[Sigia-l] It's started

[Christopher Fahey]

I wrote:
> Because for the first time in human history a mobile phone 
> manufacturer saw the UI as something much more than an 
> afterthought to the hardware and software feature sets. 
> For the iPhone, the UI is almost certainly the first thing 
> they worked on, not the last.

Jonathan Baker-Bates wrote (apparently presuming me to be a breathless
Apple sycophant and not just a thorough mobile-phone-UI-design-hater):
> > Oh calm down.
> > Nokia have a long tradition of very high quality handset UI design 
> > backed up by equally comprehensive research. If you don't know what 
> > Jan Chipchase is doing at Nokia, you should:

You know, despite all of that happy talk about Chipchase in that
article, I still think that all mobile phone interfaces I've ever seen
suck, presumably including every one that Chipchase has designed, too. 

Also, nothing in that article suggests that Chipchase does anything
about what appears on the screen (it's perfectly possible that he does,
but the article says nothing about it). I should have been clearer that
the GUI is the aspect of the UI I was talking about. Apple has paid
immense attention to the GUI (obviously because there is no hardware UI
at all, but also presumably because they care more about the GUI than
almost any other company who makes GUIs). Chipchase seems mostly
interested in the physical design and lifestyle fit of his devices --
factors that deeply affect the shape, hardware UI, and software feature
set of the product.

In general I do think that a product's UI *is* the product's feature
set. I should have been clearer: I meant the GUI not the UI.

-Cf

Christopher Fahey
____________________________
Behavior
http://www.behaviordesign.com
me: http://www.graphpaper.com