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That shot of WP7 also looks a lot less functional than the above one of iOS. Apple's interface is well-organized; the purpose of each screen element and the re
by Gormo 15y ago
That shot of WP7 also looks a lot less functional than the above one of iOS. Apple's interface is well-organized; the purpose of each screen element and the results a user should expect from manipulating it are fairly clear and unambiguous.
The WP7 UI seems to be following Microsoft's recent "haphazard grid of inconsistent elements" approach, which works about as well as the ribbon.
- untog 15y agoHow do you figure that? The WP7 tile list is a list of apps, just the same as iOS icons. Except that apps can push a hell of a lot more information onto their tiles than iOS apps can to their icons. I struggle to see how that is less functional.
- Gormo 15y agoWith the exception of the single number-bubble, iOS icons don't include dynamic information on them, and therefore aren't regularly changing in appearance. The icon to run the photo viewer in WP7 appears to consist entirely of a thumbnail of an image from your photo album. That means that every time you take a new photo, the image changes. Your contact list application itself contains a grid of thumbnails of contact photos, which is a superfluous feature, and may cause a lot of confusion if other applications also contain a grid of content thumbnails. Pushing information onto tiles is itself one of the key usability problems with WP7. The controls that you interact with to invoke functions should not do double-duty as general-purpose info delivery systems. Apple gets this right; the ability of controls to convey information is limited to conveying state information that indicates whether/when you need to interact with the control itself, and the shape, placement, coloring, and imagery of the control don't change for trivial reasons. I understand the visual appeal of the Metro UI, but ultimately, this is supposed to be a functional user interface, not a Mondrian print.