Edward Tufte Weighs In on Apple's iPhone

An anonymous reader writes "Via Daring Fireball, a post from design guru Edward Tufte's site discusses his views on the interface used by the Apple iPhone. The post includes a video presentation by Tufte on the subject of video resolution on the phone. His argument is primarily that while the iPhone does a lot of things very well, Apple hasn't quite realized the platform's full potential by making screen real estate all it could be. "

Re:That was fast

[Stanistani]

Actually, he's pretty happy with the interface.

From the Fine Article:
"The iPhone platform elegantly solves the design problem of small screens by greatly
intensifying the information resolution of each displayed page. Small screens, as on
traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads
to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information--too often leaving users with
"Where am I?" puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space
rather than stacked in time."

Re:That was fast

[Anonymous Coward]

I got it through the Coral Cache link [nyud.net] Just tack ".nyud.net:8090" onto the end of the domain name.

Re:Design decisions vs. 20/20 hindsight

[Knuckles]

Besides, it's always easier to critique someone else's work than create something novel yourself.

Did you read on below the video?

In 1994-1995 I designed (while consulting for IBM) screen mock-ups for navigating through the National Gallery via information kiosks. [...]

The design ideas here include high-resolution touch-screens; minimizing computer admin debris; spatial distribution of information rather than temporal stacking; complete integration of text, images, and live video; a flat non-hierarchical interface; and replacing spacious icons with tight words. [...]

The mock-ups are included, too.

Mirror

[Aaron Isotton]

http://www.edwardtufte.com.nyud.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00036T&topic_id=1 [nyud.net]

MIRRORS!

[appleguru]

Grab the coral cache mirror of the page here: http://www.edwardtufte.com.nyud.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00036T&topic_id=1 [nyud.net]

Also, I've mirrored the video, as that was the slowest loading element of the page, here:

http://g.appleguru.org/iPhone_Resolution-desktop.m4v [appleguru.org] (58MB)

Re:3G?

[jonesy16]

As he states, he's using a jail-break version to make his video. Therefore, he can change the banner to say whatever he wants. It actually changes several times throughout the video showing 3G, WiMax, 700MHz and others. This is NOT a leak of a new version of the iPhone. Sorry, I would have been happy too.

Re:Tufte...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, another Tufte fan.

Maybe I can introduce you to my coworkers/employer. They all think he is god's gift to charts and graphs.

I went to one of his lectures. Skimmed through Beautiful Evidence.

Newton? Not by a long shot. Tufte primarily regurgitates two ideas:

1 - Sparklines are awesome
2 - The more info on the chart and the more complex it is, the better

It's just too bad that neither one of these ideas holds true in the real world. So I guess that would be the main difference between Tufte and Newton. Newton is applicable to the REAL WORLD. Tufte is not.

"Drill-down" is automatic to the eye

[rbrander]

I'm surprised and disappointed to read comments from people who've read Tufte's books and agreed with them, and then say the opposite about this case. I wonder, did they ever 'get it' ?

Tufte's view, consistent for decades, is that the information display should be designed around the human visual system's abilities and preferences, not the designer's prejudices or what's easy for the display system.

The human eye automatically "drills down" in an information-rich visual field by focusing the fovea on anything that is noticed as being of interest. Further information on the subject of interest is gained in a dozen milliseconds by the act of focus. No jumping to new pages over a second later.

A couple of posters offered the absurd assertions that

a) Tufte is stuck in the paper era - when he's been commenting on computer displays for 20 years. His criticisms of the screen real-estate forgone to 'computer administrative debris' in Mac and, later, Windows, go back to their inception.

b) That space is limited on those paper pages when they are far more information-rich than screens. Multiply 8.5x11x300x300 and get over 8 Mpixels, guys. (And an open magazine is twice as big; an open newspaper, 10x that!) Why do you think most people prefer to read on paper even now? Richer colours, too; compare TIME print edition photos to the web pages printed out.

People who think information-thin combined with drill-down is the way to go are responsible for those frustrating answering-machine menus.

And definitely have never taken a look at Craigslist, where there are a maximum of index words per page, using smaller print, and every piece of information in the index is also a 'control'. a link to another information-dense page. You rarely have to go more than three clicks in until you are looking at a list of the things you want, out of all the country and all the products and services there are.

Bottom-line: provide the user with as much information as possible, use visual cues (size, colour, position) to prioritize, and have trust that they will pick out what they want. Providing them with less information so as to lead them by the nose down your little trail insults their intelligence and human abilities.