Thanks to techcrunch.com I have found this interesting example of a new interaction for the iPhone. The idea is to offer a new way to select the pages of your home screen: some users use to have lots of pages of application and if you are on the first one…going to screen nr.9 it’s just a pain in the ass. So this Swedish design house, called Ocean Observation, have come out with a concept
I think that this concept has the strength of using an interaction that Apple users are familiar with (even though not every iPhone user is an OsX user) but on the other side has some points of weakness: how do I know which is the page I am looking for? While Exposé works pretty well on desktops, ’cause you also have a big display, would it work on the iPhone? Perhaps it could be a way to change page quicker but I don’t see this as a good interaction to select the page you want, unless the icons are very peculiar. Maybe it’s time to introduce a folder\category element. But that would transform iPhone into one of those smartphone full of things nested into each other. Maybe then, it’s time to think of a multitouch search that takes advantages of what the iPhone can do better: make interactions different.
