Tom Thornton calls it the “wow” factor. The third-party applications built for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch have plenty of it. “It’s ‘Wow,’ I can’t believe a phone can do this now,” says Thornton, a senior research science at usability specialist Perceptive Sciences in Austin, Texas. 
But there’s a dark side to wow moments, too. Thornton had one of those when he was fooling around with MyWeather. He discovered the weather application’s best feature–a nifty, full-screen depiction of the weather–entirely by accident when he inadvertently tilted his phone on one side. That “wow,” Thornton says wryly, More»

Labels: apps, iPhone, usability