[Sigia-l] Tog on iPhone

[Manu Sharma]

From: "Ziya Oz" <listera at earthlink.net>

> For companies like Motorola that can't fluidly integrate hardware 
> and
> software if their lives depended on it, this happens in terms of 
> "features"
> as disjointed points of innovation. Because, in their minds, 
> features sell
> and one "innovation" here or another one over there is what it's 
> all about.

I pointed out the exact same thing in my first reaction to iPhone 
hours after its introduction. To quote from my blog:

"The user experience is the magic of iPhone. It is a slap on the 
face of current cell phone manufacturers whose blind allegiance to 
features over experience has led to stagnation in design of mobile 
interfaces."
http://tinyurl.com/yvdpax

So I agree completely with you there.

> The point for Apple's is NOT "what can we innovate today?" At all. 
> The urge
> is to solve a human, UX problem first. If that necessitates an 
> innovation,
> they are happy to do it, only because there's no other way to 
> solve that UX
> problem. But if there's a way to leverage prior art, so be it: 
> from
> Engelbart to Xerox to FreeBSD to OSS they'll incorporate it.

Yep. That's precisely the right way to go.

> So "innovate as a last resort" means don't do it because it's the 
> endgame,
> do it because there's no other way to reach your goal: solving 
> strategic UX
> problems.

I wouldn't call what you explained above as innovating as a last 
resort. It's innovating when needed, just not for the sake of 
innovation. Although it might be accurate, the phrase would be 
easily misconstrued to mean "push the staus quo until you can't 
anymore" which is definetely *not* what you mean.

"Innovate as a last resort" is a poor slogan to describe what you 
really mean by it.

Thanks,
Manu