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Edward Tufte Weighs In on Apple's iPhone
An anonymous reader writes "Via Daring Fireball, a post from design guru Edward Tufte's site discusses his views on the interface used by the Apple iPhone. The post includes a video presentation by Tufte on the subject of video resolution on the phone. His argument is primarily that while the iPhone does a lot of things very well, Apple hasn't quite realized the platform's full potential by making screen real estate all it could be. "
Actually, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a few of his suggestions get incorporated into future updates. For instance, his comment about the bottom toolbar in the web browser is exactly the same as what I thought when I first used it--"They should either make this thing transparent or just get it out of the way." And while his suggestion for the weather app is okay, it would make sense as a user-configurable advanced option. Many people get confused by looping radar images.
This guy's the limit!
Kudos to Edward Tufte for providing good detailed constructive criticism on the iPhone, including specific examples of improvements. I hope that Apple will pay attention to the FREE ADVICE that Tufte is giving and incorporate it into their next iPhone firmware update. I am sure that the UI advice that Apple pays for is likely not as good.
Personally as a product developer myself, I would welcome such good detailed constructive criticism for free from a UI guru such as Tufte. Remember that there are all innovation is based on prior innovation, so it is good to have analysis done on existing products in order to improve on future versions.
BTW, on a side note, I hope that someone at Slashdot deletes the offences racist postings above.
He's not making a point about the technical limitations. In fact for the most part, it seems as though he actually likes the interface. Truth be told, the idea is so novel that it deserves some examining. A multi-touch interface is a unique concept by itself. Combined with the way it's being used make it stand out from its competitors.
I'm sure when you first saw an OS GUI thoughts went through your head on how to improve it. Perhaps YOU should have thought of something more novel than critiquing previous works.
If you look at his examples, his primary argument is that you can cram more information on the screen because of the iPhone's high resolution. I can't agree with him that this is a good idea.
Part of the reason that people BUY the iPhone is that it's simple and stylish, rather than the existing information heavy devices like Pocket PC phones. In particular, look at his example about the Weather- Apple's widget is small and sleek. It shows you the vital information, and it does it in strong fonts and bold styling. It's clear, and it's easy.
He squishes all of that information into a tiny corner, so that he can add a large repeating satellite view- Sure it's useful in some cases, and it's certainly a neat demonstration of the iPhone's abilities, but it fails when it comes to the task of quickly giving me the important information.
It makes me squint to see the tiny version of the temperature, and shows off, rather than helping.
Sometimes developers fall into the problem of working so often because they can, not wondering if they should.
Note- He dismisses this argument, saying that information density isn't the problem, it's laying it out clearly. I agree with him in general,in that complex information can often be presented simply, but in most of his cases, increasing the density would diminish it's usefulness.
Colin Davis
Tufte makes a good point about the hidden potential of iPhone's brilliant display. But I feel the answer lies less in resolution, and more in depth. We have been exposed to much web content that is layered (for example, pop-up windows that appear on top of existing screens that fade into the dark) that we can now discern depth on a 2D picture provided it is clear, sharp and bright. There is this 3D real estate that is not exploited in iPhone (and something that it is quite capable of).
As an example, I sometimes find it a tad annoying to keep going to the Home screen on the iPhone when switching between applications (typically when I am viewing a website and quickly need to look at maps). A dock with all Home icons down the side that appears overlaid (and magnifies each icon on fingerscroll, just like on a mac) would eliminate the intermediate step of going to the Home screen. To take it a bit further, the Maps can open in a 75% window on top of the Safari, so we can get back to Safari by one fingerstroke (Tufte's idea would be to open two windows each 50%, because there's resolution). This is, as you can see, nothing new - just something that iPhone doesn't currently have but can quite possibly do.
My sig has been answered.
Just because an average human eye can tell apart a 600 dpi print from a 1200 dpi print doesn't mean it is more 'usable'. 1200 allows fancier or more elegant fonts (like a subtly waisted Optima) and nice printouts, but I have never met anyone who would have printed all his texts at 5 pt size just because his printer could.
UI design regarding resolution is mainly about legibility. Using sub-pixel anti-aliasing and optimized fonts you can get excellent, and I mean very excellent results below 200 dpi. Anything higher can show more detail in theory, but not more significant information. Nobody would chose a waisted font over a optimized one on a portable device, so why waste money (which could be used for other features) on displays which -could- display them.
I used to have an account here /. ages ago. Sadly that PW was lost.
I registered again to simply say: Tufte is no genius, his lectures/seminars are overpriced, and I'm tired of hearing about "sparklines".
I heard Tufte speak here in Houston not too long ago. I'd really like to send him a bill for the hours of my life that I wasted.
If I wanted to hear someone rant and rave about PowerPoint, I'd pay a kid in high school. If I wanted to hear some guy with an over inflated sense of self-worth talk about his past accomplishments, I'd tune in to the presidential debates.
In short, to the OP:
1 - Tufte has been bragging about "sparklines" forever. You obviously have seen through the smoke and BS. Kudos to you. I wish my employer/coworkers did the same.
2 - Tufte constantly emphasizes "add more data" "show more info" etc etc. Yet he fails to realize that in the *real world* slides or documents (let alone a UI) that is crowded and complex does no good for the reader/user.
