The New York Times weighs in on the iPhone’s success, and design usability hero Edward Tufte gets a prominent mention.
In a recent article and accompanying video posted on his Web site, Edward Tufte, the information and visualization designer at Yale, argues that the iPhone’s success is attributable in part to the decision by iPhone designers to dispense with clutter — all of the irritating buttons and menus that are part and parcel of a typical computer interface.
“The content is the interface, the information is the interface, not the computer administration debris,” he said in a video critique of the iPhone.
He also notes that the iPhone succeeds by “intensifying” information, made possible in part by its higher resolution display and in part by packing more useful information in each display.
Microsoft’s products could use this approach. Honestly, we might use about a tenth of those grouped icon bars. To be fair, they’ve improved the clutter somewhat on Office 2008 for the Mac, but it’s only a faint start. Hopefully, the next (last?) version of Office is truly a Mac application.