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Our observations of the world around us
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Why is my smart phone so stupid?
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Dear major mobile phone manufacturer,
I think something has been forgotten in the design of the latest smart phones. It’s a phone, first and foremost, for most users. I realize that innovation has to move quickly, and that there’s a lot of competition out there in the mobile industry, but basic user needs seem to be lost time and time again. With the iPhone came major innovation. It could perform a lot more functions than anything most of us had ever seen. But with that came frustration where usability was concerned. We should be learning from this. Why is it that my new phone is still suffering from interface problems that are enough to outrage me as an interaction designer? Why aren’t we standing on the shoulders of those who have gone through this before? It seems that with my smart phone, the biggest problem is that the designers were so excited over new technology that they forgot that 90% of the time, I would be using it as a phone. The phone portion of the interface is infuriatingly difficult. I dial with my face. I mute and hang up on people anytime I try to pin it against my shoulder. As a workaround I tried to plug in a headset. Oops! I guess now I have to go out and buy a blue tooth headset because my phone isn’t built to accept a traditional ear piece. The back panel falls off leaving my battery exposed. I can’t dial with gloves on, yet I need to use the touch screen to access the voice recognition interface (so I end up having to take my gloves off anyway). But it’s ok, all I need is some duct tape, no gloves (even in the 10 degree Ohio weather) and a blue tooth headset and this phone will be all that it was cracked up to be. But hey, it sure can tell me how to find the nearest Olive Garden!
When making design decisions, let’s get back to remembering how this product will be used. New innovation is amazing, this progress shouldn’t stop or even slow down, but we can’t let other features fall through the cracks as a result. Especially when these features constitute the bulk of the use cases to which we should be designing.
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