erraticwisdom

I’ve had my iPod Touch for a good week now and am absolutely loving the multi-touch experience. To say that the iPhone/iTouch UI is revolutionary is a massive understatement. In its first entrance into the mobile OS market, Apple has leapfrogged years past its competitors and leaves my Windows Mobile-powered Motorola Q in the dust. Switching between the obnoxiously unresponsive Q and the smooth scrolling and animation of the iPod only makes Apple’s product more brilliant.

Recent advancements in hacking the device mean that my iPod is now the greatest PDA I’ve ever used. The TIFF exploit-based jailbreak method (while not as straightforward as the iPhone’s options) was fairly simple to produce and I now have all of the iPhone applications such as Mail, Maps, Notes and a functional Calendar running perfectly.

However, the device is not without its niggles and I wouldn’t be a UI designer if I didn’t point out a few of the most obvious:

1. Application state preservation – There does not seem to be any universal standard for state preservation in applications when a user returns to the home screen. In YouTube or Photos, a click of the home screen means you’ll start from the beginning when you reselect it. For Music and Safari, the application remembers your status.
2. Touch alternative to main button – The touch interaction becomes so natural that it can be a bit disconcerting to switch to the tactile button when returning to the home screen. It would be nice to have a touch alternative to the home button always showing somewhere.
3. Excessive animation – I hate saying this because the effects are so smooth, but sometimes the animations can be a bit disconcerting. For example, if I click a link in Mail, the Mail app zooms out, then Safari zooms in, then the current Safari page zooms out to display the “tab” navigator, then a new tab slides open and zooms in before the clicked link starts loading. The animations are lovely, but I have to wonder if simpler switch with a “Back to Message” button would be easier.
4. Application crash notification – Currently, when an application crashes on the iTouch (most frequently, Safari, when it encounters a resource-intensive page), the device just returns to the home screen and says “nope, nothing out of the ordinary happened there” (well, maybe not the second part). It would be helpful if the iPhone/iTouch would somehow acknowledge that the application had indeed crashed.
5. Easier “Breadcrumb” navigation – The current breadcrumb navigation design on the iPhone/iTouch only allows the user to move one level at a time. However, I usually have at least a couple nested folders in my Safari bookmarks and it can be a bit cumbersome to step back through each level. A more breadcrumb-like navigation system that listed the full path to the user’s current level would make this easier. Something akin to what is done on Leaflets would be ideal.
   

Have your own iPhone or iPod Touch? Feel free to describe any UI problems you’ve encountered in the comments.