• Identifying opportunities based on the needs of all stakeholders.
• Cluster the opportunities
• Develop service propositions for each cluster
• Evaluate all propositions
• Build the most promising service proposition based on the evaluation

From there on we went directly into paper prototyping and the service/product came to life! Before starting the project we tried to find literature on methods on how to do it. But it was remarkable how little literature there is on methods like this. Or perhaps we didn’t search in the right places. Anybody have any tips?

Even with our method we felt there is still a big need for techniques to do each step efficiently and effective. For example, what it the best way to evaluate which proposition is the ‘best’? I can tell you it is not a trivial exercise. Obviously you then immediately run into issues like:

• ‘best’ is a relative term. So what do you compare it with? How do you avoid apples and peers?
• How do you deal with implications on technology? A proposition may sound good but if you aren’t sure that you can technically deliver on the proposition, all will fail ultimately…
• How do you include potential business models? In the end we are looking for a proposition that benefits the user and the company can make some profit. If the proposition is not clearly profitable we will obviously not continue with it. But how do you make a business model so early in the process?
• …and many more questions like these.

Again, remarkably little literature on this. Any tips?

Nonetheless, we had fun and I feel we delivered something truly valuable. Hopefully it will be launched 2011 and I can tell you what it is….

YouTube's LeanBack

YouTube launched LeanBack this week. I think this is a great step forward in what watching TV could be in the future. You get your our personalized feed but you can also select categories and get a recommendation there.

The good part here is that it is all personalized. So you see what you like! Well, in theory that is. Leanback seems to think I like ‘tractor races’ which I can assure you I don’t like at all!!! Quite some things to improve there. A couple of things are missing still. For example:

• Browse content by type, series, movies etc. Nice to leanback but if I am interested in Top Gear I don’t want to skip all the other rubbish that shows up when search for it.
• Mark your favourites, after all if I watch something it doesn’t necessarily mean I like what I see… So there should be some kind of thumbs up/down mechanism so that personalized suggestions will get better and better.
• Define your own ‘channels’ using tags. So my sport channel would be ‘+F1 +Racing -Soccer’, meaning car racing and Formula 1 but no soccer please.
• There should be a way to see when new content will be available. It matters to me knowing when the new episode of Lost will be first available and will appear in my personal feed. Perhaps show it grey’ed out in my feed?

Anyway, nice to see YouTube is going for it. My guess is that Google TV will look similar….

Here are some first conclusions after three weeks of usage:

• The Desire is MUCH faster than the iPhone, although the iPhone is not slow at all.
• The on-screen keyboard doesn’t seem to be as good as the iPhone’s one. I regularily hit the wrong key….rarely happened to me on the iPhone.
• Android applications are generally much less stable than iPhone apps. I guess this is because of the quality control of Apple. Of the 20 apps I downloaded for the Desire at least half regularily crashed. I assume this is the price consumers currently pay for ‘openness’….
• Multitasking isn’t everything. I basically end up having my entire phone memory being filled up by apps and the Desire starts becoming sluggish. I had to install a task manager in order to keep some control.
• When you use the Desire you notice that Google isn’t that focused on a consistent user experience. The applications are inconsistent in where functionality is placed and it just doesn’t feel that polished. The iPhone really shines in this area.
• Syncing with our Exchange server works fine on the Desire just as on the iPhone. On par there..
• The HTC Sense addition is quite nice and allows me to make much more effective use of the home screen. I can completely customize it using widgets. Nice one! Apple should take notice here….

The Android platform certainly has great potential but I feel it will take some time before all the wrinkles have been sorted out. But nonetheless, it is a great phone already and I’d recommend it to everyone who is looking for something else than an iPhone. Oh, and it comes unlocked for a very reasonable price! No hacking need

Before we dive into strategy building, let’s take a closer look at some examples of visions and strategies. For my first example consider you are living in the 15th century and you have a family with 2 kids. As a responsible parent you want to make sure they are fed well. Your children haven’t had a full meal with a nice piece of meat in a while. As soon as you wake up you create your vision: “today at 20.00 my children will eat a full meal with a fresh piece of meat, larger than they can eat!’. That is pretty concrete, right? There is a time-line, a quantifiable goal, although the type of meat and the quantity is still left open. But you sort of get it, it is concrete enough.

