If I Were In Charge: iPhone Shortcuts

The other day I decided to pretend I was Steve Jobs and figure out all the stuff missing or not working properly in the iPhone. After 30 minutes of brainstorming, I had a list of about 15 things to add/fix. My original plan was to list each of these things in a single post. However, I was so impressed with myself for one item on the list that I decided to dedicate this entire post to that one brilliant idea:

If I were in charge, we'd backpack.

The iPhone (and any other touchscreen phone) should offer users a custom, programmable set of shortcut gestures on their phone.

Here’s the situation: I’m on my iPhone and want to check my mail. Like most everyone I know, I don’t just have a single email account. I have several. But to check all my mail I have to click mail, click the account I want, pick inbox, read my messages, and then hit the back button several times to get to my list of accounts and then repeat the process to read messages in a different inbox. Basically, it’s a pain in the neck. Wouldn’t it be much better if I could just put my finger down, make two circles and jump straight to inbox one? Make three circles and go to inbox two?

How about shutting off your wifi by just tapping the screen two times in the top right corner? Or swipe left-to-right across the top of the screen and go to my podcasts; right-to-left takes me to my music playlists? I’d love to launch Scramble 2 by just making  a ‘Z’ on the screen. Sure, I could swipe my finger through my 5 different home screens to find the one that has the app and then tap it, but I’d prefer to just make a ‘Z’ on any screen.

You get the picture, right? I love keyboard shortcuts on my computer and I want them on my phone. However, I’d prefer that Apple engineers don’t decide for me what shortcuts I need nor how to activate them. Here’s the interface I would create:

1. You go to settings and select “Shortcuts”.
2. You then select an option called “Record Taps”.
3. You are thrown back to the home page and you click through the desired series of actions you’re looking for. For example, you click iPod and then navigate to your favorite playlist.
4. Once you’re on the final destination, you hit the home button and the iPhone records your series of clicks.
5. You are then prompted for the shortcut action.
6. You put your finger(s) on the screen and make your custom gesture.
7. Once you lift your fingers up, the gesture is saved and associated with the recorded actions.

That’s it. You can now record all of your most common actions and associate them with one quick and simple screen gesture. Sure, there are some little details to deal with (like double tapping on a letter while doing a text should not jump you to some shortcut), but those are manageable. The point is, this type of interface would be a big improvement over the current method of navigation.

So there you have it, one of my many brilliant ideas. I also have another idea about location based settings on your iPhone but we’ll save that for the next installment.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 16th, 2010 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.