Advanced Handsets Need Advanced UIs

As mobile phones become more capable, people are using them to store an increasingly wider variety and greater quantity of data. This raises a new problem for designers of handset user interfaces: how do you let owners find what they're looking for in a coherent and friendly manner?

Historically, mobile phone interfaces have been menu- or icon-driven: users select from a number of choices displayed on-screen and repeat until they find what they're after. While the phone was primarily a device for person-to-person communication this worked well. An address book, message inbox and call log are clearly linked strongly to one another and happen to map to everyday, real-world artefacts.

But analogies with the real world start to break down when your handset starts storing your photos, video clips, media you've purchased, payment details, account history, WAP sites, books and notes. Some of this information is well-structured and understood (such as call histories), while it's very difficult to perceive structure within others -- for example, handsets can't currently tell you which of your contacts is pictured in any given photo. The situation will become even worse when handsets deliberately start blurring the distinction between data held locally and that accessed across the network. It'll be all too easy to confuse end-users. (Via TheFeature)