In order to achieve the vision you come up with several potential strategies:

1. You will go into the woods to hunt, hoping to kill a deer or boar. If you leave early you should have time enough to be successful and have enough time to have the meal ready by 20.00
2. You will bake cookies and try to trade it for 2 large pieces of whatever meat you can get.
3. You will try to get your family invited by the neighbours who always have plenty of meat.

These are quite different ways of possibly achieving the vision. The clear vision has helped us to create alternative strategies to achieve it. However, the real question is not coming up with strategies that may or may not work. We are basically only interested in the strategy that has the highest probability of succeeding! In order to evaluate which strategy is best we need to look at ourselves and our context. If you are a lousy hunter and there are only few animals in the neighborhood you are likely to fail on this strategy. Similarly, if your cookies really aren’t that good compared to the cookies other villagers make you may not be able to trade them for meat. And lastly, if your social skills are low or the neighbors happen to be out to visit the family that day, you will fail as well.

In other words, evaluating strategies means looking at your own situation and the wider context, to made an estimation about the likelihood of succeeding. Basically, educated guesswork!

In the example above the time-line was short, the vision very concrete. In practice it is often not the case. Let’s assume we change the time-line on our example and adjust the vision to “I want to be able to provide my children with quality food on every day of the year”. The time-line is now a year and the challenge is now to achieve a consistent ‘food performance’ every day. For this vision the strategies above are probably not efficient and you will need to consider other strategies:

1. Get a steady job that will provide you with enough money to buy enough quality food for your children.
2. Start an animal farm that will provide you with enough supply of animals for your family and beyond so that you can buy other types of food as well.
3. Marry a partner with money so you’ll have access to enough money without having to do much for it.

These strategies are still potentially good plans but you see that the abstraction level of the strategy is getting higher. Moreover, it is also becoming more difficult to estimate your chances.

Enough about feeding your children, let’s look at real world visions and strategies! The problem with most companies is that their visions are usually very abstract and vague, e.g. “be the leader in industry X”, “be the best company doing X”, “making the best products/service in the field of Y”….and so on. That is if your company has a vision at all; most small companies never even formulate one. The really highlevel vision statements are clear on one side but also very vague on the other side. Take for example “be the leader in industry X”. The first question would be to make the word ‘leader’ more specific. Does that mean ‘highest number of products sold’, or ‘highest overall revenue’, or ‘most profitable’ or ‘most respected’ or perhaps all of these at the same time. Nonetheless, there can be a substantial difference between ‘highest product sales’ and ‘most profitable’. Then there is the question of who you compare yourself with. So who are your competitors? Then there is the question of what your ‘industry’ actually compasses…..My point is that such vision statements are problematic as they don’t really define the desired ‘vision state’ precisely enough for developing strategies.

There are usually 2 things that can happen: 1) the vision is refined before any strategies are formulated, or 2) management states the vision is ‘clear enough’ and strategies are demanded. You can guess the what problems may arise if the latter route is chosen. Basically you’d have to formulate a new vision statement anyway that is more useful because otherwise you will simply not be able to generate meaningful strategies. That’s brings is to the problem of clear vision statements.

If you know exactly what you want to achieve, formulated in a clear vision statement, you have already solved more than half of the puzzle. In a competitive market it is often quite hard to formulate a vision that is ‘good’. Just like with strategies there may be a whole set of potential ‘vision states’ that you could consider. But which one is the best for you company in terms of its business value, the people you have in your company, the knowledge and assets, the competitive advantage you may have and so on? Some of the vision states would be nice to be in but they may be utterly unreachable. Other vision states may be within reach but are business-wise not bringing the company anywhere significant. Companies that have very abstract vision statements or no statements at all really need help with their vision and not so much the strategy! A good vision is one that sets the company in a good business position and is both clear and specific at the same time. Naturally it will be hard to do that using only one sentence. Therefore good vision statements will use at least a paragraph to formulate!

