Elevating Interactivity

Of course now that the iTunes App Store is open, everyone is downloading cool new apps for their iPhone, and we are no exception. The iPhone is an excellent platform for interactive experiences and a great demonstration that interactivity can excel even in a small form factor. Of course there is the multi-touch screen, which makes the iPhone an interesting platform all by itself. But one of the most unique features is the availability of the iPhone’s built in accelerometer to app developers.

The accelerometer is the gyroscope-like sensor that tells the phone which way it’s oriented. It’s the thing that allows you to turn the phone to view a web page in widescreen and the thing that tells the phone to unblank the screen when you take it down from your ear so that you can press the hang up button. The accelerometer lets developers program some interesting experiences that people are generally not accustomed to.

One of the most popular iPhone apps is also one of the most seemingly throwaway. iPint is basically a heavily branded game / advertisement for Carling beer. The game itself is completely beside the point. The reason everyone loves iPint is the clever use of the accelerometer to make the iPhone appear like a pint of beer. When you tip the phone, the “beer” drains away. So you can virtually drink a pint of beer out of your iPhone. This seemingly frivolous experience is actually quite compelling because of its novelty. I’ve personally shown this to at least a dozen people and it actually all by itself can explain to non-iPhone owners why someone should own one. Now that’s a successful promotion!

An even more fun game that makes good use of the accelerometer is MotoRacer. MotoRacer is developed by Freeverse, who have been developing games for the Mac for some time now. It’s a pretty straightforward motorcycle racing game. But you hold the phone and move it around to drive. The accelerometer makes the bike respond to your motions as though you were leaning the bike around the track, so it’s an incredibly intuitive experience. In fact, when you’ve played a racing game with an Xbox controller or a similar input device, you probably had a tendency to move it around just like you would do with MotoRacer. Only now all that motion actually has a purpose.

I’m sure this is only the start of the cool, fun, and useful apps we will see for the iPhone. It’s a brave new world for mobile interactivity.