PSP User Experience With Memorystick Videos
by James Marzano on Sep.26, 2005, under User Experience
Personal video player (PVP) hardware developers just don’t get it yet. The user experience doesn’t stop at the device, it extends to the desktop.
Take Sony as as example. While the PSP was designed as a gaming platform it seems to be used a lot with video playback from the memory sticks. "The Street finds its own use for things." My expectation is that transfering a video to a PVP device should be as easy as an putting a song on my iPod using iTunes. But not so. There’s no cross plaform iTunes like interface from Sony for managing video content on the PSP. Sony really missed the boat with this aspect of their device. Users have to resort to third-party utilities that manage the alphabet soup of video CODECs, formats, and sizes. If you thought music file formats were difficult, with all the different bit rates and mp3’s vs. AAC’s vs. ogg’s, video is a true nightmare compared to digital music. One look at my compression software and there’s a litany of choices; Quicktime, Real, or Windows Media wrappers, compression in MPEG-1,2,4, Motion JPEG, Sorenson, H.261, H.263, H.264, DV, etc. In addition, there are various frame rates and audio compression choices of various flavors. Wow, what a user experience nightmare. Which really means there’s a huge opportunity for any company that get videos working as easy as the iTunes/iPod, hardware/software marriage. If you’ve seen other PVP’s out there that you think have nailed it, leave a comment, let me know.
Usability Cost vs Benefit
by James Marzano on Jul.13, 2005, under Usability
“Usability cost-benefit data shows that including usability in product development actually cuts the time to market and increases sales because usability and ease of use build quality into products and catch many expensive problems early on in the cycle when they can be addressed at lower cost. Finally, working with users from the beginning of a product cycle ensures that the product is being designed so that users will be satisfied.”
- Claire Marie Karat, “A business case approach to usability cost justification.” In, R. Bias and D. Mayhew, Eds. [Cost-Justifying Usability->http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0120958112/], Academic Press, NY, 1994.
Quote of the Day
by James Marzano on Jun.27, 2005, under Philosophy
Progress means simplifying, not complicating.
-[Bruno Munari->http://www.dolcevita.com/design/designers/munari0.htm]
The Next Big Thing Is Always User-Centered
by James Marzano on Jun.06, 2005, under Design, User Experience
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.