In the next article we’ll take a look at how to build a vision….stay tuned!

What strategy is NOT:

• A strategy is not a number. Saying that your strategy is to have 10M EUR revenue is not a strategy. A revenue target is a ‘goal’. A strategy should say how to achieve it. But it is also not a ‘vision’ as it only expresses a financial target of the vision situation. And what a poor vision you have if you can only express it financially…
• A strategy is not a process description. Saying you will study the needs of your clients and make solutions based on what you know about their needs is a ‘process’ and not a strategy.

Here is what a strategy is:

• A strategy is a well thought-through plan. It describes how to go from the current situation to a desired situation, often called the ‘vision’.
• A strategy is grounded in a context of the company/product/service. A strategy is no accident and is created taking into account opportunities, innovations, business models, competititors and so on. Basically the regular stuff you look at when doing a SWOT analysis.
• A strategy is concrete and not vague. Behind the strategy is a rationale that makes the steps in the strategy logical. The steps are clear and should be understood by all stakeholders in the same way. Perhaps the rationale is the actually the most important part of the strategy as it will explain why you make the choices you made.
• A strategy is about making choices. It is about what you will do and what you will not do. Being clear about what you will NOT do is perhaps even more important than describing what you will do!

Bottom line of this: developing a good strategy can be pretty difficult! In a next article I will discuss the process of determining a strategy…..

The Service Design evangelists often cite success stories like Apple’s iPod and iTunes combination. This example is very appealing and it is really a good example of how to address user needs it a good way, leveraging both the power of products and the strengths of services. I really digg that. However, it surprised me that the number of success stories like this is fairly small. Even more interesting I find the failures such as Nokia’s N-Gage, which even had IDEO involved. It would be nice to have a list of successes and a list of failures to discover what really makes it work. So if you know of good examples of successes or failures, leave a comment on this article!

Successes in terms of user experience may be plenty, but do they also make sense from a business view? For example, how much profit (not revenue!) does the iTunes store actually make? It doesn’t even have to make a profit as long as the increased iPod sales make up for the loss. Judging by Apple’s annual report it seems to work out for them. But then consider Nike Plus. My guess is that they don’t make any money on it despite the large amount of users. I’d love to be wrong but I can’t find any numbers to proof me wrong….

For me the best thing about Service Design is that it brings attention to bringing value to the end-user. Ultimately that is what it is all about isn’t it? The funny thing is that it implies that Product Design does not bring enough value which of course isn’t entirely true either. In my view designers face the challenge of bringing the best possible value to the end-users, whether that is using a product or a service or both together. Perhaps we should call it ‘Value Design’?

Anyway, if you know of successes and failures in online service design, share the here!

So if we think about an application as a person, what kind of person would it be? Is it a rude person or a very gentle one? Is it a blunt person or very tactful person. Does it like me, or is it just doing what I asked? You may wonder why I ask all these questions. The main reason is that as a designer of an application we basically have the ability to determine what kind of ‘person’ the application will be and how it will behave.

Examples of application behavior

Let’s look at some examples and think about it in terms of behavior:

• An application that talks to me in capitalized text seems to be shouting to me. Not very nice behavior for most of us.
• An application that uses loud harsh sounds is not very subtle and can be perceived as rude, whereas applications that use swelling mild sounds can be perceived as gentle.
• An application that first lets me fill in a form and only when I press the ’submit’ button tells me I filled it in wrong is quite careless. It could have told me before and not let me submit things it knows are wrong anyway!
• Applications that tell me I made an error are patronizing. We people don’t make mistakes, but perhaps we misunderstood what the application was expecting to receive from me. Or perhaps there is an ‘issue’ the application wants me to deal with that I could not have known up front.
• Applications that throw windows promptly in my face are rough where as windows that fade onto the screen are far more graceful.
• Applications that require me to click on small things are intentionally trying to make me suffer whereas applications with pleasantly large buttons and links to click on care about me and take my own human limitations into account.
• An application that keeps on telling me about things I don’t understand such as error codes, format errors, compatibility issues is obviously more busy with itself rather than assisting me. A bit selfish perhaps?
• An application that keeps on telling me irrelevant stuff that don’t seem to impede normal usage is nagging.

