[Sigia-l] It's started

[Russell E. Unger]

>> Nokia have a long tradition of very high quality handset UI design
>> backed up by equally comprehensive research. If you don't know what
>> Jan
>> Chipchase is doing at Nokia, you should:
>>
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6698075.stm

I have a hard time believing that only Nokia is doing that.  I also have a
hard time believing that, just because Jan Chipchase is getting credit in
an article, he's the one pioneering it all.  Seems unlikely to me, in my
experience.

> I have a different take on this. As I see it, up until now mobile
> phone UIs have had to serve multiple masters -- the phone
> manufacturer and the dozen or so truly important national or
> international telecom providers, with the additional strong spin of
> multiple phone manufacturers competing for OEM sales to the telecoms.

I'd agree with emphatically.

> Quite simply put, that's not an environment in which a phone designer
> -- any designer in the entire cluste.... err ... conglomeration
> described above -- can build an integrated hardware/software design.
>
> I'm sure Apple will have to compromise over time with AT&T, but at
> least with the iPhone design, everything that isn't Apple designed
> can be turned into a separate widget.

Imagine the advantage at Apple--starting from scratch and meeting demands
that they've assessed in the marketplace and then choosing but 1 carrier
to work with upfront.

Think about that one.  They made a lot of choices and had a pretty good
inclination that the UI/UX was the way to go because of what's being said
in the marketplace.  They also worked with Motorola on the ROKR; I cannot
imagine that they didn't glean some insights off of that relationship.

Then take a look at what manufacturers are doing--adding patchwork
solutions to existing UIs and OSes in order to meet the demands of the
marketplace.  Oh, and get as many of those into a full "release" as
possible.  Then get it into development and modify all that existing
codebase and/or add to it.  Test it, and test all of the ever-growing
modifications and then go against multiple carriers, and so on and so
forth.

I think people put forth a lot of leaps when they make assumptions about
Mobile UIs.  It's one thing to identify a pain point or multiple pain
points, but it's another thing altogether to be able to react.  I think
that Apple watched, waiting and moved into a space where they could shake
up the space by virtue of seeing what people want, hearing what they say
and then responding.  Oh, and they're Apple.  Oh and they've already got
iTunes.  Oh and an OS.  To me, it seems as if they've sort of gotten off
easy by jumping into the foray now.

I'll be interested to see how they handle OTA updates to their devices and
I'd be interested in how they handle the legalities of such a process--IF
they have to take their users offline at all.  There's going to be a lot
of things that will be interesting about this, for certain.

Russ