User Interface Design matters
The future of cell phones and the role of User Interface Design ...
"I spent some time with Bob Geiman from Polaris Ventures last week. Bob focuses on wireless communications infrastructure, networks, and devices. We had a spirited discussion about The Next Big Thing in wireless. We concluded that the big cell phone network players will not lead the way, and in fact, the USA will probably not lead the way either. Europe and Asia are way ahead of the US in wireless technology creation and adoption.
User Interface design matters, especially in converged devices. Let me share a simple example. The remote control to my big screen TV has 51 buttons. I use 5 of them; power, volume up/down, channel up/down, mute, and alternate channel. The rest of the buttons attempt to control my DVD, VCR, and Tuner. But they often don’t work because they are incompatible with my component devices. Sound familiar? It happens often in software, hardware, consumer devices, etc.
In the case of cell phones everything works well until you need to type in commands or data. The form factor is just too small. The Blackberry introduced a “thumbing” keyboard that works quite well, and a reasonable sized screen for viewing. T9 was supposed to be the answer for cell phone data entry but for me it is just too slow and frustrating. So, the choices are a larger form factor like the iPAQ or Blackberry that are optimized for data entry and viewing, or a smaller form factor cell phone which is optimized for lightweight passive activities." continued ... (Via The Next Big Thing)
"I spent some time with Bob Geiman from Polaris Ventures last week. Bob focuses on wireless communications infrastructure, networks, and devices. We had a spirited discussion about The Next Big Thing in wireless. We concluded that the big cell phone network players will not lead the way, and in fact, the USA will probably not lead the way either. Europe and Asia are way ahead of the US in wireless technology creation and adoption.
User Interface design matters, especially in converged devices. Let me share a simple example. The remote control to my big screen TV has 51 buttons. I use 5 of them; power, volume up/down, channel up/down, mute, and alternate channel. The rest of the buttons attempt to control my DVD, VCR, and Tuner. But they often don’t work because they are incompatible with my component devices. Sound familiar? It happens often in software, hardware, consumer devices, etc.
In the case of cell phones everything works well until you need to type in commands or data. The form factor is just too small. The Blackberry introduced a “thumbing” keyboard that works quite well, and a reasonable sized screen for viewing. T9 was supposed to be the answer for cell phone data entry but for me it is just too slow and frustrating. So, the choices are a larger form factor like the iPAQ or Blackberry that are optimized for data entry and viewing, or a smaller form factor cell phone which is optimized for lightweight passive activities." continued ... (Via The Next Big Thing)
Is convergence a good thing?
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