Smartphones - what ever happened to ergonomics?

Smartphones have become the swiss army knife of the digital age. The expression, "There's an app for that", describes the seemly endless diversity of functions you can use your smartphone. While many of us have dozens of apps most of use very few. Mostly we habitually use a core set which allow us to communicate, discover and record. These three categories also describe three modes of holding our phones.

To communicate we can phone, email, text, or post to social media. To phone we tend to hold the phone up to our ear in the traditional, making a call mode. Despite siri and the improvements in voice to text dictation, the other communication modes are usually done with the phone in one hand at approx 18 inches from our face. Frequently we do this one handed.

We surf the web and discover information using the same single handed mode. When possible we will use two hands for this task, but frequently we are in situations where one hand is more convenient.

Finally we use our smartphones to record our lives in the form of photographs and video. This tends to be a two handed operation, but again it can sometimes be done single handed.

While this is what we want to do with our phones their design is driven by the need to improve the technology that allow these functions to happen. How we actually physically hold the device is not a focus of improvement. What ever happened to ergonomics?

Pick up your iPhone, Samsung, HTC, Sony or any other new smartphone. Their design is primarily focused round the conflicting goals, of incorporating as large a high resolution screen as is practical combined with as much battery life as possible within the slimmest size. The camera, additional hard switches are added in there, but their location and utility is of lower consideration than the screen/battery compromise. The whole package is encased in materials which say as much about the brand values and social statement as the functional needs of the device.

Coupled with this is an ever shortening product cycles. New models come out every year. The core technology increases in capability, the camera gets more better, the pixel density gets higher and the screen seems to inevitably get larger, and the products get more anorexic. The product cycle is more driven by the same forces that gave us ever increasing fins on the American automobiles of the 1950's. It makes last years, or hopefully the competitor's current phone seem, so yesterday.  At no stage in this headlong rush does the ergonomic failings of the slim cuboid seem to be addressed.

When looking at our high definition, retina displays we do not actually hold our phones, we cradle them in our hand balanced on our pinky. One of our most personal and valuable habitually used possessions is balanced in a precarious position. All the people who we see with cracked screens stand testament to this. The larger the screen the slimmer the form factor the harder this single handed use becomes. If you try and grip your device tightly and then use your thumb to select things on screen it quickly becomes tiring. You need a relaxed grip to comfortably use your thumb.

When we take pictures we are holding a thin slab, with none of the ergonomic enhancements actual cameras have, no hand grips, or ridges to make griping easier. Not even a tactile surface which offers some friction to aid grip. And when we hold these slabs to our ears we increasingly need to stretch our fingers to grasp the device.

The software attempts to make concessions to the ergonomic problems which Steve Jobs so rightly pointed out at the iPhones birth. The arc of reach of the thumb is a limiting factor in the size of the display. So now the iPhone 6 has an software trick which brings the top of the screen within reach.

Jonathan Ive is a very clever man, he is a leader of the cult of the design object. Beauty in the materials and details of the finish. Shaving a tenth of a millimeter here, a new radius there. But for all his passion about making the perfect product he rarely makes phones which are holdable in use. The original iPhone and up to the 3s were much more ergonomic devices. But as the phone has evolved and grown to today's iPhone 6 Plus they have increasingly failed in terms of ergonomics. It is not an easy task. Can a multi capable device have one form which satisfies all uses? Maybe not. But which single use do our current phones actually do well.

My number one top feature for an iWatch

September is coming round and with it the announcement of new Apple iPhones. This year there is a real chance we may also get to see the iWatch. If it does appear, I have a single must have which I feel it needs to succeed.

I must want it on looks alone. Forget all the features and added functionality it may bring to my life, but if it does not look gorgeous then you will have hard time winning me over. Recent staff hires and reports seem to be suggesting that Apple is hoping to position the iWatch as a luxury product. All Apple Macs and iPhones Except the 5c) of recent years have oozed quality and precision engineering. But to make that move into luxury they have to go further.

Long ago watches lost their primary purpose as just timepieces. I could spend £0.69 for the cheapest watch on Amazon or £55k for the most expensive, and potentially gaudie example. Amazon is not the place most people buy their luxury watches, and you can spend considerably more. By doing so you are not simply wanting to know the time, you are making a statement about you, what you want to be seen as.

So for Apple to make a luxury watch they do not have to compete with the very high financial end but they do have to compete on statement terms. The watch has to be a proud addition to a wrist, it has to stand for sometime, and the user has to want to broadcast their ownership. Existing smart watches have failed in this aspect. Pebble has a small but loyal following but despite the ability to use custom watch face designs, it has never shouted out "wear me with pride".

LG, Sony, Samsung have all failed to excite the market. They may have great technology and Google Now is a very powerful desirable feature, but some - the original Samsung Gear - had very high numbers of customers returning the products. Some of this will be due to functional problems but I suspect a lot are to do with the diminishing desire to actually own the item.

