As long-time iPhone owners we’ve done our share of railing against AT&T. Time to put our money where our mouth is. We’ve ordered an iPhone 4 (with AT&T) and a Droid Incredible from Verizon. In 30 days we return one. Two phones enter…

We’ve had the new iPhone for three days now. Since there are plenty of full reviews elsewhere, I’ll restrict myself to a few highlights.

It’s fast. Fast, fast, fast. I cannot overemphasize how important this is. Presumably it’s a combination of the faster processor and the pseudo-multitasking, with an emphasis on the former. (I am upgrading from an iPhone 3G whose iOS4 upgrade slowed it to a crawl.)

The new screen is beautiful. It’s evolutionary, but the type of evolution that feels revolutionary because it makes such a difference. I was doing my Kindle reading on an iPad, but the crispness of text on the iPhone 4 has switched me back to it. In some ways it feels like a different technology.

The hardware is not as dramatically different from previous generations as Apple would have you believe, but nice, compact, clean-looking. It’s a little harder to pick up because of the square edges.

The best news is the signal. Reception is definitely better in San Francisco – and the Mission in particular. It’s possible to make calls in our apartment and to load data on the street, though it’s still spotty. Whether that’s the device or AT&T’s ongoing improvements is unclear: we know they’re adding towers, and our iPhone 2G seems to be doing a bit better as well.

Then there’s the much-discussed antenna issue. It’s real, not simply cosmetic, and confirmed by Consumer Reports. (Mini-rant: the frustrating part is not the hardware problem, but Apple’s all-too-typical response ranging from, “What problem?” to “You’re the problem.” It takes a special brand of arrogance to deny something so easy to reproduce.)

Otherwise…well, it’s an iPhone. Overall a delight to use, irritatingly locked down at times, occasionally annoying. The Droid should be arriving soon…

These trade-offs are unavoidable. If you don’t make them explicitly, you make them implicitly. Can’t decide which feature get a big button? You can create ten buttons but you’re making another trade-off: each will be a little less prominent, and your product’s simplicity and elegance will suffer.

Trade-offs are necessary at every stage of the product lifecycle:

• Apple is often praised for simplicity. Less is more: remove all the physical buttons and do the rest in software. But that’s not the whole truth. The iPhone has two volume buttons, a power button, a Home button, and a ringer switch. Only the power button is necessary. Someone made a trade-off, sacrificing a certain degree of simplicity for the convenience of four more buttons. The result may, in fact, feel simpler: without taking the phone out of my pocket I can adjust the volume or set it to vibrate. What we call simplicity is, in fact, a successful trade-off.

• Facebook has repeatedly favored speed over caution, angering users by releasing features and design changes (e.g. the newsfeed) without vetting them thoroughly. Many look to the resulting uproar as a cautionary tale, but I believe this is the wrong lesson. At worst, Facebook’s tremendous growth has proceeded in spite of these choices. But I suspect Facebook has succeeded because of them: by trading speed for pre-release research and by making sure they can correct course quickly, Facebook has innovated, stayed ahead of the competition, and gotten free user research in the bargain.

Make no mistake: trade-offs are hard. They require sacrifice. They require risk. But then, it should come as no surprise that these qualities are needed for great product design as well.

Maggie is an enthusiastic office manager with a keen interest in the details of what goes on around the apartment. Her broad range of interests is perhaps her strongest asset – from tackling tissue paper to folding laundry to changing the sheets to whatever seems to be going on under the stove, her passion reminds us not to take the details for granted.

Maggie sees tasks through to their completion. For example, on several occasions I’ve seen her work late simply to defend a pile of laundry from being worn or put away. This drive to go above and beyond the call of duty – and indeed beyond what anyone actually wants her to do – is admirable or possibly irritating.

In recent months Maggie has focused on developing an extremely fuzzy winter coat. While the associated shedding can be problematic, the entire team appreciates the resulting increase in cuddliness.

