SXSW: How Emotions Determine Android's Design 68
Nerval's Lobster writes "At a SXSW panel titled, 'Android's Principles for Designing the Future,' Helena Roeber (who headed up Android's UX research from 2007 through 2012) and Rachel Garb (who leads interaction design for Android apps at Google) discussed the complex philosophy behind Android's design. Roeber went back to the very beginning, recounting Google's Android Baseline Study, in which the team made in-home visits to study how people use technology. 'We saw the profound effect that technological design has on people's lives,' she said. 'Technology had become so pervasive that people had started to schedule and enforce deliberate offline moments to spend time with their family and friends.' From that study, the team learned that users were often overwhelmed by their options and 'limitless flexibility,' leading them to consider how to design a mobile operating system that wouldn't beat those users over the head (at least in the proverbial sense) on a minute-by-minute basis. Instead, they focused on an interface capable of serving features to users only when needed. That meant creating an interface that only interrupts users when needed; that does the 'heavy lifting' of the user's tasks and scheduling; that emphasizes 'real objects' over buttons and menus; and that offers lots of chances for customization. All those elements— and many more — eventually ended up in Android's trio of design principles: 'Enchant Me, Simplify My Life, and Make Me Amazing.'"
I also prefer my principles to mean nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the point of calling something a 'principle' if it is so vacuous as to both affirm and reject practically any design decision you might choose to make?
Re:I also prefer my principles to mean nothing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's good design? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of the current UX people are pretty young (and I'm talking about both Android and Apple), and don't seem to have a solid grasp of historical UX precedents. (same thing is true of art directors and programmers) Google seems to think they invented all this stuff, but as you say the Macintosh had a GUI design bible that is still very relevant today and covers most of what Google is trying to spin as their profound discoveries. Unfortunately even the UX designers at Apple seem to cast aside this bible. Everyone wants to make their mark and do something different than what was done before, even if it's not the right decision, even if it hurts the user's experience. Often hubris clouds their judgment. Jony Ive is a great designer because he serves the product, not his ego.