"But I only want to turn the damn thing off!"

March 1st 2006

People try to be too clever with user interface design these days, and it backfires. Think about mobile phones - 80% of those I've used have a horrible interface - it's more a matter of us getting used to the restrictions in the system than actually learning how to use a new piece of technology.

The iPod has won many awards for its design, and not just for its look. The design is simple - it works. Buttons that aren't needed are removed. You can skip tracks, you can play and pause tracks, you can go up and down the menu on screen and select, and you can change the volume - that's it - the basic operation of a music player in a nutshell. 

My very first MP3 player, a 32Mb Diamond Rio I bought in 1998 was infested with buttons, for example, it had two buttons for marking loops within a song (so you could repeat part of a song from A to B ad infinitum). Now, why on earth would I want to do that?

Presumably if you've got some kind of obsessive mental disorder, or you're too cheap to buy the 12" version of a song, you might find it somewhat entertaining, but does it justify buttons? No!

The iPod Nano has it right. Just enough interface to do what it needs to do - and no more. Learn from this, this lesson is important. One of the nicest features of the iPod is the least obvious - the hold switch. There's a tiny little switch on the top which you can flick with a fingernail. It's not easy enough to switch by accident, but it's still easy enough to control without problems.

Now, turn back to my pet hate - the interfaces of mobile phones. I have a Nokia 6680 3G 'smart phone'. Although the phone is smart, I have doubts about the design team. Why? The way you turn it off.

Instead of a simple button, or a switch like on the iPod, you have to hold down a button for a few seconds. This is annoying. It's irritating, it hurts your thumb, and you're sitting there waiting for the phone to turn off. And it plays a little tune while it turns off for you, presumably to keep you entertained while you're standing there forever with your thumb on the button.

Oh yes, it plays a tune. So.. when do I normally turn off my phone? Well, when I'm in a meeting, in a cinema or somewhere where I don't want the noise to disturb people. And it goes and plays a tune every time you turn it off. Neat idea Nokia, very neat.

Sometimes I rebel, and rip my sim card out and put it in my old phone, another Nokia, this time a Nokia 6310i. This doesn't pretend to be smart, it tries to be a phone. And it does it really rather well. Except of course there's the silly button you have to keep held in painfully to switch it off. But...I found an alternative way with the Nokia 6310i, a quick action of the thumb on the back of the phone could unclip the battery, slide it down, and slide it back up and into place - turning off the phone instantly and effortlessly.

They should have put this instruction in the manual - take out the unnecssary 'on-off' button and promoted this wondefully simple way of switching the phone on and off. Of course, my new Nokia phone needs to have the back taken off before the battery can be uncliped, so it won't work now. I have to turn off the phone the hard way.

So, Nokia, if you're reading this. Put an on/off switch on your phone. A good old fashioned sliding switch. Make it turn off instantly without saying goodbye please, and turning on instantly would be a blessing as well.

And for everyone else who thinks about user design. Having a button that requires a long press to activate (or worse still, a button that does something different if you press it quickly, or hold it in a long time - or do a delayed double click, like the rename function on icons on Windows that never really works when you want it to),  is a pretty stupid idea. And yes, Mr ATX power supply creator, I'm thinking of you. I won't wait, I'll pull the kettle lead out of the back, and so does everyone else.