Perhaps you are thinking I am exaggerating but then I urge you to look at the examples again and image it was a real person instead of an application doing these things. How would you feel then?

Application behavior and brand personality

When we design an application we usually want it to be a nice, useful and usable application that behaves well. Except perhaps for people who create viruses or other nasty applications. So as a designer we consciously want to control the way the application behaves. The application’s behavior is as good as the behavior the designer wanted it to have.

If you think about applications demonstrating a certain behavior, you could say they have a certain ‘personality’. It is a ‘designed’ behavior that is the result of the design and final impletation of the application’s user interface.  In the field of branding there is a the concept of ‘brand personality’. By ‘brand personality‘ we mean the set of human characteristics associated with a brand (Aaker 1997).  According to Aaker, the five core dimensions that make up the brand personality are:

• Sincerity (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, cheerful)
• Excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date)
• Competence (reliable, intelligent, successful)
• Sophistication (upper class, charming)
• Ruggedness (outdoorsy, tough)

According to brand theory every brand has a certain brand personality, although it is often not clearly defined. In all communications the brand values and the brand personality should be reflected. This is what makes branding much more than simply defining the company’s logo, typeface and colour palette. The brand personality and the resulting behavior should be consistently communicated. This leads to definitions of tone of voice, layout principles, photography standards and so on. But that is all about non-interactive behavior, it does not say anything about how the brand behaves when you have a dialogue with it, just like you could have a dialog with a person.

What we need for Interaction Design to be ‘on brand’ is to translate, or define, the brand behavior when having an interactive dialogue between end-user and the brand, mediated by the application’s user interface.

Designing application personality

If we want to carefully construct a personality into an application’s behavior we need to know which elements of application behavior determine the perception of a ‘personality’. Here is a start of a list of things that determine the perceived application persionality:

Presentation layer

• Speed of interaction. Applications that are swift in their actions create a positive perception and they emphasize that everything is well within the boundaries of the application’s capacities. Slow is not necessarily bad but needs to be accompanied by sufficient feedback about its doings. When applications are perceived as unnecessarily slow it communicates disrepect and self centeredness.
• Alerting. The fewer alerts an application gives, the more reliable or trustworthy it seems. Alerts should be given at the right time and not be in the way of normal function if they don’t have to be. Otherwise they are a source of irritation and cause a negative perception.
• Gesturing. Things that appear gracefully and sublte (e.g fade-in) create positive preceptions where as sudden appearances or unnecessarily complex appearances (e.g sliding and turning) which are blunt or exaggerated.
• Strong visuals. Something in a big red box signals very strongly but usually the issue is not that grave and a less strong visual is more appropriate. Using too strong signals is normally perceived as creating unnecessary panic, therefore negative perception.
• Continuity. Usually people prefer the application to communicates in a continuous fashion rather than in staccato, such as when it seems to ‘hang’. We don’t want our application to stutter. Stuttering suggests that it is incapable of handling the users request whereas continuity suggests perfect control and capability.
• Visual layout. Screens or windows fille with elements and no use of grids are perceived as ‘messy’ and communicate a lack of ‘effort’. Apprently other things were considered more important. When screen are open, with pleasant spacing and good use of whitespace, the applications shows good decent behavior with a feel for etiquette.

