Technology is fun. And beautiful. User interfaces get better and richer by the day. Yet they become less visible. Remember the days you first had to go through a thick manual every time you bought a new phone? These days, you simply unbox your iPad and you're off.
I gave my dad an iPad for his 70th birthday. Five minutes after unwrapping his present, he was already browsing and checking his emails. Because the Apple iOS interface is self-explaining. There's an expensive word for that: invisible design. Be it a magazine, furniture or a logo: the best designs are the ones that go unnoticed. Period.
Dad now reads his favourite newspaper on his iPad. It took him some time to get used to it, but luckily, the people at De Tijd put a lot of effort in buidling a decent app. Clearly, they saw that a copy-paste version of their printed version wouldn’t stand the test.
However: first he has to pass through the app store for a new issue. The Apple app store. Smart move, since Apple makes a couple of cents on every downloaded issue. And it takes quite a while to download an issue too. When he's lucky, he's ready to start reading 5 minutes later. Not really textbook example of invisible design if you ask me.
But technology evolves fast. Now you can read magazines on your tablet without having to exit through the app store. With a so-called web app. We finished building our first one at LUON last week. By using smart new technologies such as html 5 and css, this web app feels the same as a native application. Swiping? Check. Video? Check. Offline browsing? All possible.
And there's more. Using responsive design, the layout always fits the screen, depending on the device you are using. One web app to rule them all. Android, iOS, it doesn't matter.
And my dad? He doesn't care. He goes on reading his newspaper. While we make ourselves invisible.
Now ain’t that sweet?