Check out this BBC video on usability trends in designs of products. Five minute of voiceover, plus sound bites from manufacturers.
I was especially interested in:
“Nikon has added live animation to [the UI of] some of its newer cameras.” (timepoint 1:30)
The Beeb’s text under the video uses extreme phrases to catch attention, such as “why the user manual could be a thing of the past,” but here are some of the real take-aways:
Hardware manufacturers are looking to software for models:
- Apple for simplicity of UI
- apps like DropBox that do only one thing but focus on doing it really well.
The impact of social media’s instant word-of-mouth:
- increases the ROI of good user experience
- lets product designers take advantage of the instant feedback.
“Ease of use” now means: can I use it immediately?
“Nikon has added live animation to [the UI of] some of its newer cameras.”
My instant reaction to that was “Oh, great. Another battery/power sucker on the camera.” Hardly a positive.
Actually, I think a still or animated image will use the same amount of juice. Just lighting up the display is the big power suck. The “redraws” of the screen with animation use a bit of CPU and RAM, but shouldn’t affect the power usage of those components.