Interaction

• Errors. When errors are entirely avoided the application must be smart and understanding for it never needs to tell me I did something wrong. If it somehow must tell me there is a problem it can tell it politely and constructive or bluntly and disrespectful. Applications that don’t do this are more distant and will feel more ‘technical’.
• Giving input. Applications that ask for a lot of data often use forms. Forms may create a negative perception especially when it is not clear why all the data is necessary for the task. Therefore, an application that asks the minimum amount of data and that is really necessary for the task is perceived as modest, unobtrusive and ‘light’. When applications even help us fill in forms by autocompleting what we type, the application becomes helpful and intelligent.
• Clicking. When users interact they usualy have to click on something. If click targets are large they are easier to click on. Click targets that are placed next to where they belong to create a stronger mental model and make it easier to use. Application that don’t do this are annoying and require me to repeat my efforts. Hence they are perceived as unsympathic, nerdy or techy.
• Feedback. Every time users do something there should be feedback to tell users about its doings and when it is actually done. See also last month’s article. Applications that don’t tell users what it is doing are somewhat mysterious. When it doesn’t tell users it is finished it simply rude.  Applications that give proper feedback are friendly, polite, informative and clear.
• Task optimization. Some tasks are often performed that others and even with the task there are certain defaults that usually apply. Applications that make the basic tasks easy are clever and intelligent. In contrast applications that make basic things difficult cause irritation and communicate arrogance and disrespect.

Functionality

• Prioritization of functionality. Some applications want to show all their functionality at once, some try to hide everything and some strike a perfect balance. Functionality for regular tasks should be at hand while less often used functionality or collateral functionalty can be hidden at bit, but be available in case it is needed. Application that have the prioritization spot on are perceived as very insightful and clever, but applications that get it wrong are perceived as either ‘ridiculously complex’ or ‘overly puristic’.
• Amount of functionality. Some applications really want to offer every possible function you can think of to end-users. Most users will only use a subset and usually the 80/20 rule applies.  Applications that show only a clear subset demonstrate a focus, chosen with care and insight. When applications want to be everything to anyone, they loose credibility and show a lack of focus.

Content

• Tone of voice. Just as with offline communication, applications need a certain tone of voice. Online people tend to scan rather than read. Application that takes this into account communicate pleasantly and are usually quite concise. That that are lengthy and show a ‘wall of words’ communicate a lack of insight into the reader and its needs. They are perceived as formal and perhaps even distant.
• Data display. Displaying data is a precarious thing, Edward Tufte has gone through great lengths to tell us that. So applications that simply show rows of text are taking the easy route. But applications that show insightful graphs communicate information rather than just data. That shows dedication and interest in why you need the information/data. In addition what I can do with the data is important. If I can set filters, timelines,  or change the type of graph I give full control to the users and communicate a thorough understanding of their needs.

Take your position!

Now that we have identified some aspects of application behavior that influence the perception of ‘personality’ the only thing left to do for any brand is to choose a position on each of the elements and be consistent in its execution. Then designers can apply the position in their work and hence design applications that are ‘on brand’.

One thing that needs to be said is that if you compare all of the aspects above to generally preferred ‘good usability behavior’ you could argue that the space to differ is quite limited.  That is probably true, but I think that the consistent application of the position can really communicate a clear brand personality. Just think about how Apple takes a position that is quite different from Microsoft or SAP.

So what about the brand(s) you design for? Is the behavior of your application ‘on brand’?

It is just a simple function that any email application has, but what is so special about the way it has been implemented on the iPhone? You have to look at the details of the interaction to understand it.

In the old days when we didn’t have any fancy animation capabilities and every time you did something in an application it would go from the initial state (email not deleted) to the final ’state’ (email deleted) instantly. Well, in most cases the application would do nothing first for a while, although it was actually deleting the email, and then all of a sudden go to the final state. State transitions were only separated by a certain amount of time. By doing an action such as a keypress or a mouse-click the application would go from the initial state to the final state where the application has performed the task and is ready to receive a new command.

One reason this is suboptimal is that visual appearance of the final state is basically the only feedback the user gets on actions done in the initial state. And if the transition takes more than a couple of tenths of a second, the application seems slow to the user or may even seem to ‘hang’. In slightly more modern interfaces the user often receives some additional feedback, for example the fact that a pressed button comes back up after being pressed. Although it confirms that the user has pressed a button, there is usually no other feedback after that until the final state is reached.

