Tog on iPhone
Assuming that your not sick of reading about the iPhone, Bruce Tognazzini has posted a great article (The iPhone User Experience: A First Look) looking at the history behind the UI of the device.
Bruce makes a really good point about innovation within the current business world:
"The origins of these bits and pieces (innovation), however, is not what’s important about the iPhone. What’s important is that, for the first time, so many great ideas and processes have been assembled in one device, iterated until they squeak, and made accessible to normal human beings. That’s the genius of Steve Jobs; that’s the genius of Apple."
The overall experience is what is important in making the iPhone innovative, not the individual pieces. This is true of all user experience design: if one small piece of an interface is great and innovative, but the overall experience sucks, what are you left with? I would certainly argue that you don't have innovation.
Bruce goes on to echo my thoughts on UI Laziness:
"It [iPhone] also speaks to the limited vision of the cell phone industry. Exactly why have we never had random-access voicemail on cell phones? We’re talking about hand-held devices with more computer power than the Apollo spacecraft that took us to the moon. We’re talking about devices with screens of more than sufficient resolution. Could nobody think of displaying the messages?"
Check out the article: The iPhone User Experience: A First Look
