David Lynch making a point on watching a movie on a mobile device, originally from the Inland Empire special edition, edited to fit the iPhone commercials theme.
Sure, you can't fully experience a great feature film watching it on a mobile device, you'd miss a lot of the emotions a movie can convey. But having the ability to read videos on the go can be great for other purposes than entertainment and art consumption, like getting informed or learning some skills.




via Kottke.

Labels: cellphone, cinema, emotions, interface, iPhone

Following this previous post describing a possible way to call or text your favorite contacts on an iPhone, I did an animation of how it could behave.
To keep things clear, I didn't add the symbol of a finger touching the screen, so here is a transcript of the actions involved :
- After unlocking the phone, flip it to launch the favorite icons screen.
- If you have more than a screen worth of contacts, tap the arrows on the side of the screen to navigate them
- Tap and stay on an icon to reveal the call/sms display. Moving up and release will launch a call, moving down and release will start a sms. Release in the middle neutral zone brings back all the contacts.

I'm very thankfull to Kontra from Counternotions.com who provided me with some good advices to get the interface where it's at. He gets all the credit for the move up/down to call/sms gesture, which is much easier and elegant than the one I had thought of at first.

Labels: cellphone, interface, iPhone, project, software, wish

Or how to call/sms your favorites with 2 click-and-drags on an iPhone.

The last update of the iPhone software gave the double click on the home button the same functionality of bringing up the favorites, but there is maybe a way to avoid these two clicks.

1. First click and drag : unlock the phone.



2. Rotate it anti-clockwise to display the favorites. It works to call the Coverflow interface when playing music, so it might as well work to call an action from the home screen. I guess. Anyhow, this is where the double click disappears.




3. Select one of the favorites : that's the second click (or tap, how do you call them...). As a result, the other contacts icons and names fade out a little, and two bars appear at the top and bottom on the screen to invite you to the next step.



4. Drag and release the icon of your contact on top to call (the result is a fade to the classic call screen of the iPhone), and on the bottom to send a text message (also fades to the classic sms app screen). Once the icon enters one of the area it changes color to tell the user ot has understood his call for this action and performs it on release (so it's always possible to change your mind even if you entered an active zone).




Recursive actions need to be simple so they don't get boring or tiring to perform, and this is what it's all about.
One limitation though is that it would work well if you have up to 10 favorites. Passed this number, I don't know if the interface sensibility can deal with smaller icons/names, and as I don't live in the US, I can't check for myself on the device. Maybe somebody can tell ?
On the other hand, 10 is way enough in terms of favorites as far as I'm concerned.

Labels: apple, cellphone, communication, interface, iPhone, software, tech, wish