Hey Tufte - Give it a break. You've got enough books. You obviously have a fan base. Do the rest of us a favor and fade off into obscurity so I don't have to hear "How can we incorporate sparklines into this presentation" or "Is this PPT following Tufte's basic principles?" every damn day at the staff meetings. /rant off - thanks for the vent /. i missed ye.
Worst thing about the UI is that there seems to be some inconsistency on behavior -- sometimes I tap a phone number expecting to edit contact info and it makes an unexpected call. I can't remember exactly. It could be user error, but I'm feeling like the behavior is different in different context sometimes. Also, the back/forward arrows that sometimes appear near the top of the screen also seem inconsistent. Sometimes you click "done" or "save" in the upper right, sometimes you need to look to the upper left for a 'back' button, and so on.
Overall, I really like it though.
I've been a Tufte fan for almost 20 years. I was introduced to his work, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, while an Architecture student and multimedia developer in the early 1990s. This man is to graphic design what Newton was to gravity. He really defined the rules and explained why and how they are applied, technically. His statement, "Thus the iPhone got it mostly right," is him basically saying, "It's great, but I would have done some things a little differently." From a man that knows what he knows, that's the highest praise any contemporary could ever hope to get! I don't mean that sarcastically, either. I'd be ecstatic if he said anything like that about my work. Of course, I'd think it was a prank, but I don't think I'm that good anyway.
Besides, it's always easier to critique someone else's work than create something novel yourself.
I'd call both sparklines and the data-ink ratio pretty good and novel innovations.
You can't credit the man with "creating" information design as a discipline, but he's done a great deal to evangelize it, and you certainly have to give him plenty of credit for its currently elevated profile.
Tufte is not just some crank. Intelligent, useful, compelling information display is what he's all about. You don't have to agree with him, but his thoughts are usually worth weighing.
Most people are average. But the mind is such a complicated thing, and there are so many fields of interest and complex interactions between them, that almost everybody is more talented and more knowledgeable in certain fields than... you are. Or me. Some people are terrifically talented in certain areas but may seem almost retarded in others... like correlating animated 2d radar maps to the real world.
My mother shies away from the DVD player we got her... but she can look at nearly any 3d object, such as an animal, and freehand draw a sewing pattern for it. That's not a simple task; it involves mental 3d->2d transformations that any graphics modeler would be jealous of.
Because it is a selling point even though most people can only barely see the difference over 300 dpi. That was the resolution of the first laser printers, and most people thought they looked as good as typeset. And that was for black and white printers with no way of controlling dot intensity. With a screen that can produce halftones for antialiasing, it is hard to see much improvement above 150 dpi.
I get the distinct feeling that Tufte understands data visualisation, but not interface design. These are different things, and he's letting his expertise in one area make him think he can make pronouncements from on high in other areas and comes out with some real bullshit as a result.
His "to clarify, add detail" rule could be applied to his comment on the photo browser. He says they should be grey not white, and only one pixel wide, but gives no reason why. I'd like some detail to clarify why he says that! It would not fit more images onto the screen, it would add no information content, it's barely even an aesthetic change to the design. It's news to me that arranging images against a plain white background is a bad approach. I've met a lot of smart people that like to "show off" by making detailed comments like this, without any actual substance or empirical evidence to back up what is simply their own preference. Tufte seems to be doing so here.
He criticises the stock app for being "cartoony" and "PowerPoint" like, which seems again a mere preference rather than an objective comment, uses words designed to provoke an emotional reaction rather than an intellectual one. He claims his app has more detail - which of course it should when it only has three stocks, not six. But I don't see how x thousand points of data points in a tiny little graph is of use. First of all, if you fit thousands of data points into a single graph, it's going to need a damn big piece of paper before I'm capable of distinguishing them, combined with a ruler and a set square if I want to get the value for a specific data point. Second, why would I want this level of detail on a phone app? Personally, I find the iPhone's red light / green light view combined with percentage points useful - it jumps out at you when e.g. the market crashes as it did recently. In Tufte's example, it's impossible to tell what recent market changes have taken place, and there is no obvious way to quickly see data for e.g. the last week. The "modest data graphic cartoon" conveys just as much information to the viewer as his "image resolution" with thousands of data points, and is the kind of thing a portable stocker checker would be used for. Tufte is letting his expertise get in the way of understanding the use case - all his catchphrases are there for the converted, but his use of them here just annoys me.
Here's a nice little piece - take a look at his site at http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00036T. He criticises the iPhone browswer for having 10% of the screen used for buttons, but in his own designs he comments "about 90% of the image is substance". Clearly he's happy with that 10% sacrifice when it's his own work. And if you look at the designs, you'll note that in each case there is a navigation bar of some form at the top or bottom of the page. What a hypocrite.
Finally, he's very keen on getting rid of computer admin debris. The problem is, he treats looking at a web page the same as looking at a picture. But when I'm looking at a picture, I don't want to bookmark it (it's already in my collection), and I don't want to make a webclip of it. I don't need the back button with photos, because I can navigate via the photo collection. But I do need those functions in the browser, and I need them large enough to easily hit with my finger. We're all used to scrolling down webpages, so having a mere 90% of the screen available, and an intuitive flick of a finger to scroll down, is perfect. Commenting that the button bar should at least be transparent strikes me as just one of those condescending little compromises some people like to make when they know they won't convince the other side of "the right answer". It would be bad interface design to have application buttons hovering over hyperlinks, making it distinctly ambiguous what would happen when you touched that bottom 10% of the screen.
In particula