Discoverability

Someone I know well had noticed me using the iOS 5 notifications and started to ‘feel around’ to try to find this handy feature. I was fascinated/amused to see the other party making jumpy-uppy-downy finger spider impressions on the screen of their phone, while making a “shpliggity-splaggity” incantation to will the notification dialogue into existence. The user is in no way a novice iOS user, but for them the control to initiate the desired interaction was completely invisible. It was a lovely example of a concern I have with touch-based interactions, the functionality is opaque. Its a key difference from the WIMP paradigm. The straightforward functions are readily point and draggable, but more subtle features are tough to predict or discover. Lovely, charming and whimsical when you find them, but no use for core funcationality.