I realized today as I was going through the finger jujitsu of finding my music app in between chat conversations and remote controlling the television that my phone is really hard to use.
It’s powerful, sure. I’m confident there are absurdly awesome comparisons of my iPhone 14’s capabilities to the total computing power of the U.S. Navy in 1972 or something. I should find one
Power, you might argue, means there’s capacity to add and manage lots of stuff in your phone, making the finger can-can necessary. You’d be right, but that’s beside the point.
Wait! Before you retort (you interrupt like a poorly timed Uber notification), you should also consider the relative size of everything in your phone were it a real thing, compared to the relatively small portal through which you’re interacting before you critique the clunky finger square-dance of app navigation. Again, right but irrelevant.
Are you finished…? Let me help.
– The design challenge inherent in making something this complex simple is staggering? Sure.
– You could have less on your phone and thus have a simpler experience? Ok, to a degree.
Those are all beside the point. The interface is hard to use. And we (I) accept that and the subsequent burden on my cognition and joints in order to fully utilize and, presumably enjoy my phone.
But, like kerning or alcoholism, once you see it, it becomes impossible to unsee. I find myself increasingly angry at the designers and builder of things on my phone.
The fact is, I often think of my phone as a large-ish room full of all these things. In my imagination I interact with them through a seriously adept but super-awkward robot arm with which I sort and rearrange and so forth. I find that I do a lot of phone cleanup in these moments—deleting apps and wondering why I even use this as much as I do.
Brains are weird, their ability to adapt to complexity and make it seem normal (let alone simple) is astounding.
Fundamentally, my phone is hard to use. I’m just good at it. It’s strange what we are willing to normalize.
A wizard should know better.
Treebeard