This post is not about tweaks that anyone can do to the TouchFLO 3D interface to speed it up. This is some advice to the software developers at HTC and Microsoft who intend to make animated user interface designs in the future.
First off, a lot of people are noticing slowness in the TouchFLO 3D user interface. While multitasking, cache levels, and processor usage may have some effect on this, the biggest and most obvious culprit for slowness is the animation length for each transition.
Sliding between icon panels on the bottom is actually quite quick and responsive. So is flick scrolling in the lists. However, after you transition to another TouchFLO 3D panel, you have to wait for the panel to load AND animate! In the case of the “Mail” panel, you have to wait close to 3 seconds for the animation to finish before you can use the content on that panel. Other panels take 1-2 seconds to fade/animate into usage. All of that waiting really adds up, and that’s where the perceived slowness becomes most apparent. See this post for a video of TouchFLO 3D in action.
I’m making a rule right now. If you want your animated interface to feel quick and responsive, no response transition should take longer than half a second. That’s the slowest it should be. I shouldn’t have to wait longer than that to interact with the device.
In the case of the weather animations, I think those are okay since you do not have to finish the animation in order to interact with that panel. You can easily flip to another City or show the 5 day forecast before the weather animation finishes, however, the transition between the 5 day forecast screen and today’s forecast takes over 2 seconds.
Originally published on Pocketnow on June 10, 2008. More Thought articles from the Pocketnow archive.