Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Nokia looking for a new CEO?

Nokia is looking for a new CEO, according to Wall Street Journal. This is due to the facts that the stock price keeps going down and that there's no success in smartphones. This obviously fires up the discussion in Finland. It's about time, many say - even here in Finland where Nokia is considered our holy grail and not owning a Nokia is almost like a treachery. Okay, I'm joking of course but the respect for Nokia has been high, maybe a little too much. Years ago, way before iPhones, I used to joke about what's up with Nokia innovation - phones that can do SMS won't cut it.

Nokia already dominates everything else in mobile phone business than smartphones. So they still do well. Nokia just needs to polish it's image by showing they still are the leader in the mobile phone business. That's going to be done right by producing a couple of hit products in smartphones. That would easily put things back to track. But how can they do that since for so many years, they've been so incapable of doing anything consumers would love? The last time I heard somebody love a Nokia product, it was before the Symbian era. And it's a long time in tech business. Here's what Nokia should do in my opinion. I'm just a user experience guy but hey, no point for a blog without strong opinions, right? : )


1) Get a new leadership. A person with star power. They need somebody like Steve Jobs. Somebody who can make hard desicions. Somebody who can change the image of the company. Somebody who understands competition and when a great new product like iPhone comes up in the market, doesn't just foolishly ignore it and say things like "it's just one phone, who cares". People's faith in this one has gone, things won't recover if Nokia doesn't show it understands that they messed up. A new leader would be a clear sign for everybody that Nokia seriously wants to get back on the saddle.

2) Dump Symbian. Symbian is slow and it sucks life out of developers. Documentation is not there and creating great UI is close to impossible with Symbian. That's why usability sucks so bad in Nokia phones. Working with Symbian makes things so complex there's no room to really create great user experiences. And great user experiences are the only thing that sells in smartphones for consumers. Nokia tried to get people to develop apps but nobody was interested. Nokia needs something like Android.

3) Allow for innovation. People develop great new concepts at Nokia but somehow the innovative stuff never reaches market. You've gotta put great new things on the market or just give up with smartphones. Here's an example of a great, innovative Nokia product concept that hopefully some day will be available. I certainly would buy one even if it cost more than a computer.

4) Focus on user experience - this is absolutely the key point. This is what saved Apple from near death and helped it become the biggest tech firm. If you build things for consumers, the products need to work for them. No engineering skills should be needed. Make things simple, fast and easy. Example: try using a Nokia phone for web browsing. Then try an iPhone or Nexus one. See a difference? Cut down the features on cheap phones. Eliminate totally features that nobody uses. Go back to basics - what are the key features for a phone user? Do those extremely well. That's enough!


5) Trim the product line. Make it easier for customers to pick a phone. Concentrate on making fewer, better ones.


6) Don't change the things that work. Keep supporting the business sector. Others do terrible job with understanding companies' needs so that's why Nokia rules there.



I'm sounding like a broken record here linking this again but I so much love the concept! That concept is by the way already two years old. Still it looks so great that nobody would be interested in iPhones or other ancient tech anymore. And I'm pretty sure people would pay a lot for such a product. So here goes my request:


Please, Nokia. Do whatever it takes to get things like this one on the market.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Apple is not sorry for their epic antenna failure

Ok here's the background in short. Iphone 4 drops calls. People get pissed as their phones fail. I boldly argue -- and we probably have a firm grasp of the obvious here -- that making calls is pretty much a critical function for a phone. Apple says there's no problem but the media coverage around the problem gets so huge it's affecting Apple's stock price. Apple has to respond so they set up a press conference to respond and here's how it went.

Apple is not only the biggest but also the most fascinating tech company from UX point of view. Their products have been so great for consumers that as Mc Hammer would say, nobody can touch them. As many know, Apple hardware sucks in comparison to their competition but the experience of owning an Apple product has so far been pure magic. When owning a gadget is pure magic then nothing else matters. Now, for iPhone 4 owners, that magical Apple aura fades away with the famous antenna failure. Even if a phone looks, feels and performs wonderfully in overall, you've got to admit making calls (that do not drop out randomly) is the primary function of a phone. Even smartphones with all that "smart" extra stuff almost nobody cares about. Not so smart a phone anyway if one can't make a call.