Development Areas

In 2010 Maggie should work on her periodic tendency to become confrontational. While I admire her passion, I would encourage her to find a more effective and professional outlet than leg-biting or drive-by swatting.

In past peer reviews I’ve commented on Maggie’s progress in lap-sitting and purring; in 2010 I’d encourage her to build on those skills and turn her attention to hugging.

Maggie would also do well to cultivate team-oriented traits like staying off the table, vomiting only on non-porous surfaces, and increasing her “face time” by restricting incessant meowing to normal business hours.

Additional Comments

It’s been a pleasure working with Maggie over the last ten years, to see her grow professionally and socially. While her performance in 2009 was excellent, I am not yet convinced she will reach her overall career goal of remembering what she was doing ten minutes ago.

Background

Traditionally, software applications are installed via an installer: a script that copies files to your computer and performs any configuration necessary to get the app up and running. Typically (and especially on Windows), files are dumped all over your hard drive. The program itself, yes, but also various supporting files: help files, images, libraries, etc. Deleting one of these files may cripple the application. To remove the app, you need to know exactly what was installed or you need an uninstaller.

With Mac OS X, Apple introduced application bundles to improve this situation. (Actually they were introduced with NeXTSTEP several years earlier and OS X inherited them.) An application bundle is a specially structured folder that looks to the user like single file. If you’re a Mac user, you can see what I mean: open your Applications folder and Ctrl-click (right-click) on an app there such as iCal or Mail. Select Show Package Contents and you’ll see what the app is made of.

Why is this important? Because now a double-clickable app can contain all its supporting files. Installing an is as simple as dragging it to your hard drive. To uninstall, drag it to the Trash. And applications are less fragile: because they’re self-contained they’ll run from anywhere (not just Applications), and the chances of destabilizing an app by deleting a depenency are low.

Current Practice

Since apps don’t require an installer, the simplest way to distribute one is simply in a zip archive. Unzip it and you’re done. If you drag to /Applications, great; if not, it’ll still work. Many apps are indeed distributed this way.

However, the de facto standard is to put the app on a disk image, compress the disk image, and distribute that. It’s also  standard to include either an image or an alias of /Applications to indicate the need to drag the app there.

Disk image window with drag-and-drop cue

There are several advantages to this approach:

• You can distribute auxiliary files (plug-ins, extras, manuals) without dumping them all on the desktop or obscuring the app in a folder.
• When the disk image is mounted its window can open automatically, providing helpful feedback to the user.
• It enforces the idea of dragging the app to /Applications.
• It allows you to present a license agreement to the user when the DMG is mounted.
• You can include branding in the DMG’s window.

The Problem

The trouble is, this approach works too well. Because apps can run from anywhere, a user can launch the app from the mounted DMG, resulting in the following scenario:

1. A user downloads your app.
2. He double-clicks until the app appears in a window (that of the mounted disk image).
3. Accustomed to installers or just to double-clicking on things to make them go, he double-clicks. Or, he drags the app to the Dock and clicks on it there.
4. The app launches. Everything is great.
5. Later, the user restarts his computer. The Dock icon turns into a question mark and the app’s window disappears. The user is confused and sad.

In other words, if a user misses or misunderstands the drag-and-drop cue, everything works so well that he fails to install the app, causing confusion later on. And it’s not a far-fetched scenario: many apps do still use installers and double-clicking on things tends to work. People’s visual focus can be very narrow, so some users will certainly miss the drag-and-drop cue. Aliases are arguably somewhat of an advanced concept, so the idea of dragging the app from one place in the window to another may not make much sense; and users who interact with apps exclusively via the Dock may not know the location or role of /Applications.

Luckily, this problem isn’t hard to solve.

The Apple Solution

The ideal solution would probably come from Apple. With Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), apps launched from DMGs already produce a warning:

OS warning when launching from a DMG

Apple could simply replace “Open” with “Install” and copy  to /Applications before launching:

A revised launch-from-DMG dialog

A context menu item or modifier-click would allow advanced users to run directly from the DMG. References in the Dock would be updated as well.

