Posts Tagged iphone
You receive a new message, say an email or a tweet, and at that very moment your software decides to do something stupid. A little red bubble appears over its icon. A ringing bell is heard. Sometimes even the message itself will pop up over your screen announcing its arrival and inviting you to read it.
Is it not rude to disturb people? Does the software assume you were sitting there doing absolutely nothing, just waiting for that update? Not only does it decide to disturb you, it does it in the most forceful way it possibly can, using every weapon at its disposal: sounds, colors and animations.
Instead of serving the user, the software now decides it is in command, and begins pulling the shots. At its will, the user is forced to check for new messages—reminiscent of the bell being pulled to call the butler. Instead of checking for messages at a time convenient to the user, the software forces them to check it at the time of its choosing. What I’m arguing against isn’t so much the mechanism of notifications. I can disable Growl or turn off notifications for a particular app on the iPhone. Technically they work. It’s about how we interact with notifications.
Instant notifications are a feature that was useful at the rise of fast communication technologies. It notified you of new messages because it could, and because it was genuinely useful (e.g. an emergency pager). Using this feature for every service, especially those on the desktop that by design only work when you’re working, doesn’t make any sense. Notifications are inherently negative, barring the few cases where you actually need them. Whenever you receive a notification, your brain is pulled away from its current task. This is distracting and breaks focus. The more notifications you receive, the more distracted you will be.
Your brain is reacting to an outside stimulus, which the phone or the computer provides. This stimulus is governed by the time of arrival, but this rarely has much importance. Yes, you will sometimes wait for that important email or SMS to arrive, but many other times it won’t be time sensitive, which the application assumes by default. In this way, real-time apps actually have a negative value in that they consume your most precious resource—your time—on their own terms, rather than on yours.
We have all been hearing the chatter about mobile applications. It seems 2010 has been an astounding year for development in mobile technology, both hardware and software. Apple’s iPhone & iPad along with Google’s Android OS and Microsoft Windows Phone all prove just how large the market currently stands.
Trends have been forming over the recent years which might show us where our future is heading. It’s clear the amount of mobile users are increasing daily, and there appears to be no sign of slowing. As an app developer or business owner these are some great trends to check out regarding mobile devices.
Mobile Software Industry
We can see a rise in the amount of users accessing the App Store every day. Apple checks each submission for quality and carefully searches for possible bugs. The Android development team has a similar application retail store, although not as developed and lacking a strong market share.
Many are expecting a business app store to come soon. This would provide small revenue streams for small businesses who have information to offer their mobile users. Many competitors of all niches are in the market to make money and have the same amount of ability to swoop in.
Currently the amount of developers for each mobile platform is slim. There is a growing number of both digital artists and developers showing interest in the mobile arena. This will become the next highly developed piece of technology following cable television and the Internet.
Location-Based Services
We have already seen soaring interactions with these types of apps in just a few months. The most popular enterprise Foursquare
I’ve been giving We Rule a try on my iPhone (username ‘chwats’). Recently though, I’ve been having connection problems, with the game being slow to load and play, and sometimes unavailable. Yes, all online services have issues sometimes, but this was getting ridiculous.
I was just about ready to uninstall it when I received a perfectly timed email from ngmoco, the developer of the game.
It was a great example of how to apologize to your customers for service problems, and frankly, kept me as a customer. Here’s why.
Firstly, although I only discovered this once I had read to the bottom, I really appreciated that the email had come directly from ngmoco’s CEO, Neil.
I also appreciated his honesty in describing the issues that were causing the connectivity issues:
…we underestimated the number of people that would play the game, the number of social connections that they would have, the number of push messages that would be sent, the number of times that they would play per day and the number of minutes that they would play for.
Simply put, ‘we didn’t expect the game to be as successful as it’s been.’
I liked how the steps to resolve the issues were outlined and the urgency with which they were being implemented:
…we’re working around the clock to scale our physical infrastructure and we’re also in the process of finishing a new round of changes to both the We Rule and Plus+ servers, as well as an update to the We Rule App…
Lastly, it was heartening to learn that not only were service issues being addressed but new features were also being brought online:
We’re going to be rolling out new content on a fairly regular cadence over the course of the game’s life and we have enhancements lined up for many many months to come.
As a customer, the first part of this email saved me from leaving and the last part aroused my interest enough to stay around for the foreseeable future in order to see how the game evolves. Nice job, Neil.
Further Reading
Now that the iPhone has a true competitor in the Nexus One, I thought it would be interesting to see how their home pages compared. What is Google doing from an online standpoint to take on the smart phone market leader?
When I first viewed the Nexus One home page I was struck by how utilitarian it looked. The logo, the hero image of the phone, even the ‘buy now’ button — there is nothing compelling about what’s being presented. This really surprised me for such a major product launch.
Nexus One home page
Compare this to the iPhone home page, which oozes quality. The logo is bold and elegant and the hero imagery shows off the iPhone’s excellent industrial design to great effect. The autoplaying slideshow shows off the key features of the device without requiring any user interaction.
As soon as you arrive on the page, it starts telling you why you should buy an iPhone.
iPhone home page
I think it’s fair to say that the Nexus One can’t compete on visual design, both in terms of the hardware and software (take a closer look at the phone’s home screen to see what I mean).
So, I was surprised that more emphasis was not placed on the features where it does stand out. Why exactly is this phone a worthy competitor to the iPhone? It would benefit immensely from a more upfront presentation of what sets it apart from the iPhone. What exactly are its killer apps? Surely not Gmail and voicemail?
Apple uses the space below the main promo area to call out additional features and benefits, and Google would do well to do the same. Apple also enables the visitor to easily learn more about each feature. I don’t know where I’d go to dive deeper into the features of the Nexus One.
The Nexus One’s interactive demo is good once you start using it; however, there’s no guarantee how many features a user will click on, and even if they will realize that the image of the phone is interactive (we know how people hate to read instructional text). I couldn’t even tell that some parts of the phone were clickable without mousing over them.
Google should be much more proactive about what features the visitor should know about by displaying them automatically once the page loads. Otherwise, without the benefit of great overall site design, the page appears very static and boring.
The page would also benefit from tightening the layout and a greater application of polish to the visuals. For example, the Nexus One logo and the tagline lack association due to the spacing between them, and the hover effect for the already lackluster ‘buy now’ button adds nothing.
The Nexus One page hammers home the importance of good copywriting. There is nothing remotely compelling about the content on the page. “Web meets phone” is not a strong value proposition when compared with the iPhone. I think most people would agree that web has already met phone.
Compare “Click on an icon for a demo of each app” with “The fastest iPhone ever. Load web pages, launch apps, and more — even faster.” No contest.
Overall, the Nexus One site does a poor job of both launching and simply selling its product, especially when you consider the competitor it is going up against. Which is a shame, because I’ve heard it’s a pretty decent smart phone. You’ll just have to find that out from another website.
If we could tear into the fabric of time and look a decade into the future, what kind of experience might we find? It’s easy to imagine the technology would be much more advanced. Something out of a film like Minority Report with holographic touchscreens, or so advanced of an A.I. (artificial intelligence) that the application anticipates solutions without the user having to do much else.
In reality the kinds of products, websites, and applications that survive and continue to be effective are those that that focus on the user experience. The digital world evolves continually, but we need to manage this by making sure we don’t leave the people who use our applications and websites in the dust. In this article we will explore creating a timeless user experience.
