2007 feels like a good year. Perhaps a few years on since ‘the year of the mobile phone’ but not too late either to be the year of the ‘mobile phone interface’.
The year beganwith announcements from Apple for their iPhone garnering the usual following and press coverage along with numerous unveilings from every other corner of the tech industry. In fact according to the Keller Fay Group and Nielson BuzzMetrics, the Apple iPhone was mentioned up to nine times for every mention of George Bush across the internet for over ten days following its announcement.
Today the planet is literally covered with screen devices from the very visible and common home screens – TVs, plasmas, computer LCDs; to screens on-the-go – phones, ipods, psps, portable video players, screens on trains, planes and cars; as well as display advertising everywhere – shops, stations, stadiums, outdoor. We can’t escape them and most of us spend the larger part of our lives using them. Designing interfaces for screen devices that appear almost anywhere, fulfilling numerous purposes at the same time provides an almost universal and growing need for increasingly simple and natural ways of interaction that are forgiving and accommodating of anyone who may use them, in anyway they want.
Just getting past the post-New Year’s slumber, Lorenzo spotted LG’s Prada touch screen phone, ready to ship with an interface modeled in Flash. Late last year Elmer previewed a similar Flash menu running on his own Nokia. Designing interfaces with Flash for handheld devices will take us out of the dark ages in on-screen interfaces, historically – just image buttons changing state and calling up lists of further actions. Flash gives designers control over interfaces that offer the user flow and natural organic transitions between states. It puts the design back with the designers and liberates us from stuttering screen interfaces that have been co-opted by hardware limitations and telecom companies (who still don’t get the internet).
Last week I was invited to deliver a course titled ‘Design for Screen’ at the University of Westminster’s ‘BA (Hons) Contemporary Media Practice’ degree program in Harrow. Lecturing over two days to second-year students, we began with a morning of how to gatecrash a job in the industry, playing to our strengths and being passionate about what we love in our work, my own journey from uni to Holler, as well as showcasing some key Holler projects and a sneak peak at some new stuff, not yet seen. We swim within a diverse industry delivering communications and media to every segment of the world. Even an equally diverse body of students made up of film makers, writers, illustrators, and media designers who are rooted within the practice of developing well founded concept and evolving thought process, are not made fully aware of the scale and scope that their talent applies to, and thats exciting.
Design for screen is in itself just as diverse. During the first workshop the students were given sheets of paper and asked to fold them down to size appropriate to the screen they would design. Working in small groups they discussed the how, where and who of each device and put to paper designs that ranged from interactive DVR cinema, exhibit consoles and children’s bubbly touch-screen TV to a pictographic-mobile interface, immersive goggles and a dreamcatcher concept of a ceiling mounted touch-screen device to capture and categorize the quickly disappearing fragments of last night’s dream. I was generally impressed with the unanimous adoption of touch-screen interfaces throughout, but even more so with their embrace of simple finger point-and-drag interactions and the ease with which they took it for granted. And rightly so.
The students really brought it home as they naturally made intuitive choices in how we interact with screens, relate and experience them. They demonstrated scalable design ideas with simple transparent navigation. Day two and we were taking our paper-based designs to the screen. I delivered a basic Photoshop masterclass – preparing our digital canvas and covering technical basics that would allow us to get on with the creative design. The students were given the chance to present their work, field any questions or insights and above all, get a real good feeling for the industry they will become a part of: a media golden age passing just beneath our finger tips.
If you are a designer studying today, there is no doubt that you will graduate into the humble dawn of universal, simple and tangible touch screen interfaces (verbal interaction included of course). We talk of convergence and ubiquitous connections between all devices through any medium, but the real experience will connect with the user only through a fundamental rebirth of the interface. We’ve all seen the stunning TED talks multi-touch screen presentation of February 2006, and perhaps you’ve also followed Prada’s Magic Mirror of a few years ago in New York. And what of HP’s ‘Making the computer personal again‘ TV ads or more recently (January 18th) – Nokia’s quietly released concept films titled ‘A view to the future‘. The last two are pure gold.
Let’s think natural, non-intrusive and extremely responsive intelligent design. Multi-touch has enormous potential and along with voice interaction will revolutionize and simplify the way we do almost anything. Its essentially back to the basics, and thats a good thing for all users. Today we use back-lit displays, electronic paper is not far off, and 3D holographics may soon emerge out of deep-end development and into our own day-to-day lives.