Why Windows’ flicks and iPhone slide gestures are not the same
I’ve been meaning to get up a video that I made awhile back which shows how similar the iPhone and UMPC are in many respects–at least how I have them set up. Yeah, it kind of surprised me too. But it’s true.
The issue is that even with similar features, the experience is different. And here is where the iPhone trumps the UMPC.
Take Flicks on the UMPC and the finger slide gesture on the iPhone for example. Both can be used to switch from “page to page” in an application (though Flicks can be defined to do a lot of things). However, despite their similarities, the iPhone slide gesture wins out for me.
It wasn’t until this morning that I realized why.
The iPhone slide gesture gives me feedback during the gesture, Flicks does not. With Flicks–as the name suggests–you make a rapid side-to-side or up-down gesture to signal an action. The problem is that during the gesture itself you get no feedback. It’s not until the gesture is complete that you might see an icon on the screen signaling that the gesture was recognized. If you did the gesture incorrectly, no icon appears.
The iPhone slide gesture is completely different. During the slide itself you see the “page” begin to move. You can tell right away that you are in control of something. You slide slowly, the page moves slowly. You toss the page to the side, it moves off the screen rapidly and the next page “bounces” into view.
The lack of feedback is a big problem for Flicks. It means that no matter how much the hardware may improve to improve the quality of the gesture, it’s still not going to provide real-time feedback. Flicks’ paging gesture as it exists now is never going to win out over a gesture with feedback. The Flicks page gesture is OK in itself, but just not optimal.
Some of the problem is that Microsoft is working with subpar gesturing hardware. Resistive technology isn’t going to do it–or at least I haven’t see it work as well as capacitive. Give this video a glance to see the problem. In it Josh Bancroft tries to slide a coverview like window of content on a MID using is finger. Since the MID uses resistive touch and Josh doesn’t use his fingernail, the experience is horrible. Don’t fret Josh, I’ve done the same thing. Many, many times over. And I keep doing it wrong too.
Now the “hand” tool in IE is more like the iPhone’s slide gesture. Pretty much. With it you can slide page content up and down. There are some jitter problems in IE though that you don’t see on the iPhone. Here again, part of this is a sensor problem. And “hand” tools are not standard by any means on Windows apps–though with coverflow like controls and other iPhone-inspired behaviours becoming more popular, maybe it will be.
I think the challenge for the Flicks team is to come up with gestures and a user interaction model that makes more sense for a variety of devices. Whereas Flicks might seem cool at first–and it might be a simple way to add some gesture functionality to a lot of apps never designed for gestures–it’s probably not the model that should be the primary focus.