A closer look

In the iPhone example I just showed you, way more is happening. All these small animation effects give us a clue about why this interaction feels good. Have a look at this slow motion version of the same interaction:

What happens is this sequence of events:

1. When the trash can is tapped, it lights up with a glow
2. The trash can opens step by step
3. The page wrinkles up and animates towards the trash can, the title of the next article already appears
4. The trash can closes step by step
5. The text of the new email appears with a quick fade in
6. The images are loaded and the network icon rotates
7. The final images appear
8. Done!

Pfffff, a lot of stuff, isn’t it. But is just takes under a second for most of the animation stuff the be completed. You may not notice at first but these subtle animation make all the difference.

Creating more feedback

The importance of feedback is long recognized in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but it is often understand as a ’singleton’ type of thing, i.e. an action of the user has only one feedback action by the system. For example, when deleting an item in Outlook it simply disappears and the next item is shown. The only other feedback comes from the affordances of buttons and other clickable items.

The main role of feedback is to let the user know what the application (or machine) is doing. Many established interaction guidelines contain at least one guideline that says that the user should always get immediate feedback of some sort. However, there is more to feedback than it may seem at first. It doesn’t have to be only the announcement that ‘everything it is done’, it can also be ‘received your order’ and ‘doing on the order’. I distinguish 5 states the application actually goes through after the user performs an action:

1. Received the order
2. Preparing the order
3. Doing the order
4. Finished the order
5. Ready for the next order

After the last state the initiative of interaction is again back to the user and the whole cycle can start again. It is like taking turns in a conversation. So instead of the old fashioned situation where we went from the initial state directly to the next state, there are now 5 sub-states in between them that the user can be made aware of.

Some of theses could be divided into multiple sub-states, e.g. ‘doing on the order’ can be shown as a percentage of completion, so that each percentage in effect becomes another sub-state. However, some states may not be very relevant to show because the time they consume is irrelevant, e.g. ‘preparing for the action’ may not always be very relevant and ‘done doing the order’ may be implied by only giving feedback on ‘you can give me the next order now’.

State glue

What Apple is doing in the iPhone is making all of the 5 sub-states explicitly visible by means of animation. Showing all 5 sub-states is what I call ’state glue’, the animations link the initial state gracefully to the final state in one fluid motion. Instead of going from the initial state directly to the final state, all of the intermediate states give feedback to the user about what the application is doing, how far is has progressed and whether it has completed the task. It leads to a very satisfying experience. It is this state glue that makes the user experience of the iPhone so much nicer than that of most other mobile phone interactions. The following table shows how the states have been applied:

1. Received the order:              button lights up with a glow and fades way when released
2. Preparing the order:            the trash can opens up
3. Doing the order:                     the email wrinkles up and moves into the trash can, trash can closes
4. Finished the order:               new email being loaded and network indicator spinning
5. Ready for the next order:   new email fully displayed

Using animation as state glue

The user somehow needs to be informed of the sub-states that the application is going through. The easiest way to create state glue is probably to give the user text messages about the stage the application is currently in. This is basically what progress windows, status bars or message windows do in user interfaces. It does the job perhaps but it is far from the most pleasing way to do it. Nowadays you often see animation being used to indicate the various states. You can see all kinds of special effects being applied in websites and Flash animations and also in devices such as the iPhone. It is not only used when deleting an email but it is applied throughout the entire interface. For example, when selecting an application from the main menu on the iPhone you can see this behavior:

1. Click on the icon
2. Interface shows animation zooming in on all icons into the ‘black’ background
3. The screen goes black for a brief period
4. The application menu and empty foreground fade in
5. The application foreground appears
6. Data is loaded
7. Data is faded in

The whole sequence takes just over a second or two to complete. If none of the states were communicated to the user it would be perceived as a terribly slow smart phone that seems to ‘hang’ from time to time. Many Nokia smartphones suffer from this nuisance. But with all the states being communicated by some animations and transition effects (zoom, fade) the users get a sense of ‘progress’ being made. Hence the iPhone is not perceived as slow anymore. The fact that effects such as zooming in and fading in are used gives it a very smooth feeling. The interaction is not blunt but it is graceful and smooth.

