GregBellDesign

Since beginning my look at the mobile web, and the products used to access it, I have found one common theme: UI Laziness.

UI laziness is when products or services remove functionality because it seems difficult to design on a small screen. Or when interfaces are difficult to use, and it is blamed on small screen. Or any other problems to the UI when it is blamed on some other circumstance. It basically means that the designers (this includes anybody who is involved in producing the product, even people who's titles may not include "design") have come up with an easy solution just because it's easy, not because it's better.

This bothers me.

I understand that not every product released needs to be revolutionary and design a superior interface, but thank goodness for Apple. Where would the state of MP3 players be without them?

So, now we have the iPhone. Hopefully a revolutionary phone. And from what I have seen online so far, it appears to be just that.

What I appreciate about the iPhone, is that the UI is not lazy. From the online preview it looks like they re-thought a lot of "best-practices". Of course, I have not used the phone, so I can only speak to the preview of the UI online.

Apple threw out the concepts of hardware keyboards, hardware buttons, and scaled down software. The iPhone features a version OSX in all of it's glossy glory.

For a simple example of how they re-thought and simplified tasks, here is a quote from a Time Magazine article:

"All right, so it's pretty. Now pick it up and make a call. A big friendly icon appears on that huge screen. Say a second call comes in while you're talking. Another icon appears. Tap that second icon and you switch to the second call. Tap the big “merge calls� icon and you've got a three-way conference call. Pleasantly simple." Apple's New Calling: The iPhone

I love it! Anyways I am sure that there will be more talk in the future about this phone, for now, No More UI Laziness!