Apple is the best when it comes to presentations and praising their own products (which is something other players should learn about). Even when they fail, they manage to turn things around so that somehow people end up feeling they need to buy 17 new call-dropping iPhones. That's all thanks to Steve Jobs' superior presentation skills. Knowing this, it didn't come as a surprise that Apple is not going to be sorry nor take in the phones for repair. Jobs is also very arrogant - he shamelessly bends things as much as he can to make everything seem ok. Somehow the major problem iPhones have is presented as everyone's problem. Apple puts the blame on the industry while it's clear that the problem is Apple's experimental antenna design. They could have absolutely nailed everything if they just made the antenna design different. They also could have bought the solutions from Nokia or any other player there who have way better understanding of mobile phone hardware solutions. But that's not how they want to do things. And business-wise, that's probably the right decision for them.

Innovation is not bad. People all around the world can thank Apple for raising the standards of user experience. Iphones are full of great innovations. Same with macs and iPods. To be innovative you have to take risks. And sometimes risks just don't pay off. If you're not innovative in tech business, there's no future for you.

On the other hand, if you think about it...

What would you do if you launched a product that has a big hardware issue in it? Do you take it back for redesign and lose your face (and a ridiculous amount of money in the process)? Or, do you try to handle the situation at the minimum cost but still try to keep your customers somewhat happy? Of course you go with the latter. And if you think about it for a while, what's there to do differently, (despite of the ridiculous self-praising, even at the very moment of an epic failure)? They promised a free case or full refund. Okay, that's gonna cost a lot of money but it's better than losing customers. Apple understands that their business depends solely on delivering great user experiences. They left people a bit cold but also saved a lot. I bet iPhone 4 is going to continue to be a superb sales hit. One thing is clear. Smart companies learn from their mistakes. The next time Apple launches a phone, they're surely gonna pay extra attention to the antenna design.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

What's user experience (and this blog) all about?

Welcome to UX Buzz. This is blog is about user experience (UX). In case you're not familiar with the fancy term, this post tries to explain what's it about and why it matters. I hope you get something out of my thoughts. Conversation is always great so comments are very much appreciated. Let's get into it.

Another definition of user experience? Not again?

No, don't worry, I'm not falling for that. So many people have tried to box "user experience" into a couple of sentences that we could stick to. Not one of those definitions seems wrong but they all are different! The term user experience was coined by Don Norman in the 1990's but what's it all about has been around since...well...day one.

I'm not going to go for a well-thought definition but still I think it's fair to use a couple of words to describe what this blog is all about.

In my humble opinion, all the definition you need is this.
User Experience is about how stuff works for you. 
A good user experience is that it works well for you, a bad one means it doesn't work for you. It's as simple as that. User Experience is what happens when you do something. You doing something includes you and something. A good user experience means you're happy with what happened. A bad user experience means something did not work for you. This experience thing can be extended to anything. A great movie. A car that breaks down. A thing that doesn't work and pisses you off. Your favourite artist's concert that you'll never forget. A mobile phone that you need to hold in a certain way that it even works... You experience something and then think how it was for you. That simple! All this hype and actually we're just talking about how we feel about things. It's nothing new. We just put a label on it. Industrial designers, artist and a whole bunch of other people have known about the importance of this stuff for ages. Talk about about a marketing trick!

Mostly things that involve software have been hard to use, ugly and boring. Big bosses only wanted to do things cheap. Well, now we have accomplished that it's pretty expensive and stupid to do something and have nobody buy the product. So things have changed. In IT business, now it's all about making great stuff that works for customers. Not because somehow companies started to care about people. It's because making things good for customers has become the critical driver for business. Customers buy what they like. They'll even pay more to get things that they want. You don't need to go far for an example. Apple almost died before Steve Jobs rescued the company. He did it by concentrating on design and user experience. Now Apple is the biggest tech firm in the world. People are obsessed over iPhones, MacBooks and iPods even though they cost so much more than their competition - and are technically worse than their competion.

So, making great experiences rules the world. This blog about user experience - mostly on websites, gadgets and other stuff that include software. There might be a sarcastic joke or two about things that could easily have been designed better but somewhere during the process, the ball was dropped. Hopefully posts in future, post won't be this long. Anyway, thanks for reading this far and see you later!