The iPhone 3G was announced today. Besides the faster speeds, the one component that gets me excited as a UX designer is the included GPS. Location based applications are coming sooner than you think. Social networks are about to get more personal. Want to geo-tag photos? No problem. The applications that have the best user experience will get the market share of iPhone users.

David Morgenstern of ZDNet writes about the why Apple shines and Windows fails by looking at their human interface principles found on their developer sites.

Apple’s Human Interface Design Principles features 13 topics:

• Metaphors
• Reflect the User’s Mental Model
• Explicit and Implied Actions
• Direct Manipulation
• User Control
• Feedback and Communication
• Consistency
• WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
• Forgiveness
• Perceived Stability
• Aesthetic Integrity
• Modelessness
• Managing Complexity in Your Software

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Design Principles features only 5 topics:

• Top Guidelines Violations
• How to Design a Great User Experience
• Powerful and Simple
• Designing with Windows Presentation Foundation
• First Experience

The Apple principles are actual principals for user interaction while the Windows version seems more like hints and suggestions.

The original 1997 sketch drawn in ClarisWorks of a chat user interface based on speech balloons by former Apple employee, Jens Alfke.

With the announcement of the upcoming iPhone SDK, Apple also released their iPhone Human Interface Guidelines for Web Applications available both on the web and in PDF. It’s a little over 50 pages long but it’s a very quick and easy read for anyone looking to build iPhone applications with the User in mind. Most of their advice though can be applied to other systems, especially if screen real estate is at a minimum.

The document is written in such a way that someone without much technical experience would still be able understand it. Some of the guidelines I found most important were:

• Be prepared for the probability that users will not be giving their undivided attention to your content, at least not for long.
• Make sure your layout accommodates the average size of a fingertip and finding alternatives to drag-and-drop and cut, copy, and paste.
• Before you begin to work on your iPhone web application, be sure you know precisely who your users are.
• Minimize the number of controls from which users have to choose and labeling them clearly so users understand exactly what they do.
• A webpage that is cluttered with many different sizes and styles of elements, different sizes and colors of text, and gratuitous images presents an unpleasant user experience.
• When you ask for input from users, consider using lists (or pop-up menus) instead of text fields whenever possible.
• Make sure you use interactivity to get users closer to their goal and avoid interactivity that serves no functional purpose.
• Avoid technical jargon in the user interface.

As a fan of Apple products and software, we often don’t hear about who is behind the great designs and user centered features. An article in BusinessWeek gives a small glimpse of Apple’s Design Process from Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple.

Pixel Perfect Mockups
Taking the time in the beginning to get it right will cause less problems (and expenses) down the line and “removes all ambiguity” upfront.

10 to 3 to 1
Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups, designed without any restrictions of any new feature. They eventually decide on three and spend more months on them before finally ending up with one strong decision.

Paired Design Meetings
Two meetings each week. One to brainstorm and think freely of any restrictions. The sky’s the limit. And another production meeting which is the opposite and the engineers and designers try and work out all the details.

Pony Meeting
Everyone thinks they want a pony, but is that what the Users want (or need)? The best ideas from the paired design meetings are presented to leadership to transform the pony into requirements and deliverables everyone can agree upon.

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Having done high fidelity mockups before, it really does take an enormous amount of time. However, it does give you results and removes a lot of questions and ambiguity. The 10 to 3 to 1 design process is great. I love the unfiltered creativity and Loop’s quote of the designs not being “seven in order to make three look good.” I’ve experienced it before. The paired design meetings are also a great idea. I remember having a creative no restrictions type of meeting before and the ideas that came out of it were spectacular (and even patentable). It is difficult for people to be creative when still thinking about the constraints. I read a good analogy for “The Pony.” A person may like ice cream and he may like pickles but that doesn’t mean he’ll like pickle-flavored ice cream.

All in all, it is nice to see that Apple takes the time to really think outside the box. Now if only other companies can be convinced to invest their time and money on the User Experience.