While researching emotional design for my 2010 An Event Apart talks “Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design”, I interviewed a number of interface designers to gain insight into the processes and techniques they are using to connect with their audience. Mark Jardine the is the designer behind the hugely popular Tapbots iPhone apps.
I spoke with Mark about the design work he is doing. Below is the transcript from our conversation:
Aarron: Convertbot and Weightbot have been successful in a large part because of the engaging design. The interfaces use personification to build emotional connections with users. Can you talk a bit about your design strategy with these apps, and how personality in interface design has impacted the success of Tapbots apps?
Mark: The whole UI concept was really inspired by the movie, Wall•e. They were designed in a way that you could practically guess their function by the way they looked. I really loved that. So when we set out to design Weightbot, I wanted it to resemble a typical weight scale. With Convertbot, we wanted it to feel like it was in the same robot family, yet was designed specifically for the purpose of converting units.
Our concept for the first 2 apps was selling our apps as if they were physical robots. That’s why the icons resemble the interface. We also gave the icons eyes to humanize them a bit. But we use this idea as a selling point and not to distract the user in the actual app. We want our apps to be used seriously, but also give the sense that they are more than just a piece of software.
We did want our users to have an emotional connection to our apps. Most people don’t have a love/joy for software like geeks do. When I switched to the Mac (from Windows), I began to appreciate software design and found great joy in using software that was carefully crafted. Our goal was for everyone to be able to feel like that about software.
Aarron: Some of the interactions in your apps are a bit atypical for iPhone apps. For example, the spin to select interaction pattern in Convertbot could have easily been a series of simple buttons instead. How do the slightly more sophisticated interaction patterns you design influence user experience?
Mark: Again, the goal for this was to make it feel more like interacting with a physical device rather than just software. We wanted to create an experience around what’s normally just a mundane utility.
Aarron: The Tapbots brand experience is cute, informal, yet elegant, which I think creates a sense of fun and joy around your products. Can you talk about how intentional that outcome is, and maybe point out some specific examples of how you shape your brand experience?
Mark: A lot of the look and feel of the brand comes from my art style in general. But our goal was to create a brand with a positive vibe to it. Even our interface has somewhat of a cartoony feel to it. Our goal wasn’t to make it LOOK as realistic as possible. We really wanted it to FEEL real.
The paragraph on our About page really says it all about our company:
“Tapbots are utility robots designed and engineered for your iPhone and iPod touch. Our applications are easy to use, focused, and lots of fun. These amazing little robots are dreamed up and brought to life by Paul Haddad and Mark Jardine. We slave the night away creating—not to make a quick buck, but because we love software. We hope our robots will create the same love for software that we have.”
We wrote that early on and keep it in mind with each app we release.
I should note that our 3rd app Pastebot is a slight departure in the sense that it follows more of the UI guidelines provided by Apple. This is mainly because of the type of app it is. It’s mainly driven by user-generated content and can get quite complex so trying to create a completely new experience wasn’t ideal. We also wanted to take a risk and see how it would work out.