Even the Best iPhone Apps & top Android Apps Have This Challenge: Big Software In A Small Screen
Rewind the clock a few decades and you’ll find Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio (and later, video) was state-of-the-art science fiction? It’s interesting to note that video was the ‘killer app’ envisioned on that watch – not a computer.
There is a bit of irony in the fact that today, in an age where a 27-inch computer screen is considered normal and a 40-inch HDTV is on the small side, we still spend hours ogling our itty-bitty Android or iPhone displays – which poses some of the following issues for designers:
- Doing more with less: User Interface designers striving to create the top Android apps or best iPhone apps now have to stuff everything back into a screen with the resolution of the original Mac or PC, but is one-fifth the size. I find myself holding my iPhone at arm’s length, hoping to bring all those miniature features into focus!
- Modal interface: Since you can’t show them all laid out in a grid, designers must make menus and other interfaces hierarchical and ‘nested’ meaning you go ‘into’ each menu one at a time . There are clearly some important tradeoffs here, since users must adopt these new interface styles, and keep more of the application context in their head.
- Encourages shorter names – this is good!
- Icons get smaller and stranger – and I never liked icons in the first place.
Adding a fascinating new dimension to this trend are the Remote Access apps: now you can really use an entire PC inside your smartphone. Team-Viewer and Log-me-in are a few of the Remote Access solutions.
One company that is testing the penultimate challenge for ‘smallscreen’ devices is AlwaysOnPC, who offers customers a computer that is truly virtual, since its hosted in the cloud, but used from the iPhone. Like an app on steroids, AlwaysOnPC delivers over 35 powerful programs from productivity (like Powerpoint-, Word- and Excell-compatible editing, and outlook email) to fun and games (like the most powerful chess program available for iPhone)!
Both of these products – the remote access and AlwaysOnPC virtual pc – give you remote control of another machine. Perhaps the most compelling attribute of this setup is that your processing horsepower gets a massive boost since all the work (when running AlwaysOnPC or a remote access app) is being done on the PC (not the iPhone).
I hope the hardware manufacturers are driven to make even better interfaces to take advantage of all the features these new apps are bringing. One new area that I think will see progress is the ‘hybrid interface’ whereby the visual elements are managed locally, but processing is still done in the cloud (mentioned by Steve Jobs a while back). AlwaysOnPC nailed the hybrid solution with their virtual PC app.
So where does this leave us? Are we making progress or re-gress in UI and usability in general with this new breed of hand-held devices? The jury is still out in my view, but that’s not going to stop the flow of new devices coming to market.
