Fahey gets all Up in Tufte’s iPhone
There is no need whatsoever for someone on their way to work or waiting in line for a sandwich to know what a stock is trading at down to the third decimal place, or for them to see a historical sparkline. In fact, I would contend that 90% of the benefit of the stocks app is in the colors alone — even if there were no numbers at all and just red and blue boxes, the design would be effective.
-Chris Fahey, respectfully but compellingly taking down Edward Tufte’s appraisal of the iPhone UI
I’ll admit, some of Tufte’s alternate design suggestions (the one for the Weather app in particular) are markedly not nice to look at. Clouds are an apt metaphor for the animated satellite imagery he proposes. And he is really intent on hitting home the by-now-implicit idea of swiping sideways for more data, which seems to me like belaboring the efficiency of the scroll bar for revealing more content in a Word document. Am I an asshole for saying? Am I now blacklisted from infographics parties everywhere?
via highindustrial
