« Segways Recalled | Main | Dichotomization of the Digital Camera Space? »

September 28, 2003

The Importance of Interface Design

I think consumers generally overlook and underestimate the importance of one critical aspect of handheld and mobile technologies: the user interface. It is possible, in my opinion, that no other single attribute is as important to user satisfaction as this design aspect, yet we, as consumers, generally think very little about it (at least on a conscious level).

Now, I'm no graphic arts / design geek (but some of my best friends are! :-). However, I've come to appreciate the dramatic impact that interface design quality can have on my satisfaction with a particular device. Let me explain using a few personal examples.

My first PDA was an original Pilot 5000. The essence of Jeff Hawkin's original concept was simplicity -- the "Zen of Palm" was keeping simple tasks as simple as possible. This was achieved through extensive thinking and testing of how people interact with the device, both in the physical sense (e.g., hardware and on-screen buttons) and in the process sense (e.g., what do I want to do next?).

The result was one of the most efficient interfaces I've ever personally experienced. It allowed me to do a fairly large number of things in a relatively small number of highly intuitive steps. Palm OS today largely retains this design philosophy, but feature-creep has complexified things somewhat. For example, having the ability to rotate the screen means that the user now has to decide each time which orientation he/she wants to use. I think Jeff Hawkins would doubt that this adds significant value for a majority of users in a majority of use scenarios, but I digress.

When Jeff Hawkins started up Handspring, he took his "the interface is sacred" philosophy with him. The result was the Treo series of smartphones. I've used a number of smartphones and...er...dumbphones (?) over the years, and none have had such a nicely integrated, well-conceived interface as the Treo. It was almost as if the phone anticipated what you wanted to do next. All the applications were integrated such that the transition from one task to another was nearly seamless and the data just floated along, ready to be handled with whatever you wanted to use at the moment. It was Nirvana (the state of bliss, not the band). The new Treo 600 looks and sounds like it has even improved in this regard, meaning that using it will be just heavenly.

Another really good example of an excellent interface is TiVo. It is simple and intuitive enough for anyone to learn how to control, even without training, in just a few minutes. The menu system is pretty well thought out and easy to navigate. The remote control is a wonder of ergonomics, putting the most important buttons where they need to be and packing 100% of the functionality you need onto a very comfortable remote. In contrast is the Scientific Atlanta 8000 DVR, which does not have such a great interface.

In a car analogy, the Treos and the TiVo are like modestly powered but immaculately behaved (i.e., effortlessly controlled) and confortable sports cars, the kind that you love to drive every day and never get tired of.

Of course, there are dozens of examples of bad interfaces. My Kyocera 7135 is quite the opposite. It runs on Palm OS, but the engineers at Kyocera have utterly destroyed any sense of simplicity. They packed on application after application with almost no data integration across them whatsoever. For example, when in "Phone Mode" (yes, the phone display has a separate mode for making phone calls), the touch screen doesn't work. But, and this makes me both laugh and cry at the same time, if you touch the screen when in phone mode, it actually pops up a message that says "Touch Panel Inactive -- The phone applications is not touch sensitive...Please use <-OK-> (buttons) to navigate." Incredible. Overall, the phone is amazing, but sometimes I feel like I have to wrestle it into submission in order to get it to do what I want (very much the same way I feel about the Pocket PCs I've used).

Another good example of a bad interface is my FL100 MP3 player from MPIO/Digital Way. It is incredibly powerful and full-featured, but the hardware buttons are very poorly thought out. It's very easy -- too easy -- to do things you don't intend. Also, some aspects of the on-screen menu system just don't make any sense at all.

In a car analogy, these two devices are like suped-up muscle cars -- they're really powerful and full of features, but hard to control and they take a real effort to "drive." Initially, there's a real "wow" factor, but over time this wears off. As a result, these devices don't elicit the long-term enthusiasm that the devices with a good interface elicit, at least in me.

So, we, as consumers and users, need to think about this aspect more than we have in the past. Every time you use something with a designed interface, start to become aware of characteristics that you like or dislike. Does your digital camera have a menu system that makes it easy to get to those controls you need to change on a regular basis? Does your portable music player have buttons that are easy to manipulate without looking? Does your PDA take as few taps as possible to get to the data you need? If you start thinking about these things, you may begin to appreciate aspects of these devices you never even consciously noted before. Also, you may begin to see new reasons to explain why you look forward to using certain devices more than others.

Posted by Craig in Mobile & PDAs

Comments

Posted by: Ken at September 28, 2003 8:09 PM

Posted by: mashby at September 29, 2003 9:31 PM

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:
(required; will not be shown publicly)

URL:
(optional; will be shown publicly)
Remember Me? YesNo

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)