If you ‘re an iPhone apps junkie “ and I know a lot of you who visit here are “ then the limitations on how we can organize and manage our apps on iPhone home screens are probably one of the areas you ‘d most like to see addressed. I know I would definitely like to see this area get a lot of love from Apple.
So I was interested to see a post today that offers a set of recommendations on how to ‘restore spring ‘ to the iPhone / iPod Touch springboard. I was even more interested once I ‘d read the brief Bio of the guy who wrote the post, Bruce Tognazzini, who spent 14 years at Apple and founded their Human Interface Group.
Here ‘s the Bio blurb given on the About page for Bruce ‘s askTOG site:
Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini is a principal with the Nielsen Norman Group, the "dream team" firm specializing in human-computer interaction. Tog was lead designer at WebMD, the super-vertical start-up founded in February, 1996 by Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape. Before that, Tog was Distinguished Engineer for Strategic Technology at Sun Microsystems. During his 14 years at Apple Computer, he founded the Apple Human Interface Group and acted as Apple’s Human Interface Evangelist. Tog has published two books, Tog on Interface and Tog on Software Design, both from Addison Wesley, and is currently publishing the free webzine, "AskTog."
And here is a slice of Tognazzini ‘s explanation of some of the major problems iPhone users have with the current springboard limitations
One reason people never return to an app after three days is that, should they get interested again, they can no longer find it, hidden as it is, randomly slotted on one of eleven look-alike Springboard pages.
Yes, Apple does give you the ability to sort out your apps, but that quickly breaks down when you have, for example, one and a half pages-worth of travel apps, a quarter page of medical, 7/8ths pages of scientific instruments, etc. With a fixed upper limit of 11 pages, with no way to label pages, and without sufficient space on pages to hold all one’s apps for that category, things begin to break down. As one approaches the 180-app upper limit, the pages descend into chaos, as new apps randomly place themselves in any available spaces, with nowhere logical to move them.
And on issues with using Spotlight search for finding / launching apps
Once you hit the maximum number of apps, apps just start falling off the edge. This is apparently already happening in sufficient numbers that Apple, in 3.0, released an all-too-typical programmer hack: They enabled users to have invisible apps they can call up using Search as long as they can remember the app ‘s exact Name. For example, if you have the American Automobile Association app, you have to type in "AAA". Oh, wait! It’s not called "AAA", it’s called "Roadside"! What are the chances you’re going to remember that two years from now when your car breaks down?
Note to programmers: The only people with a good enough abstract memory to use this hack are other programmers.
I don ‘t agree with all the suggestions put forward in the post, or on the specific execution of some of them “ but I definitely like the sound of these;
Page Labels (so you could have a Travel or Games page for example)
Vertical Scrolling (for categories where you have more apps than can fit on one screen)
Containers “ I like this one probably best of all
Springboard needs to introduce Containers, whether they look, in their closed appearance, like traditional folders or bear some other appearance.
Anyway, the whole post is a very good read “ and the subject is one that you have to hope is one that ‘s getting a good long look from Apple sometime soon. Give the post a look HERE, and let the author (and us) know what your thoughts are about how to improve the springboard.
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TAGS: Apple
