Valhalla Island

The first thing you probably notice on LG’s Voyager phone is that it’s a blatant rip of the iPhone home screen. Menu bar, dock and everything in between is ridiculously similar and I always wonder how companies get away with this. Or how it’s even started — I can imagine a manager telling the UI designer “don’t inovate, make it look like the iPhone”.

But whatever, that’s not my greatest concern. Ignoring the rip, what’s the most stand-out element on that home screen? The Voice Command icon? Mobile TV? The battery indicator? How about the ridiculously large and capitalised title that says “SHORTCUT MENU”?

A good interface doesn’t need to label it’s interface elements. There’s no “MENU BAR” or “DOCK” labels on OS X’s respective elements They’ve obviously copied the iPhone home screen with the most obvious difference being the huge home screen title. You’ve got to wonder, did they look at the iPhone home screen and think “how will users be able to tell this is a menu of shortcuts if we don’t tell them?”. Effectively they got to take the iPhone UI and modify it how they please, they chose to add a massive title telling us that the menu of shortcuts on the home screen is a shortcut menu.

I find it funny that while the majority of the icons also have textual labels and something as obvious as the shortcut menu is labeled as the shortcut menu, an icon as obscure and ambiguous as the four blue dots in the dock is not labeled.

That said, I’m in favour of simplifying the interface where the meaning of an element can be quickly learned with something as small as a click (or tap). Sure, we have no idea where the four dot icon might take us now but after tapping it the first time and mentally recording where we’re taken, we’d know.

Via DF