I’m not sure if all the WAP browsers on the mobile phone are going away overnight but the iPhone, with its Safari browser, has certainly showed everyone that mobile browsing need not be a compromise. The folks over at Mozilla have been working on a mobile version of Firefox for some time and the latest version looks like it’s progressing nicely. It’s an interesting take on a mobile browser with user-configurable spaces and touch-based slides in various directions that give the user access to common browser functionality. That last bit is an interesting approach to maximizing the real estate that’s pretty limited on a mobile. Also, I agree with the comment that typing on a traditional mobile number pad is “like trying to remove a contact lens with a cotton ball; it’s just not fun.”
I’ve heard that the browser on the Nokia N810/800 is a Mozilla version. It works very nicely. Can’t wait to try this new version of Firefox on other mobile devices.
I still run into a few people that don’t think the iPhone is all that great of a user experience. Well, it looks like the hard data is telling a different story. It appears that iPhone owners are using the Internet many times more than their non-iPhone counterparts. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Google revealed that there are 50 times more searches originating from the iPhone than any other mobile handset. This finding has also been reported by O2 who found that 60% of U.K. iPhone users are sending or receiving more than 25 MB of data a month.
From a user experience perspective, this is quite amazing. For years, many companies in the mobile arena have been building mobile hardware and mobile UI’s that they’ve deemed usable and now Apple comes along and is getting 50X the usage. Incredible! There was obviously room for improvement. I can see why Google originally thought the high iPhone usage was a mistake…
“We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,” Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations told the Financial Times.
For US carriers, increasing the average revenue per user (ARPU) has been the new financial target as voice revenues are steady or decreasing. They need to find ways to make their mobile data services more attractive. Besides the obtuse pay-as-you-go vs. all-you-can-eat data pricing models, mobile users have had to deal with the walled-garden decks, poor hard-key usability, unclear soft-key button labels and maze-like navigational paths. It’s no wonder that users have stayed away from the mobile web. Personally, I’d rather use my laptop.
“The world is changing. Users want an internet without fences. They know how to type in
Google.com if they want to get to it. Two years ago the operators were still playing the role of
gatekeepers but that is no longer the role for them,” Mr Gundotra said.
It looks like ux does matter when it comes to mobile data services. Let’s see which approach everyone takes moving forward. I hope the sequel is not going to be an “Attack of the iPhone Clones”.
John Rhodes has an interesting article published on his blog about individuals being passionate, dedicated, and focused on design and UX…
It is hard to develop something amazing if you don’t care about it, when there’s no interest or passion…If you talk to people who do great work, they will tell you that there is dedication based on the inner need to craft something wonderful. It isn’t money or external rewards that drive the best people…it takes special people doing special work to make usability a reality. If you’re doing UX work, you need to actually care about the work you’re doing, and the people that will feel the pain if the design isn’t right.
I know from experience that this also applies to corporations as much as individuals. Individuals can lack passion about design because the organization itself is not focused on building great UX. Is it the company that’s not passionate about design or is it the individual?
Organizations like individuals can either care about the work they are producing or be focused on a myriad of other issues like time to market or ROI. With the later, I see individuals in organizations just doing what it takes to make the buck and get by or just doing what they’re told to do to meet the next deadline. It’s hard to motivate people in organizations to be passionate about their products if the organization hasn’t built a culture that rewards employees building great user experiences.
It’s the holiday season, and most companies are doing their year end bonuses now but I wonder how many of these bonuses are based on usability UX metrics? When organizations are passionate, dedicated, and focused on delivering great design and usability, everyone benefits.
Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. “Perhaps the most amazing demo I’ve seen this year,” wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.
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