Platform Agnostic Influence
“It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
About a month ago I was in Office Depot looking at printers. As I was waiting in line, I had a chance to play with a display HP TouchSmart. This all-in-one desktop is their equivalent of an iMac but comes equipped with a touchscreen. This wasn’t my first experience with Windows 8, as I have a copy installed via Parallels on my retina MacBook. This was, however, my first shot at using Windows 8 via touchscreen. For all the criticisms and inconsistencies people have screamed about, I walked away inspired by a single touch; just by opening Outlook, actually. The button (or tile, I suppose is what they call it) depressed in z-space as I touched it. It felt really natural, responsive, much like a physical object. Of course being a demo, an error message immediately popped up about lack of internet connectivity. As I dismissed it, the ‘OK’ button also depressed in the same manner. It felt really good and thoughtful; it was delightful. So here I am, in a store I don’t particularly like shopping at looking at a device I’d probably never consider using and I’m getting inspired. I’m already finding behaviors I can implement in my own interfaces.
Earlier this year, I tried switching to Android. I ordered a Nexus 4, as I’m a big believer that if you’re going to go Android, you need to go with the pure-Google experience. I made it about three days. I’m not trying to start a flame war, but it simply wasn’t for me. I was working, as a designer and developer, on a project that included an Android port of the app. I feel very uncomfortable designing for a platform I don’t use on a daily basis so decided to rely on it as my primary device at least for a bit. Honestly, it was iMessage on my Mac, as flawed as it is, that brought me back to my iPhone. Google, since the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, has been tightening up Android’s UI design and if you haven’t taken a look at an Android phone in a while it’s worth playing with for a bit. There are some interesting interpretations. I left the platform with fresh ideas on transition animations, iconography and general interaction design. I was a stronger designer because of my experience, albeit short.
It’s easy to get into the habit of hitting up the App Store to download a spring board worth of apps as research. It’s even easier to search Dribbble for ‘app’ and go from there. We, as interface designers, should be pulling influence from all platforms across the board. Heck, not even just platforms. We should be looking to people like Jayse Hansen, designer of fictional UI for film and TV. Check out his work for Iron Man and the Avengers – it’s inspirational and very thoroughly thought out. A lot of his concepts translate very easily to mobile interface design.
No one operating system or platform gets everything right, but all of them have talented individuals working day and night on improving the user experience for the core OS or third-party app development. Extinct operating systems like WebOS are a great source of inspiration, even possibly inspiring Apple’s work on iOS 7.
Play around on another platform, even if you don’t find anything you like. You’ll return to your home platform with the blinders off and refresh yourself as to what made you fall in love with it in the first place. Go open minded and remember not everything is going to be perfect, but there are a lot of diamonds in the rough. To turn your nose up and deny using another platform limits you as a designer. I’m not planning to stray from OS X or iOS anytime soon, but you better believe I’m keeping an eye on what’s happening on the other side of the fence.