A detailed, occasionally overzealous, discussion of the iPod’s design flaws. A deserving topic given the status of the object in design discourse.
“The IPod Photo has six buttons – and it should have more. Apple tends to go for a simple aesthetic, which isn’t a bad idea sometimes. However the IPod is used regularly all day long by many people and simple aesthetics aren’t as important as decent usability. The number of buttons is a design tradeoff. Too many and it becomes confusing and complex, too few and it becomes confusing and simple. The IPod has too few buttons and it results in a slow, error prone, modal interface. Read any HCI textbook about modal interfaces – avoid them if you can is the advice. The middle (unlabled) click-wheel button first brings you to a track-movement mode, then a rating mode, then back to the original track-progress mode, and if you leave it for 5 seconds it reverts back to the original mode by itself. Also note that the track-movement and track-progress modes look very similar and can easily be confused. Additionally, stroking the scroll-wheel enters a volume-changing mode (which times out after 2 seconds).”
Link: What Is Wrong With The iPod (mobilecommunitydesign.com)
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