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February 19 2010
Windows Media 7 interface flops
Yes, I did a write-up about Windows Mobile 7's interface design flops in Chinese. Not intended to translate the whole thing back into English, I'll just make the points here for the record. :)
This picture is quite well-known these days; it looks cool and chic, but there are at least two "cosmetic" problems in my eyes.
Lateral scrolling is not new, at least we've seen a lot on iPhones. The interface of WM7 intentionally leaves some next-page contents as a visual cue indicating there's something left to be seen; this is smart, but not enough.
What it lacks is another visual, or navigational, hint telling the user "where you are", like traditional scroll bars or the dots on the iPhone screen:
And the interface design is also a twin-bladed sword: while it conveniently encourages users to swipe the screen to read ahead, it's also a "dead zone" wasting the precious screen property.
The huge headline text ("pictures" and "people" in the examples) works only on the first screen, and the space reserved for it becomes another dead zone.
That is, the first and the second dead zones take up as much as 44% (the working area, shown in the red rectangle, is 3/4 * 3/4 = 56%) of the screen and do nothing more than "please read ahead".
So what's the big touch screen for?
Another thing is that when you scroll to the second screen, the big headline text is likely to be cut in half, and the result is in fact unpredictable.
In this case, the latter half of "people" looks like "Apple" to me in a quick glimpse. This is not bad at all, but you'll never know what's left when a word is cut in half.
I used to work on a project with similar design (not my design though), and the word bring cut off looks like "cunt" on its second half. The marketing material was later totally recalled at all cost.
Now we have smart phone OSes like iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS and now WM7 and the new Symbian^3, all with touch screen, gestures and their own smartness. What's the best for the rest of us with limited budget and discerning eyes? It's your call.