The Developer Solution

Of course we can’t rely on Apple to implement this. Nor do we have to. In the absence of an OS-level answer, individual vendors can provide the same functionality themselves.

How aggressive should vendors be? Delicious Library – which is not distributed by DMG – prompts users when the app is anywhere outside /Applications:

Delicious Library's launch dialog

The disadvantage of this broader approach is that it must be presented as a warning or choice rather than a natural part of the install process. By only prompting for DMG-launched apps, we can make it a simple (and expected) “Proceed with installation?” confirmation rather than a more complex “Should I put this someplace else?” choice. And while Delicious Library’s prompt keeps a user’s desktop clean, it’s an extra and entirely optional step: downloaded apps scattered all over the desktop may be irritating to some, but it doesn’t prevent the user from launching them.

As you can see, pictures hit the 1000-word mark at just under 1 megapixel. It looks like a standard 16×16 pixel toolbar icon weighs in at an auspicious 42 words. (No data yet on how much badging is required at that size to achieve the full 42-word potential, though).

This comes at a terrific time. Products like the iPhone are popularizing usable, delightful experiences, and for many the takeaway message is make it spartan. Some point to the Google home page as the perfect user experience because it contains so little. But good design isn’t about simplicity (in the English sense); it’s about context. Fogg’s simplicity framework builds a new concept of simplicity that incorporates context and perception.

Simplicity is the “minimally satisfying solution at the lowest cost.”

It is a function of the user’s scarcest resource at the moment and thus depends on the person and the context. It involves the following factors:

• Time: How long will it take?
• Money: What will it cost?
• Physical Effort: How much must I expend?
• Brain Cycles: How much must I think?
• Social Deviance: How weird will it make me look?
• Novelty: How different is it from what I’m used to?

It may not be intended as a complete design framework, but it is surprisingly comprehensive. Some of my favorite principles fit right in (consistency with expectations, the least effective difference, and a clear visual hierarchy, for instance). It does not, however, include the traditional definition of simplicity anywhere. In other words, while a spartan UI will often be the outcome of applying this framework, it won’t be when the context demands otherwise.

Fogg’s framework does omit delight as a factor. A delightful experience can predispose the user to accepting greater complexity, increasing simplicity through aesthetics. That may mean it belongs in the framework; but it may also belong outside it as a modifier.

Will this framework revolutionize user experience design? Probably not. But it can help designers explain the complexities of simplicity to others, and gives us tool for framing our own decisions and trade-offs.

UIE’s Joshua Porter has a worthwhile article on simplicity, with a discussion of its relationship to purchasing decisions and links to additional opinion.

“After the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press pound for more options. [inexplicably long pause] To leave a callback number, press 5.”

I have never dared to press 5.
It’s possible that someone did research and found a real need for these Instructions, but I’d be surprised. It seems more likely that someone stuck them in because she could – perhaps Shirley herself, though I suspect she’s innocent. I’m not averse to providing options, but when they serve only a fraction of telephone users (as I suspect they do) they should be provided in a manner that doesn’t get in everyone else’s way. (The need for them is what we often call an edge case. It’s easy but dangerous to get caught up in edge cases, because the last thing you want to do is design for them at the expense of the core use cases.)
Some carriers (Sprint, AT&T/Cingular, and possibly T-Mobile) allow you to bypass Shirley by pressing 1; Sprint goes so far as to tell you about it. In the past my outgoing message has begun, “Press 1 to skip to the beep.” Instructions for the Instructions.
The iPhone has already been lauded for bringing Apple simplicity to the mobile phone market, but I think of my outgoing voicemail message as AT&T’s territory. To my surprise and delight, here’s what happens after the outgoing message when you call an iPhone user:

[beep]

Thanks, Apple.

Looking out a week it’s Boston, the Gunks, Long Island, Boston again…then Oregon the week after. Let’s hope I don’t come down with something.

The observant surfer will note that I’ve posted new photos, most notably those from my dad’s visit.