Undo Reloaded

The need of an undo command was first mentioned in IBMs research report "Behavioral Issues in the Use of Interactive Systems" in 1976. Later programmers at Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) assigned the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Z to the undo command and thus usher it into nearly every piece of software.

Undo became an essential element of graphical user interface and one of the most important Human Interface Design Principles, called „forgiveness“. It gives users the power to recover content and the freedom to try new actions, confident of their ability to reverse that action - to undo it - if the result is not what was intended.

Todays new modes of interaction ignore the many important lessons of classic interface design, including the power of „undo“ and it too has disappeared from the current guidelines. The topic is up to date than ever before - In the article „How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name“, published in November 2015 the former Apple designer Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini criticize the move toward visual simplicity and elegance at the expense of discoverability, feedback and recovery. Companies as Apple rather prefer a clean elegant Design over clear understanding and usability. Thus the undo function went out from mobile devices and is no longer universal implemented. (Apple at least put undo back in, as the mainly unknown gesture of violently shaking the phone or tablet.)
The following Undo Guidelines presents unsiversal options and possibilities, bringing back the fundamental principle of Undo on mobile devices.

Merz Akademie
2016
Docent: Olia Lialina

Website / Prototype / Physical Computing

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