iPhone Usability Review

At this session we looked at Nancy Frishberg's iPhone and considered several aspects of its usability (where usefulness and  aesthetics or enjoyment were considered along with its utility and user-learnable or user-intuited aspects).

Industrial Design

Size/Shape/Weight

We noted, as many reviews have already, the light weight and large proportion of the face of the device devoted to the screen.  For those who did not recall Apple's Newton® devices we reviewed the contrast in size (larger), weight (heavier) and shape (larger in all dimensions).

Interaction Design meets Industrial Design

It's striking how many soft buttons this machine has, and how few hard buttons.

• There's the single tactilely obvious button on the screen
• There's the slightly less obvious audio output device (for the ear). 
• There are three buttons on the narrow edges of the device
  • power on/off
  • volume - a rocker which has several levels shown onscreen with tick marks
  • mute - very handy for meetings and the movies

These buttons are still accommodated with the addition of the cushioning cover I felt compelled to buy.  (I recall my Handspring device falling several times until the face cracked.  Ugly.)  The interesting difficulty of using the rubber cover is that the device can't stand in the cradle, but can still connect to the cord.

Earphones

California will soon have a new law in place:  Drivers must use hands-free methods of cellphone use.  Thus, I am motivated to become habitual in my use of the ear buds.  I also feel pretty geeky when I just keep the earbuds on when communicating face-to-face.  How to have the ear piece(s) in place for quick access to the phone, or for easy access to podcasts and music, while not appearing rude, distracted or quirky in face-to-face encounters?  I have an idea or two here, but we can wait.  I expect that around MacWorld time in January 2008 there will be many new accessories for the iPhone, including interesting treatments of the earpiece.

Multifunction Device

The iPhone, like a Treo or a Blackberry and several other similar tools, is a multifunction device including phone functions of making and receiving voice calls, but also has email, calendar, contact list, SMS and camera capabilities.  I recall at least one UX person I respect arguing for single function devices with quite reasonable arguments, but for myself, I'm enjoying having the several functions inhabit the same device.

Device qua phone and device qua computer

I reported noticing a recent conflict between the mobile telephone device and the functionality of a computer.  The phone functions as an independent device in most instances, however, it syncs with a base station laptop or desktop computer. In this exchange of information, updating each machine, with calendar corrections and additions, photos, contacts, and the like.  Still the phone takes its software updates from the relationship with the base station. 

Computers get updates

My previous mobile phone updated itself when you power-cycled it off and on.  If it started to act odd, slow or if I needed to be on an airplane, I would powercycle the phone.

The iPhone uses iTunes (an Apple software program for cataloguing audio on the base station and related devices, for connecting to the iTunes store to buy music or spoken word recordings, or update subscriptions to periodicals, such as podcasts.  The iPhone gets its software updates through iTunes.

Here's the problem I had: 

1. Start update download from iTunes Store to iTunes application on base station
2. When complete, the update will apply itself to the iPhone

So far so good, right?  But what happens when a call comes in between these two steps?  It's hard to know (as a user) how big an update package is, and therefore how to estimate the time needed to download and then apply the update.  From my recent experience, apparently what happens is that the call is interrupted and the phone software update takes precedence.  Recommendation: The software should check for an ongoing voice call and ask to interrupt, or wait until the call is completed, before beginning the update. 

Phone qua phone
 - it's easy to accept "call waiting":  you're notified that second call is coming in and (if the number is in the address book) who is calling.  Choice to disconnect from current call and accept the new one is a well labeled (soft) button.  But the choice to have a brief interaction with new caller ("Sure, noon is fine. See you there.") and return to first call WITHOUT hanging up on first call is hard, because the sequence of highest frequency for this scenario is in my estimation is

1.    accept second call by putting first on hold (one button well labeled but I forget with what wording)
2.    have brief conversation with second caller and agree to hang up;
3.    push "return to first call" button (well labeled again
4.    have the second caller hang up before the button in the previous step can take effect
5.    thus, you've closed the second conversation and (ooops) hung up on the first

Interaction Design positives

•  being able to look up something while staying on the phone, and realizing that you can get back to the call interface with a single touch at the top of the screen.  This capability may have been there on my previous phone, but I was so concerned I'd drop the call I barely tried it.  I think my favorite college student can save numbers on the phone as a note while talking, but don't know if she can enter a new number while talking to someone.
• the phone "knows" that a number is identified with two people (e.g. a husband and wife, both of whom are in my contacts list, with the same home number) and when that number rang me, the phone said "A or B calling".
• I'm enjoying the two-finger gesture for increasing the image size, enlarging the screen for a particular area (and the reverse).  Lots of promise here for additional uses of this gesture (optical zoom in the camera?), and for additional gestures

iPhone as camera

For DIVCamp I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the camera in the iPhone. 

So far I've found it handy to have the camera available, but haven't added automatic upload to flickr or Kodak Easy Share or any of the other, similar sites.  The camera, while certainly adequate, does not have flash or any zoom capability, both of which I'm accustomed to and use (the latter more than the former).  But we might expect future models to have a more capable camera.

As I use the phone and show images, I'm realizing how much of a photo editor I need to be.  "Our remodeling project" can't be a collection of even 50% of the images I've taken of this project, for most people.  A dozen or two nice contrasts and details of old and new would suffice most viewers.  This is my challenge, but it's not new to the iPhone.  It's just that now you can carry so many images and stories in pictures, where it would have been prohibitive (space, weight, cost) in physical media.

iPhone for email

I have two email accounts that I use most often.  Do I want to receive and send email for either of those on the iPhone?  I am aware of other people who use their iPhones for email.  If I could figure out an easy way to filter my mail, so that only certain senders could reach me (e.g. individuals in my contact list of some 500+ "cards"), but not mailing lists or spam or unknown folks (who can wait until I'm sitting still), I'd be more willing to get and respond to email.  I guess these are issues that are very familiar to Blackberry users, which I now reveal myself to be ignorant about.

iPhone as web-browser

I have been surprised to see how often I refer to the web, seek information, confirm answers, find routes, and the like with the added cost of a flat fee for web browsing that comes with the service from AT&T for the iPhone.  As I was already a Cingular ("the new AT&T") customer, and reasonably satisfied with the service, I was familiar with the provider.  We had a wide ranging discussion about various providers and agreements between providers and other retailers.