Elegant design and mobile compatibility make the iPhone a sexy addition to any family.
Apple is all the rage, and has correspondingly built their brand around the presentation of compact information in sleek and sophisticated ways that are eye inspiring, sequential ordered and design-ambitious. And from that alone they’ve managed to remain afloat with a multi-trillion dollar empire that has billions of “MacHeads” and other loyal Apple followers. Not too shabby for a garage start-up.
In any case, when pertaining to the mobile marketplace, Apple is king for conceptualizing an efficient way to display information on phones that essentially combines our social-media, TV-watching, music listening and Internet browsing experience. Their domination of the mobile industry has been revered for two reasons: information display and graphical convenience.
I remember purchasing my first Apple possession over a year ago. It was the ever-so-sheer 4th generation iPod touch, which was a huge deal for me because it was in many ways was the iPhone, only lacking the ability-to-call feature and a data plan. The compact CPU case and the sheer thinness of the display screen remain a tidbit of the qualities that makes the iPhone and even the iPod touch chic and desirable. The notion of a device that so intricately blends designer input and developer statistics is just truly amazing and quite sophisticated and intimately attractive. The ratio of content revelation to conceptualized graphics and illustrations is just what Tufte delves into in his film introduction to iPhone Interface Design. Throughout the video, I observed Tufte’s viewpoint on the mobile abilities of the iPhone as well as it’s designer conscience. Through his attest, I also outlined a compact list of qualities that he mentioned were essentials of successful digital design for mobile interfaces. The four of his home-hitting arguments was that mobile caricature satisfy all of the following requirements:
- Focus on minimizing administrative debris
- Emphasis on spatial distribution of information rather than temporal stacking
- Integration of text, images, and live video (non-hierarchal interface)
- Simulate information as the interface as opposed to graphics
I’m digging this, slim!
And the design of the iPhone seems to fit Tufte’s requirement botch quite adequately. Of the other perspectives he mentioned, I was interested and additionally enlightened at some of the points he made about information design and hierarchy, which made me reflect back onto the info-graphic design project that we did a while back. And while reminiscing, I compared the two, which maintain similar principles of displays that are information driven rather than graphic heavy. All the while possessing an orientation of design that is neither overwhelming to the consumer eye nor short serving. One of Tufte’s home-hitting quotes regarding this was “To clarify, add detail”, but more significantly, that
“clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design.”
Mmhm. I bounced this quote all around in my mind, pondering how I could incorporate everything he said into my own iPhone app-mockup project while still making a presentation that is iPhone customized. Way back when, I used to think that presenting information with complex illustrations, dominant color-contrasts and a bucketful of shapes, texts and gradients would make my information design more appealing. However, per the verdict of Tufte and like-minded designers, the message to me is “no sweetie, that just makes your work more busy.” And in addition is harder to grasp. Okay, that mindset in design is an obvious way to get you reprimanded. So, I shifted gears to locking in some of Tufte’s design suggestions for iPhone into my own display.
He outlined that graphical elements, images and such should be in thin containers, having borders that are no more than “1 pixel thick.” There is also the obvious dimension of time and moving as swiftly through that as possible, which I’m sure I can cleverly devise when I put my mind to it. Overall, Tufte’s video was impactful for measuring both the successes and shortcoming of the iPhone’s design, and as a notarized figure in the industry, and an author of design, I’d say he knows what he’s talking about.