In his iPhone interface design critique video Edward Tufte does some tough talking (content-wise), but unfortunately in miserably weak undertones. If only he had injected some life into the narration!
Tufte’s critique on iPhone interface design, for that matter for any design on similar appliances, is very apt. Although I am not an iPhone user, I gained immensely from his comments. His conclusive statements have real juice: “To clarify, add detail…. Clutter and overload are not attributes of information, they are failures of design”. From what Tufte has demonstrated in his video and the accompanying essay, the iPhone had largely overcome the negative points. That is not to say there were no flaws, as Tufte rightly pointed out. But I understand from the voluminous write-ups available on iPhone technology, that iPhone design has come long way off from what it was in 2008 when Tufte did his critique, and therefore has made many further improvements, eliminating many of the lacunae he has pointed out.
Another point I valued in Tufte’s comments is his remark on the need to eliminate screen-hogging computer administrative debris and the practicality of distributing information to adjacent ‘spaces’ rather than stacking them in ‘time’, which technically he terms as “spatial distribution of information rather than temporal stacking”. Most of the time we get in the digital jungle of mobile Aps because they make us dig through stacks of navigation options.
Tufte is also very accurate in his remarks about how mobile phone interface design tries to ape publication design or TV broadcast parameters, in its limited visual surface, and fails miserably in doing justice to the mobile phone user. The iPhone apparently is way ahead of similar gadgets when it comes to interface design by being truly information-sensitive.