Shit Bomb, Yo

Probably everyone who's a UI-freak has already seen Gruber's Flickr about an atrocious iPhone app design. I wasn't going to make a post about it before, at least I thought, it was obvious why it was poorly thought out and implemented. Of course then the creator decided to reply to the majority with basically 'I've been doing this for twenty years, and I'm not bankrupt, ergo I'm right and you're all wrong'.

Sorry Steve, it doesn't work that way. So I thought I'd go through and list what is actually wrong and offer a solution.

1. The background colour. It's very web 2.0 of you, but it doesn't match any of the iPhone UI colours. White, black or the stripes are usually the best route unless you have at least some idea of colour balance.

2. The top tabs and "Car #1" button. They're connected to nothing, are they supposed to be related? They give no indication if they're going to alter the view or are just selectable.

3. The "Type" buttons. Now you're using different things for (apparently) the same style option. One you gave tabs, the other you're using separate buttons.

4. The dial is not a fast-input method. And it's taking up a shit load of screen estate. Not to mention it's function is to fill the screen horizontally, to give users enough room to actually, you know, use it. Lumping it in a corner feels odd.

5. The "Destinations", "Purpose", "Frequent Trips" etc on the left are all aligned wrong. You align these to the right, so they're all the same distance from their object.

6. The plus and edit buttons are detached from the list of frequent trips. And the list has no indication if it's going to work like the regular list view and be scrollable. Also, why is one green? What does that mean?

7. The $ Spent, Save Data (Data? Jesus) and Clear are just lumped in to the middle of the UI. There's a reason most people put the final choices such as Save, Cancel, etc at the bottom of UIs, because they're meant to be the last thing you do. And the $ Spent isn't even aligned with the other two.

8. The Latest list doesn't even match what the others look like. The fields are all aligned differently. The arrow button isn't even attached or clear what it'll do.

Steve's whole defense summed up was that he knew his customers and that they wanted a fast UI. I'm sorry, but 'fast' isn't an excuse for eye-forking bad design. In fact, the whole point of UI designers are for them to create ways to use an application quickly and trouble free whilst pleasing to the eye. See any IconFactory's Twitterific for the iPhone for an idea on this.

My recommendation would be of Paul Walker's take on how it should be designed.

Additional: Check out some absolutely amazing artwork. I liked to the Undead section because they're stunningly grotesque.