SXSWi

At SXSWi, Lynn Teo, creative director & head of user experience at AKQA, chose 80 iPad apps to share with a packed ballroom, critiquing each one based on four considerations: size, shape, form and mechanics. The key takeaway from this session for me was her effort to articulate through various examples “form informs function.” The slides from Sunday’s presentation are not available, but the AKQA Interface Design Practices are in a Scribd doc. In this document, this concept is addressed. Visual design is not functional design. Simplicity and ease of use are much more important than visual complexity. Do not sacrifice function for form. One way to do this, is by bringing elements of the real world into your application said Teo. A great example of this is Audi’s iPad application, which launches you into a showroom. This real-world experience is one most of us can pull from the memory bank. Navigational elements move you around the virtual showroom just as you would in the physical space. Another way to bring clean, simplistic navigational elements and visuals into your app is by turning back the clock and using a table of contents, or directory, at launch. The Museum of Modern Art does this well by using its physical space as the table of contents for the application. In reviewing the app, Rudy Pastore said, “this is the information age at its best” and the app “brings [the] museum to life in your hands.” The Pulse was also mentioned for its use of a table of contents and Wired for its use of layers. Simply put, a clean, simplistic, utilitarian design is beautiful. We could all learn something from Instagram and how to elegantly execute ideas.