TomSoft

UI and the Fun factor…

October 18th, 2006

Interesting document from Nokia about Visualization and graphic design for mobile. Not a revolution, but contains some cool tips.

A few examples:

• The FUP maturity model: Features, Usability, Pleasure. Do not forget the Pleasure of using and app.
• Deliver your promise: you cannot improve low quality app with just eye candy and visual attractivness…
• Entertainment vs Enterprise type application and impact on design
• FlashLite as a tool to prototype mobile UI: I totally agree, it’s one of the best tool to quickly test and geet feedback on innovative UI even if it’s not always the target technology.
• etc…

Worth a read for all mobile developper/designers (and yes, In-Fusio has contributed to this nice doc!)
My remarks is that I hope that S60 Nokia UI designers will adopt this principles (especially the FUP on the Usability/Pleasure part!).

So what I like the most is this FUP concept: Features, Useability, Pleasure…Frequently, the balance is not well done in all of these. We have some great featured product, but not fun at use, or good looking one, but totally unseasable. It’s usually very hard to mix both, but some achieve to do it. A good exemple is this “discoapp” for Apple. It’s just a simple CD rom burner program, but the interface is not only very readable and clear, but fun too. A good example of well balanced mix, look at this video of what happens when a CD is being burned:

Through Small Surfaces.Technorati Tags: design, mobile, discoapp, ui

Entry Filed under: FlashLite, JavaME, Wireless