The latest on digital design trends and consumer behavior from Avenue A | RazorfishWhat’s the Role of User Interface in Mobile Phones?
February 18th, 2008 by John-Alistair GeorgeTags: apple, Design Tactics, Digital Consumer Behavior, feature, interface, iphone, Mobile, phones, user interface
On February 12 a panel of human behavior and technology experts gathered at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. One of the sessions was titled “Its the User Experience, Stupid“.
David Benjamin, from EE Times, wrote an excellent piece on the conference.
He wrote that Anup Murarka sighted a ChangeWave Survey showing that customer satisfaction of the iPhone was an extraordinary 77%, significantly more than the closest competition.
The survey pointed out the satisfaction was for the iPhone not the AT&T service it ran on. AT&T’s ratings were fairly low:”31% said they were very satisfied and 54% said they were somewhat satisfied.”
What seemed to stump the panel was the formula to Apple’s success with the iPhone. The panel acknowledged the iPhone had changed the landscape of the Smart Phone market, but they could not seem to come to a clear way to match or keep up with the success the iPhone got from the user survey.
Benjamin writes:
One direction, advocated by Lucia Predolin, international marketing and communications director for Buongirono S.p.A. of Milan, Italy, is to manipulate users by identifying their “need states” - including such compulsions as “killing time,” and “making the most of it” - and fulfilling them subliminally.”Adobe’s Murarka proposed a more technological approach to improving the user experience, satisfying the mobile phone subscriber through better interface design.Sarah Lipman, co-founder and R&D director for Power2B, suggested an almost mystical solution, somehow tapping into users’ “neural networks” to navigate a mobile phone interface “using touch and pre-touch input.”Everyone agreed that, so far, only Apple has been able to turn this trick. For users, “the content is the core,” said Lipman of Power2B somewhat ruefully, “and we have to get out of their way.”
I think most of these panelists missed the ball here. You would have thought that the name of the session “Its the User Experience, Stupid” would have given them a idea where to start. The iPhone’s success is not due to the content, hardware, software or UI, it’s a combination of all them.
Most companies and practitioners still don’t get it. Look beyond the iPhone and the competition are all single-dimensional products that really only succeed in one arena: product design, UI, or technology.For example, the Prada phone looks gorgeous, the Nokia N95 has more bells and whistles than you can possibly use and the Amazon Kindle has a fantastic UI that gets you what you need quickly and efficiently. But none of those class-leading gadgets succeed in more than one area.
Many users don’t see the iPhone as a phone, but more as a portable media experience.Steve Jobs once said that when you add a feature to a device you can never remove it. Don’t just add features and hope to compete on your feature set alone. Make sure that every feature you add has specific reason to be there. Integration with our mobile devices should not limited to the phone and network.For years the industry focused on the phone hardware, software and the wireless network.
Integration with the PC or desktop was an afterthought, at best. Apple revolutionized this arena with the iPod and iTunes and has done it again with the iPhone and iTunes. Companies should not build a device to play catch up. They should focus on the end user and create a device that seamlessly integrates product design, software and UI.
That brings us to Google’s entrance into the mobile market with Android. I had high hopes for the software but have been disappointed so far. Google’s team seems to be fixated on a feature list instead of the end experience. Which, if you really think about it, makes them no different than today’s lackluster Symbian or Windows Mobile systems. At this rate, it doesn’t look like any company is capable of catching Apple’s mastery of the mobile space.
3 Responses to “What’s the Role of User Interface in Mobile Phones?”
What really fascinates me with Apple is that it seems like they never go where people say they should go. To my knowledge they also almost never do user research. What I think is a key to their success in my observation is that they listen very carefully to there customers and afterwards figure out what the customer really wants without knowing it. This is why when Apple introduces a new product, people are bitching about it. Like with the iPod. Nobody believed that it would be successful. Nobody it seemed would pay more for less features. And here we are with the iPod being a cultural phenomenon. And I’m guessing that it will be the same with the MacBook Air. The iPhone is kinda an exception with everybody saying right from the start that it is going to be huge. But that’s because everybody absolutely hates their phone.
So the brilliance of Apple in my opinion is their ability to take a step back and really look at the whole picture and figure out what people really want with out them knowing it themselves.
Edward Tufte (information design guru) has a great analysis on his website here:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00036T&topic_id=1
I completely agree, apple tries not only to find solutions through their hardware and software but also solutions to problems that we might not be aware of yet. Competitors focus on current problems. The way they interpret problems usually translates to feature sets. They read the forums and hear people say “Man this ‘insert gadget name here’ is great but i wont buy it unless it has feature X and Feature Y. So they go out and build a gadget with those those features and hopes it’s a success. Just to find out the same person is now saying the same thing again.
Companies hammer the media with feature sets sales pitches. I mean Ford tries to sell you $40k car and they list the amount of cup holders. HD TV does the same thing. It’s refreshing to pick up a gadget that truly targets my current needs and future needs without me expecting it at the time of purchase.