To excite the buyer in a luxury market Apple has to excell at the visual and tactile details. It has to fell like a perfectly made object, with precision details and exquisite visual clarity. It must not be a chunky item, bulked out by the need for a long battery life, it must be elegant and restrained. More like this concept design by Charlie No of New York

Than this ,

The first is about a precision watch, the second is about a digital device. Now Apple has amazing UX and design skills, and may well create a new visual identity which manages to express the later and make it appear luxury and highly desirable. But to do so is much harder than retaining some of the visual language from existing forms. To appeal to the masses it has to not look like a geek only device. Its visual language should speak of quality, luxury, refinement, elegance, not of utility and Swiss Army Knife capability.

I have no doubt that the functionality will blend seamlessly with my other iOS devices. I expect Apple will provide wireless charging and somehow give it a battery that will last at least 48 hours. I expect it will be priced at an expensive but not outlandish cost of between £150 and £200. New capabilities such as health monitoring, fingerprint security, effective and accurate voice activation will all increase the desirability, but if it does not immediately delight my eyes then my wallet will stay in my pocket.

How Facebook should use Oculus Rift

Oculus has been purchased by Facebook. A $2 billion dollar bet on what may be the  future digital platform.  Virtual Reality is not new it has a long history.  The common impression of VR has been shaped by the film industry but real systems have been around for decades.

First described in the 1935 science fiction short story, Pygmalion's Spectacles by Stanley G Weinbaum as a pair of goggles which provide:

"a movie that gives one sight and sound [...] taste, smell, and touch. [...] You are in the story, you speak to the shadows (characters) and they reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it."

In the fifties Morton Eilig made the Sensorama, an immersive theatre system using a stereoscopic film display device with fans, and a moving seat. In 1968 Ivan Sutherland, the father of computer graphics, built the first computer based virtual reality head mounted display system. The 70’s bought us flight simulators, the 90’s gave us the Nintendo Virtual Boy, and as an owner of one I can tell you it is a real, not virtual, pain to use. Along the way the military, architects, and surgeons have found uses for the tech.

Today, with is the Oculus Rift, the technology can finally deliver on the promise of truly immersive, highly responsive environments. In a form factor, and a price point where it has the chance to go mainstream. The price is high but is bound to come down. Oculus are not the only game in town, technological advances, mass production and competition from Sony   and another notable competitor, the Avegant Glyph, will help lower prices. Facebook might even sell the headset at a loss. Because the immersive nature of the experience is so different, so compelling, they could set up a pay per experience market. 

The question is what will Facebook or the other players do with the technology? Mark Zuckerberg’s statement seems to me to have hit the nail on the head:

"After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face -- just by putting on goggles in your home.

This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life."

The key word is “experiences”, its all about the experiences. Before working in the web, I came from a games background, one which excels at experiences. I have always though that what is lacking from accessing the web via the traditional pages model is the ability to deliver emotions. Sure you can watch an emotional video or read a poem that moves you to tears or emotionally respond to a song delivered through the web, but the experience of using the web does not inherently have the capacity to deliver emotions.

Games deliver excitement, loyalty, fear, tension, humor, you feel your whole body respond to games. Heart rates increase, you shout at your real or virtual opponents and punch the air when you win. When was the last time you got any of this from a web page?

The web we have designed is a content delivering system. We do it very well, and I am sure will get much better at it. We have interfaces which provide quick access to content structures. We try to minimize the number of interactions to access content. We have established conventions for how we organize and manoeuvre through content. We keep is simple and intuitive.

I will put on  my VR goggles to attend a conference or take a guided tour of the Sistine Chapel, learn about a new subject through rich immersive media, or meet my friends in a virtual world.  A vastly improved second life.

However, using three dimensions to navigate through a collection of news articles and video reports is laborious and inefficient. Currently we navigate in a 2d digital world. Adding that extra dimension brings big cognitive, UI and learning overheads. It is worth investing in these to receive an emotional hit, but not to read the news, or manipulate a sales tool. A 3D world is not a good way to deliver the written word. 

Firebox a VR browser by James McCrae, Toronto University

I remember conversations in 80’s where people spoke of  cathedral builders as a model for content delivery. Use the 3d architectural structure and details as a way to access content. People are still playing with this notion. In my mind failing. The cathedral model was more a story telling mechanism than content delivery. It worked in the middle ages partly because it was a way of expressing the power of God and of the ruling class but also because of high illiteracy rates. Give me a decent 2d information architecture any day.

Today content and context are the kings. In a VR world it is the experience. I do not see VR replacing the way we consume the bulk of our content, not in the next ten, twenty years at least. The current 2d world will live along side the 3d virtual ones. Increasingly augmented reality driven by context will deliver a third way, but that is another story.