Apple's Icon Dance

Apple icons wiggle, bounce and shake. The Mac's Dock icons introduced a bouncing movement upon startup. Apple got rid of the the application startup screen, which was a staple for years. The doc icon took over the indicator function: "I am boucing...I am still busy".

       

Now Apple's iPhone's took icon functionality as step further with firmware update 1.1.3. The new software allows users to customize their iPhone's home screens and docks. Holding down one's finger on an icon will make all icons of the home screen perform a gigglely dance movement, indicating a mode switch which let users rearrange icons through drag-and-drop.

Besides being cute, what's behind the lively behaviors? Well, they are lively.  They started to behave in a physical fashion, much like movement we can produce with our own physicality. They are small, colorful, glossy and attractive. How can we help but care for them?

What's the down side? Icon movement can be annoying, as is the case with icons that bounce to get our attention.  AIM used to bounce relentlessly, which felt like a brat trying to get your attention.  Adobe updater for CS3 is similarly disruptive ( bounces and clutters your screen with message popups), as is Apple's own iCal alarms.

Maybe icon movement is part of a larger development. User Interfaces have started to move more in general. Apple's Leopard provides countless examples of that: Coverflow in the Finder, Dashboard Widgets, Time Machine etc. Does all that movement make for better computing? It does, if the experience is fun, serves a distinct function and doesn't slow down your machine.

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