It's not often that someone tries to reinvent the instruction manual, but that's just what Clara Gaggero and Adrian Westaway of Vitamins Design have done in conjunction with the Helen Hamlyn Center and Samsung Design Europe. While they've offered up a number of different ideas, the standout has to be the book concept pictured above, which literally puts the phone itself at the center of the user manual -- just flip through the pages and follow the directions that point right at the screen. Another interesting (but slightly further out) concept is a set of cards that would actually perform a function when touched on the screen (add a contact, record a voice memo, etc), and which would contain instructions on the back so you can eventually learn to do it yourself. Hit up the source link for a peek at that concept, along with a slightly less simple "map" idea that promises to help folks navigate though a phone's menu system.
posted June 2nd 2010 2:51PM
Instructions for dummies.
@One Love
All instructions are for dummies!
@TheLeprachaun So true!
@TheLeprachaun : So you could fly an F-16 @ birth? :) (P.S. dummies need extra help)
@TheLeprachaun Instructions are for customers of poorly designed devices. If they were built correctly, "If you think this is the way, it is. If you think this should work, it does." Even if there is more than one way !!
@One Love
Is it just me or are those hands really creepy looking?
@smashinpapas They are fake and end at the wrists.
I must get this for Penny.
@SheldonCooper
Now if only they made something like this for driving :P
@Kanpai888
I can most certainly drive, i just choose not to.
@SheldonCooper So why again do you fail at Mario Kart, And on top of that you manged to crash your car in a simulator and landed onto of the roof of a mall from the freeway.
@Kanpai888
Considering you'd have to drive the car into the box, wouldn't be that be putting the cart before the horse? :p
@SIGS49
nah, you buy the box with the car inside :P
Very useful for people who are less tech savy, like my parents :P
@JustThatNerdyGuy
And for people who are not tech savy like my parents, a personal instructor to teach them how to use the damn thing!
they probably got the idea from children books.
*awesome smiley*
Thank god, u all have no idea how many people come in to my work and don't know how to check voicemail or how full their battery is like its my fault and I designed the phones. So yeah instructions for more than half of us lazy americans that can't figure anything out would definately be nice
That is very clever - good ideas should be simple and this is. Wouldn't it also make a great in-store facility for phones as well?
when was the last time men conceded to instructions/directions?
@shishi When ever I have to put furniture together at work.
@shishi When I had to get my PS3 back to standard display output. God damned thing.
Reminds me of a voting machine ballot.
Wow, it's almost like everyone forgot that 15 years ago a bunch of software came with built-in tutorial modes. The ENTIRE INDUSTRY ditched that for some reason, and now we have to reinvent the wheel.
Windows 3.x had a tutorial. Windows 95 had a demo marketing app that introduced the new UI. Amipro walked you through several types of document creation. Hell, Packard Bell's DOS launchers had very deep "this is how your computer works" visual tutorials that went so far as explaining wtf Scroll Lock does.
This is a neat concept, but looks like something they could've whipped up an interactive website for (flash animation?) and saved the paper.
@josah Scroll Lock DOES something?
@dragonfli what's a scroll lock?
@dragonfli Because my sarcasm detector has run out of caffeine, I'll just take the safe road and explain anyway. o_O
ScrLk served a surprisingly useful purpose in its day (and one that really wouldn't hurt for software to leave in, what with all the other redundancies we tolerate). Normally using your arrow keys would move the cursor in, say, a text editor. If you enabled ScrLk, using your arrow keys moved the page. In other words, it locked your arrow keys into a scroll mode.
I think some spreadsheet software still takes advantage of it, and some other programs have found other purposes for the key, but I don't know of any text editors in the past 10 years to acknowledge it. *shrug*
This is actually a really good idea!
I am a man. Instructions are for wimps. Hear my roar.
Why not a native app in the phone?
What if you get a slider? Or anything other than a one-sided candybar?
Samsung: When your usability is so horrible that even a book with a hole in it seems like a better idea..
Wow, really cool and totally unique in that it's against this whole crazy "environmental" craze! Forget that! Giant, wasteful, cut-out manuals for everyone!! :D
Something is severely wrong with your company's software interface guidelines when you need innovations such as these for instruction manuals.