It has been almost 10 months since the showdown pitting the user interfaces of Tweetbot 1.0 and Twitter for iPhone. An update was long due and last week’s milestone update of Tweetbot leaves me with no excuses.

For starters, here is a quick summary of the simplified HIP model used in this showdown:

• Touch interactions are assigned a value based on the precision and time required to execute them. Single taps take in average 165 milliseconds, while double taps and swipes take 350ms and 400ms respectively. The single tap is given a nominal value of 1 and will serve as the base unit of other interactions. For instance, assigning the value of 2 to a swipe means that it’s twice harder to execute than a single tap.
• A task is a chain of user interactions with an end goal. The effort required to achieve a certain task equals the sum of the individual values of each interaction involved. The lower the sum, the more efficient the interface.
• Typing time is zeroed out.
• Only the shortest routes were used (lowest scores).

For long-time readers, here is what new:

• User flow is taken into account this time by adding the interactions required to take the user back to the main timeline in each task.
• The interaction scores have been revised since. Swipes and double taps call for twice the effort required by single taps. Triple taps are the most taxing in terms of precision, long presses in term of execution time.
• The tasks have been divided into two main groups: basic and advanced.

The new scores used in the test are as follows:

• Tap: 1
• Double tap: 2
• Swipe: 2
• Triple tap: 3
• Long press: 2.5
• Multi-option prompt: 0.5

Jump to the final results if you are short on time, or grab the if you want to sweat the details.

Basic tasks

Tweetbot has clearly the upper-hand even though little has changed since 1.0 as far as these basic tasks go; the redesigned interface of Twitter 4 forces the user to navigate constantly back and forth between the main timeline and individual tweets, resulting in a clunkier experience. For instance, opening a link in the official client and coming back to the timeline takes twice as many taps as the other third part clients. Twitterrific lands very close to Tweetbot but does a better job in terms of consistency and ease of use: all primary tasks can be carried out using only single taps.

Advanced tasks

Tweetbot comes out again a winner, only slightly ahead of Twitterrific. Tapbots’ popover implementation of account switching contrasts heavily with the 2 layer deep navigation required to do the same task in the official client. Twitterrific does direct messages best, despite the 2 penalty points tied to the impossibility of sending a new DM without resorting to the obscure trick of adding a lowercase ‘d’ to the beginning of the tweet.

Verdict

Tweetbot wins. Twitterrific closes in second and Twitter 4 lands third with a significant margin. For comparison purposes, I recalculated the score using the same uncalibrated values of the previous showdown (including Twitterrific this time). Of the three, only the official client regressed. A better user experience for first-time users you say?

( HN thread )

Desktop Identity Crisis

Following a series of leaks, Microsoft finally unveiled the new hybrid UI of Windows 8, pitching it as a “no compromise” design approach that would bring the best of their desktop and mobile offerings into one unified touch-enabled OS. The typography-centric design language that they perfected in recent years, Metro, will in all likelihood become their bread and butter in the consumer market and will remain a hot topic for years to come.

Meanwhile, Apple was busy shipping Lion, a milestone update that brought multi-touch gestures, native fullscreen support and other iOS-inspired UI elements to the desktop OS. They also made sure to upset legions of users by changing the scroll paradigm to match their mobile implementation and the rest is history. Mac third-party apps are coming in all sorts of flavors, and the somewhat unified look and feel of yore gave place to a hodgepodge of visual styles and design patterns: popovers, pull-to-refresh, icon-based tab navigation, monochrome icons, you name it.

Social Innovation

After several attempts to make a dent in the social space, Google finally decided to get its act together and design a social product that mere mortals can figure out how to use. Led by Andy Hertzfeld, a prominent member of the original Macintosh team, Google+ has indisputably packed a punch in social design, introducing some clever UI novelties such as Circles and a refreshed visual style that soon made it to other flagship Google products.

Facebook retaliated by introducing one of the most radical UI changes in its recent history, the profile timeline. On the mobile front, they managed to ship the eagerly awaited iPad app as a universal package that uses and abuses vertical tab navigation. Overall, the mobile apps look significantly better thanks to the recent design talent acquisitions; whether they work and feel as good is a whole other story.

Twitter overhauled their interface by changing the information architecture and rebranding some core elements of their service in an attempt to make it less intimidating to new users and more accommodating to advertisers. They also ended up ditching swipe gestures from their iPhone app as the last UI vestiges of the original Tweetie app acquired a year earlier.

Speaking of mobile apps, Path has managed to steal the spotlight from major social players by releasing a completely revamped interface that showcases some playful interactions and experimental design patterns.

Honorable Mentions

• Web, Native… or Hybrid?

  The bi-polar tone of this pointless debate has given place to another discussion about the UX implications of webviews, a new hybrid technique that involves displaying web pages within native containers. Even though this approach garnered widespread adoption by large companies such as Google, Facebook and even Apple, it has yet to prove itself by curbing the user experience inconsistencies it entails.

• Gestures vs. Buttons

  As touch screens are in the process of becoming the de facto standard, the transition to gestural interfaces is dividing the design community. As users, our interaction mental model is currently in a limbo state; we can hardly keep up with the overwhelming number of new interactions that we have to deal with on a daily basis. As designers, striking the balance between ease of use, memorability and discoverability is becoming increasingly hard in the lack of industry-wide standards.

• Skype Mac Redesign

  A textbook case of how to screw an app UI and trick the design community into fixing it for free.

• Linen

  Now available in red.

Wrapping up

The question is no longer whether a radical shift in our field is underway, but rather where it will be taking us in the years to come.

Goodbye 2011, welcome 2012.

Photo credits: Jesper Dyhre Nielsen / Joysaphine / Niall Kennedy / Brandon Thomas / Nick Sherman