Thursday, April 03, 2008

Do you need a START button on Windows Mobile?


Windows Mobile 6.1 is just released and it has some nice interface tweaks and supposed to be more stable and faster than windows mobile 6. Its a great mobile OS due to its familiarity and compatibility with Windows for desktop. However Microsoft has never given much thought to user experience I guess.

I understand that windows mobile resembles windows in many ways and that probably makes adaptation easier but it probably goes too far with windows resemblance that it ends up being a non-userfriendly mobile OS.

I fully agree with Kevin Hoffman that Windows Mobile is a shrunken and crippled version of windows. I don't see any value of a Start button on a Mobile OS. I have a few suggestions for Windows Mobile User-Experience team:

  1. Please remove the Start Button, its not needed.
  2. Show big, finger-friendly icons for various applications right on Home screen.
  3. Reduce number of screens and taps required to do various things.
  4. Please do away with tiny text labels and other little user interface elements wherever possible.
I think MS can borrow ideas from Palm, Symbian and other mobile OS. All of them seem to adhere to more or less same user-interface concepts.

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