Other game companies at the time assigned alphabet letters or colors to the buttons. We wanted something simple to remember, which is why we went with icons or symbols, and I came up with the triangle-circle-X-square combination immediately afterward. I gave each symbol a meaning and a color. The triangle refers to viewpoint; I had it represent one’s head or direction and made it green. Square refers to a piece of paper; I had it represent menus or documents and made it pink. The circle and X represent ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision-making and I made them red and blue respectively. People thought those colors were mixed up, and I had to reinforce to management that that’s what I wanted.
After all these years, it’s great to hear the rational behind the symbols on the seminal controller. Triangle, Circle and X make sense (though I’m with “management” on the color choice for the last two).
I find Square = piece of paper to be an interesting relic of a tool that was designed before “digital” became the norm and we still had to hold on to analog metaphors.
There are a lot of reasons Flipboard is special and they absolutely deserve all the attention (and melted servers) they’re getting.
I suspect that many folks don’t even realize the potential they have to really have a profound effect on how people consume content going forward, particularly as we continue to find ourselves with more and more channels of content to make sense of.
Frankly, I think they’ll find themselves in that product design sweet spot where there are so many things they can do with their product and they’re going to have to be very smart in choosing which ones to pursue.
Rather than focus on their innovative interface, as many others already have, I wanted to write up a quick note on a feature I saw them tweet about recently: Sharing your Flipboard covers. It allows you to grab a snapshot of your dynamically-generated cover and share it via email and Twitter:
Did a friend of yours show up on your Flipboard cover and you want to let them know? Did a beautiful picture show up that you want to share? Tap the “share” icon in the top right corner of your screen to retweet the image on twitter or email it to friends and family.
It’s your magazine, share your covers.
For me, this feature loosely touches on the one thing I really miss as I’ve made the move to e-books – the loss of the book/magazine cover as both design artifact as well as social communication tool.
While I don’t think this is a feature a lot of people are going to use, it makes me confident that the people on the Flipboard team are aware of the subtle nuances that are part of the content consumption experience and that makes me even more excited to see where they take their product over the next year.
Read about the new feature here and check out their cameo in Apple’s most recent (and by far the best/most informative) ad for the iPad:
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I maintain a more traditional blog, covering a wide range of topics over at www.alexrainert.com.
I'm a husband, new father & owner of a lovably neurotic vizsla. Obsessed with information, design, emerging tech, sports & food. Years ago I co-founded dodgeball.com and I'm currently head of product at foursquare.
