In general,
I still don't understand why companies that live from what they produce
in tens of millions don't manage to design these products well so people
can actually use them. Regarding mobile phones, the user interface
design is so incredibly much easier to develop and test than anything
else in the process leading to the final product. My father had a
M...-phone in his car 2 years ago and when he showed to me how to
operate it I remember laughing tears for minutes. It was so incredibly
funny. I just couldn't believe what I saw. Just to dial my number from
the address list he had to go through 5 menues and confirm just about
anything. In the end the damn thing said "dialing Marc..." and we were
waiting...and waiting...until he explained to me that seeing this, one
again has to press OK so it really really really starts dialing. What a
you-know-what.
Similarly there are car manufacturers producing cars since way more than
50 years and when you enter/drive such a car you wonder what they've
been up to all that time.
Packaging is another favourite. There are just so many products whose
packaging just wouldn't open (not in Japan though! Here you can easily
open all three packagings that surround the product :-) and I bet the
CEOs of the companies manufacturing these products never opened one
themselves.
The list is endless.
You see, I'm sometimes struggling with the way this world works (not).
Marc
Michael Turner wrote:
>
> Paul Eijkemans writes, in part:
>
> > What I would like to argue that it is not the telecom-technology
> > manufacturers that have the best position for launching a consumer
> > electronics device. It is the companies that have years of experience in
> the
> > consumer business. Whether that is with a game console, miniature watch,
> > discman, or any other device that needs intuitive user interfaces. As long
> > as it is not with manufacturing base stations and mobile switching center.
>
> There's an irony here: Motorola, a major manufacturer of those
> base stations and switching centers, actually started life as a mobile
> wireless-communications consumer electronics company. And it
> had, for its time, both incomparable user interface design quality
> and the miniaturization that the targeted mode of mobility happen
> to require.
>
> In short, they made a success of the car radio, from which we
> now have the reified "radio buttons" of GUIs.
>
> Smart brand-name science, too: "Motor" as in motor car,
> "-ola" from the Latin diminutive suffix meaning "small", a
> play on "Victrola", a phonograph that was itself considered
> a marvel of miniaturization in its heyday.
>
> But I digress. The point is, Paul's right, so long as you
> modify his statement to say "years of RECENT experience."
> Motorola seems to be steadily losing its way, on the
> handset side. Not to mention ethically - do some searches
> on "Motorola" and "payola" to see what I mean there.
>
> -m
> leap@gol.com
>
> [ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Mon Mar 19 14:34:23 2001