“A blue-ribbon panel of human behavior and technology experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain agreed that the best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc. — the iPhone,” David Benjamin reports for EE Times.
“Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for Adobe, cited a study showing that 77 percent of iPhone purchasers described themselves as ‘very satisfied’ with their user experience,” Benjamin reports.
“In an ominous note for mobile operators, the iPhone respondents credited their happy experience not to AT&T, the channel through which iPhone services were delivered in the U.S, but to Apple, the device maker,” Benjamin reports.
“The panel, whose title was It’s the User Experience, Stupid agreed that iPhone represents a model for mobile operators to follow, but they reached little agreement on how to follow,” Benjamin reports.
“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,” Benjamin reports. “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.'”
Full article here.
Instead of laughably over-thinking things, how about these “human behavior and technology experts” just repeat their own “blue-ribbon” panel’s title, It’s the User Experience, Stupid, over and over until they finally get it?
With other phones, the features simply aren’t usable. We’ve taken literally hundreds of times more photos and emailed them with our iPhones. We’ve browsed the Web hundreds of times longer on our iPhones than with any other so-called “Internet-capable” phone. With iPhone’s rate plans here in the U.S., the carrier (AT&T) is mostly out of our face (for once), so we don’t worry about incurring charges for every little thing we want to do with our iPhones. And, carriers take note, we don’t want your crappy extra “services” and “enhancements,” either. Just send us the monthly bill and get out of our way (meaning: don’t artificially limit our devices to pad your bottom line like you’ve been doing for years).
I may have to get one this year. My contract with V is up. Am waiting to see what comes out later. With the iPhone that is. Isn’t it about the user experience with most things that counts.
I may have to get one this year. My contract with V is up. Am waiting to see what comes out later. With the iPhone that is. Isn’t it about the user experience with most things that counts.
I may have to get one this year. My contract with V is up. Am waiting to see what comes out later. With the iPhone that is. Isn’t it about the user experience with most things that counts.
I may have to get one this year. My contract with V is up. Am waiting to see what comes out later. With the iPhone that is. Isn’t it about the user experience with most things that counts.
I may have to get one this year. My contract with V is up. Am waiting to see what comes out later. With the iPhone that is. Isn’t it about the user experience with most things that counts.
They’d all make more headway & profit if they just copied Apple and fired all their internal ‘experts’. Admitted, they would always be 3 years behind.
As the worldwide usage of iPhone in next few years progressively grows to 30-50 million range, I am sure the price of the unit will also come down gradually.
I hope these so-called experts remain stumped. That’s just more good news for Apple and bad news for its competitors.
“Users’ love affair with Apple iPhone stumps Mobile World panel”
Opening a fresh opportunity for Spanish prosthetics manufacturers.
`i will get an iphone this year, when a new version comes out. whenever that is..
When one considers the inevitable drive towards building a personality generator to live in virtual immortality after your passing, the mobile phone/device becomes the input to that tapestry of living moments.
That’s the billion dollar, killer app – integrate the moments of your life into a mechanism to grant you immortality by creating an increasingly self-aware non-corporeal existence out on the web.
Steve, I’m open for discussions. LOL.
MDN has it in a nutshell right here:
“…With other phones, the features simply aren’t usable. …”
The iPhone does about 20% of what other smart phones do. That 20% is all that 80% of users want to do. The iPhone does that 20% so exceptionally well that the vast majority of users are mindlessly giddy with the thing.
Some of us (the remaining 20%) are still stewing about things like copy and paste, using the phone’s storage, etc, etc. etc. etc. etc. but we don’t really matter because we are the clear minority of users.
See they keep looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. The iPhone is not so much a mobile phone that does other things. the iPhone is a mini pocket computer and communications information devise that handles all the main forms of personal communications simply and with style.
chalk me up as one of the very satisfied.
Hear, hear, great take, MDN. I love the fact that I now pay exactly $89.95 per month (for our two phone lines), not a penny more. When I was using Sprint + Treo 600 and 650, my supposedly unlimited rates were all over the place each month, and were $115 at their lowest ebb. The cost of the iPhone itself pales in comparison to the lower cost per month–and headache reducing consistency of the bill–than previously.
Good job to AT&T;, and especially Apple for making them create a consistent and mostly invisible billing process!
@January 24, 1984,
Are you my girlfriend?
If not, this idea is right out of a book we’re working on. lol.
elegance, ease, and freedom from mounting user fees…
quite simple no?
A relatively measured , reasonable response not, for a change, declaring the really fine iPhone as some kind of life-changing miracle. Even though there are plenty of phones out there claiming iPhone-like characteristics that aren’t worth owning, there are others now and more coming that will be every bit as wonderful as Steve’s phone and at lower cost.
Saying that Steve’s is great, wonderful, pretty, cool and all that is fine and correct. And, oh, his marketing skills are truly genius although bordering on dishonest – his products DO NOT ‘just work’ – they are full of problems pretty much like all the rest of the competition.
The really worrying aspect of this story is that there are currently 4 million people who know why the iPhone works so well for users, but nobody on that panel who has a clue – and they’re the people who call themselves experts.
You might imagine that Apple bringing a markedly better product to market might have provided them with a clear example of what they should be doing, but all they can talk about is nonsense like “pre-touch input”.
In case y’all are just noticing, we live in a world where almost no one is who they pretend to be. Politicians don’t give a damn about the welfare of their constituents; “experts” make pronouncements about subjects about which they are woefully ignorant. Families pretend that the world isn’t falling apart right in front of their eyes as they toodle down to the mall to buy more stuff. The proliferation of incomprehensible amounts of information on the internet has made it more essential than ever for people who value the truth about anything to separate fact from fiction. Rotsa ruck!
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.’ It’s amazing how clueless these people are. If you need help to navigate a mobile phone interface by tapping into users’ neural network, you already concede that the mobile phone interface is way, way to complex for practical purposes. IOW, don’t use the goddamned mobile phone interface. Design something else. Duh!
@ Alansky:
Very true – but its the stunning level of pretense that counts now.
My customers think I am an expert in my field, and they also think I am a nice guy, because I play this role so well.
Funny thing – the more I play these roles, the more I am becoming them…..
If truth becomes lies, then lies become truth…er..I think.
I can’t count how many products in my life I have used for the first time and it seems like no one at the company actually tried it before they sold it.
I can’t believe these cell phone makers actually thought they had good products until they tried the iPhone. Or, did they really know that it was “just good enough”?
The problem is that most companies rush their products out with the goal to making a fast buck.
Apple spent over 2 years developing the iPhone and have over twenty years experience in user interfaces.
That’s the difference.
iPhone is the first, and current, incarnation of the fabled “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
Simple, elegant and practical.
Don’t leave (your) home (galaxy) without it.
I’ve been anti-cellphone forever.. however I’ve finally decided to get an iPhone once the new version comes out (which I would assume is sometime this year).