOT JUST WITH HIDDEN FEATURES.

As a matter of psychology (that's what I do for a living) in the (over-simplified) STIMULUS <> RESPONSE world, a stimulus cannot be reinforced unless it first occurs.

Kim Wyman
kim@wyman.com.au

PS in the real-world there are lots of intuitive models of learning, or rather descriptions of them. Imagine leaving the safe and well-charted world of the Mediteranean in 1492 to cross the uncharted and turbulent, and bigger, Atlantic. Too long ago ? Did you know that we actually live in a world where some cats are both alive and dead at the same time ? I didn't find this on Google but Schroedinger told me.