One Free Interaction Evolved
It has been about a year since I read Chris Noessel's article on one free interaction and was immediately filled with an excited tingle-y feeling. You know the one ... it's usually reserved for when you find an extra $10 bucks or when you're the guy to remember a song title that's eluding everyone else. It's actually the same feeling I got my first time reading William Lidwell's amazing Universal Principles of Design. He was putting names and principles to things that had only every just been common sense and "who doesn't do that" in my designs ... and it was awesome! That feeling.
Well, from the time I read about one free interaction and then subtly started dropping it into my curriculum conversations and project critiques to now, it is really interesting to see how the idea has evolved. Specifically, how the iPhone page snapback "freebie" is now being used to handle the activity stream refresh for both the Twitter (a.k.a. Tweetie 1) and Gowalla applications.
I'm not sure which applications starting doing it first (or even if there is another application that did), but I love it! Download either app (both are free) and give it a try. It has all of the joy and restlessness that make up o.f.i. and yet, it actually does something useful. Now, obviously, not every free interaction needs to accomplish an action or it would make the whole point moot. It is, however, great to see an otherwise fancy-free and empty action married to such a common and necessary function.
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