As a related personal observation I found that Japanese consumers are
generally don't seem bothered by having to read manuals or having to
deal with technical details.
I was very surprised to see the manuals inside the box of my wife's
keitai, it must have had 200+ pages, and a "quick guide" of half the
size (both sort of A 5 sized).
As for the technical details I find it odd that consumers are not only
bothered with technical specs, they are even used as marketing
differentiators sometimes. Some examples:
- "packet charges" or the whole concept of packets and the number of
bytes in it with mobile phones
- hard disk size in the Sony Cocoon; just tell us how many hours we can
record
- hard disk car navigation systems; what do I care how you store the
data in it?
It may be exciting for the technophile, but I cannot imagine my mum
being able to make any sense out of this.
Dirk
On Saturday, Jun 14, 2003, at 20:24 Asia/Tokyo, Johan Bengtsson wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I would very much appreciate your reflections on the issue below.
>
> Background: With Vodafone live! came two Japanese phones into the
> European market, the Panasonic GD-87 and the Sharp GX10. Vodafone
> turned
> to the Japanese manufacturers in order to get the phones they want.
> Nokia, Sony Ericsson and the rest didn't seem interested in delivering
> tailored phones.
>
> Issue: We swear, we tear our hair and our eyes moist up. The damn
> phones
> are impossible to use. There are no logic what so ever in the way you
> as
> a user are supposed to use the GD-87 and the GX10. And I can bet a pile
> of money that these phones have given Vodafone declining data ARPU due
> to loss of average number of SMS sent by the user of these phones. It's
> not a pleasant nor quick experience when you write and send an SMS with
> these phones.
>
> Question: Are there no usability experts at the Japanese manufacturers?
> We have a bunch of interaction designers here that could design better
> user experiences in their sleep. Is there something about the Japanese
> engineering culture that keeps interaction designers out of the design
> process?
>
> /Johan
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Johan Bengtsson
> Business Developer
>
> Phone: +46-(0)709-61 44 25
> Fax: +46-(0)709-63 64 25
> www.doberman.se
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> This mail was sent to address d.rosler@jens.co.jp
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>
Received on Mon Jun 16 04:00:19 2003