Progress means simplifying, not complicating.
-[Bruno Munari->http://www.dolcevita.com/design/designers/munari0.htm]

Don’t take my word for it, the next big thing will always be the user-centered device…

Electronic News sat down to discuss the future of consumer electronics with David Milne CEO of Wolfson Microelectronics; Michael Maia, VP of Marketing at Portal Player; Jarreth Solomon, director of technology at Lexar Media; and Allen Leibovitch, semiconductors program manager at International Data Corp. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. The [full article can be read here->http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA604106.html]

Solomon: …What made the iPod take off was that it was a very easy system to use. It came bundled with an iTunes package and it was a very attractive user interface. That’s one of the things consumers are looking at now. As new products come out, the user interface has to be easy to use in order to be mass adopted.

Maia: That is the critical thing. If you hit that nail on the head, you’ve got a winner.

Solomon: Yes. Take a look at Kodak. It very recently took a leader position in the digital camera space because of the Kodak EasyShare. You plug your camera into a docking station, push a button and it prints. You don’t have to deal with Photoshop or adjusting colors; 80 percent of the population out there doesn’t have that kind of expertise or the time to do that.

Just lately, I came across this [nice list of articles-> http://www.rashmisinha.com/useroi.html] published on the ROI of usability by Rashmi Sinha. Here are some excerpts…

“At any instant, millions of people around the world are trying to use or do something that is difficult or confusing. They may be trying to find a product, trying to figure out how a product works, trying to get service for a product, or trying to replace it. Eventually and inevitably, they will begin to lose time and patience. And, no matter what particular answer they are looking for, the question they pose will be the same: “Why would anyone make something this confusing?…the advantages of creating usable products far outweigh the costs. The rule of thumb: every dollar invested in ease of use returns $10 to $100.” from [IBM's Cost Justifying Ease of Use.->http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/Publish/23]

“After Dell Computer applied basic usability principles to its e-commerce Web site in the autumn of 1999, its Web sales skyrocketed. Online purchases rose from $1 million per day in September, 1998, to $34 million per day in March, 2000.” [BusinessWeek - Usability is Next to Profitability->http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2002/tc2002124_2181.htm]

Tough question but it’s easy to make things difficult to use. It’s the easy way out in the project when you don’t take sufficient time to design things right the first time. We’ve all used products built like this, at least for a while until they hit the trash can or got forgotten. The first use was the last use.

On the other hand, good design is hard. When you use a well-designed product it just works. It appears simple, it must have been easy to build, right? Wrong. Good design is rarely easy. It’s this design that took more planning and thought. This is the design that usually took more time to build. It’s this design that followed a user-centered process.