Firstly, what screen am I on ? I can't tell because at the top of the screen all I can see is the bottom half of three letters. Very pretty and designery, but not very discoverable.
You have a good point, and I agree that if you just look at that screen, it's hard to tell where you are. But that doesn't really relate to how you use the OS. Screens like that are all transitional. You always know where you are because you know where you came from. For example, that screen shot is one click away from the home screen. Personally, I don't need an obvious reminder that I just clicked on "Music."
The second example is right below it, I can see the first three items of a menu, "Artists", "Playlist" and "So..." But I can't see what the third menu item is (or if the menu extends beyond that) without scrolling, again not very discoverable.
[for sake of information, the rest of the items are "Songs Genres and Albums"]
Again, you're correct, but what are the alternatives? You either have an intermediate screen where you choose between those items (that's how the iPod/iPhone does it, isn't it?), or you have a drop-down list where you see even less at one time. My preference is the way it's handled, because 99% of the time I select "Music" from the main menu, I want to find my music by artist. If I want another way to see everything, it's a mere two flicks away, and the player remembers your last view. I think this makes the player cater to the user more.
Another example of this sort of undiscoverability I saw in the demos was the contact lists. There is no A-Z list on screen, you have to know to tap on the letter that you can see in the list to pop up the A-Z list.
Well, I'm not certain how the iPhone does it, but doesn't it just give you an alphabet down one side that you can tap on to skip to a certain letter? Okay, fine, I'll concede that that's one fewer "clicks" away, unless you have fat fingers like me, in which case it's really hard to hit those letters dead on, and you have to do some additional scrolling.
It is the discoverability of the iPhone UI that makes it usable by "normal" people like my wife. I can't see the Zune-like UI being frictionless in the same way because of these discoverability issues.
I really do think that you need to check out the UI for yourself. I do agree that it is
different from the iPhone, but I certainly don't think it's less "discoverable." The whole UI flows really nicely and
very logically.
Of course, this is all getting very specific, and not even specific about what this thread is about. But I have faith in the UI that they're using because I like what they've done with the Zune.
However, one thing I will say is that Zune apps are just bad. I just don't like them or how they're handled. I don't know if that has any relation to the phone though.
The difference here is that most people only have one phone, whereas with PC OSs, you have users using one thing at work and one thing at home.
I know a lot of people who carry two phones with them for exactly this reason. One is for work, and one is for personal use.
I agree, some people do that. My wife dose that. What I said is that "most people" don't. And I think that's true.
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