Two thoughts on mobile touchscreen interfaces

Insights, Microsoft, Mobile, UI, WinMobile, iPhone, iPodTouch

At the outset, I’d like to clarify I’m no iPhone or Apple zealot. My interest in mobile touchscreen interfaces has been piqued by my recent purchase of an iPod Touch.

I was playing around with a colleague’s HTC Touch Cruise the other day. The Touch runs Windows Mobile 6.1, and, in summary, is a full-featured smartphone with decent multimedia capabilities. That’s not what this post about though.

It’s about two clear observations I made - that we’re stuck in the late 90s when it comes to mobile touch-based input devices, and that UI designers still use the desktop paradigm when designing for mobile touch screens. While Windows Mobile is what triggered this post, with PalmOS, and UIQ too.

Poke, poke

Turns out that it’s a huge pain navigating the WinMobile interface on the 2.8″ touchscreen with your fingers. The buttons are tiny, the menu options are awkward, and it’s next to impossible to grab and drag a scrollbar. I gave up. It’s clear - the best way to navigate a Windows Mobile is using the accompanying stylus.

But a stylus is a hopelessly outdated tool. Along with the physical QWERTY keyboard for desktops/laptops, the stylus is a tool for mobiles that stubbornly refuses to die. Perhaps it’s easier - and commercially attractive - for touchscreen phone manufacturers to add applications and features than to rework a familiar, though suboptimal interface.

iPhone/iPod Touch have changed that. iPhone may not pack the sheer number of applications the HTC Touch Cruise does, but its interface is revolutionary. It lost the stylus. In fact, with multitouch - flicking, pinching, dragging with multiple fingertips - your hand is more effective than a stylus. You may not agree with iPhone the device (I don’t) - but you have to admit iPhone’s set the benchmark for all touchscreen interfaces.

Honey, I shrunk the desktop

Windows Mobile 6.1 has a task bar, a system tray, a Start button and a drop-down Start Menu. With nested menus. On that tiny 240×320 pixel screen.

After spending a while with the device, I realized that Windows Mobile is essentially a shrunk-down version of the desktop Windows interface. The widgets are smaller, but the paradigm is the same. The result is a cluttered interface and a frustrating navigation experience.

Someone’s psyched the WinMobile team into believing that their biggest strength is that their mobile interface looks just like their desktop interface. That may have been true when mobile applications were very simple, but it doesn’t hold true any longer. It’s hurting usability and innovation.

There have been several calls for this, and I’m going to say it here again - the WinMobile team will do themselves and their legions of developers and enterprise customers a world of good if they rethink their interface.

Note: I think Samsung and LG also have very good touchscreen interfaces. But this is merely an observation from Google Image Search results. Haven’t tried them out first-hand, so no comparisons.

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Venkat 3 months ago 1 point
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Exactly my views! I have used both the interfaces iPhone (by hand) and Windows Mobile (with a stylus). iPhone wins hand down on usability. I am currently waiting eagerly for the T-Mobile HTC touch screen handset with Google Android in it. Lets see what Google's thinking is on this.

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