State glue makes things feel nicer

As you may have guessed by now, the insertion of state-glue and especially when combined with animation makes the overall user experience feel much nicer. It may actually slow down the whole interaction but this is well worth it. But we have seen before that slower interaction may sometimes be better. When there is feedback about all stages the application goes through people tend to feel that they know what is going on and they know exactly when it is their turn again to act. It also allows people to understand where the application fails if it doesn’t manage to move on to the next state. It helps users build a mental model of the applications workings.

In his new book Donald Norman re-emphases the importance of feedback in effective interaction with machines. He states that machines should behave predictable and understandable so that users can understand their state, their actions and what is about to happen. The more continuous and natural this is done the better. Apparently people have an inherent preference for machines to behave in that way.

I guess the iPhone example discussed is this article is a good example of how feedback is done properly and naturally. In normal wordings that is saying that it feels nice to interact with! In my opinion, state glue is one of the important factors in creating a good user experience. Especially when combined with animation it is very powerful and enhances interaction in a nice way.

Here are the two interfaces:

Let’s examine this case a bit further…

The iPhone solution

The iPhone uses a rotating wheel solution that we all know from using them in old fashioned cypher locks. In order to set the time you need to position the 3 wheels. If you have selected 24 hour system you don’t get the AM/PM wheel though. I did some timing tests with three of my colleagues that owned an iPhone. I gave them 10 alarm times to set and they needed on average 10.2 seconds to set an alarm. That is including the ‘add alarm’ function. The main reason I could see for this long task time is that you have to do several strokes to get to the right number and then set the one you need, and then do that twice. If you only need to put your alarm half an hour later than normal, the time can be shortened and if you are lucky you only need to use one wheel.

The Nokia solution

The Nokia solution is more straightforward. You simply type in the time using the keypad. The time it will take you is always exactly the same about of time since it is always 4 key presses. Well, nearly the same because of the keyboard layout. I ran a similar test with three other colleagues who were familiar with the Nokia interface. After setting the same 10 alarm times as the iPhone users, my colleagues only needed 6.7 seconds on average per alarm time. That is 3.5 seconds faster than on an iPhone. Actually the difference is even larger because the confirmation message is displayed for about 1.5 seconds and doesn’t allow you to enter the next time. That means the task completion time on the iPhone is about 50% slower! And that is a lot….

Usability versus User Experience?

Mathematically speaking the Nokia solution is far superior in task time completing. Nonetheless, the iPhone solution provides a nice User Experience and seems totally satisfactory for iPhone users. Nobody is complaining about the iPhone solution and they are even praising it! So can a better experience still outweigh a 50% slower task completion time?

According to ‘official’ definitions of usability task completion is an important factor but it is certainly not the only factor. Learnability, memorability, the number of errors made and the subjective satisfaction are other elements of usability. So is the ’subjective satisfaction’ what brings us to the User Experience part of setting an alarm? It seems so and it is tempting to conclude that task completion times can sometimes be sacrificed in order to improve the overall user experience.

When is slower better for the User Experience?

The difference in task completion times in this example is huge but the task is very simple and you don’t need to do it many times a day, sometimes not even in weeks if you always want to wake up at the same time. My explanation is that in this case the following aspects make it ok to sacrifice task completion time:

• The task is very infrequent, perhaps not even once a day or once a week.
• The total task time is still relatively short and differences in short task completion times do not matter much if they are not frequent.
• Users tend to appreciate fun more than efficiency for short infrequent tasks.

This leads us to the even more interesting question: when does the balance tip over to task completion time again? Probably when the task is more frequent but how frequent should it be exactly? I don’t know. Perhaps somebody should do more testing?

One very interesting feature that was delivered in the latest firmware update for the PS3 is the ability to play DivX movies. Great! Now I don’t have to re-code all my movies to MP4 anymore, since that was the only format it would play up until now. So now I can happily use the PS3 to what all my movies on my television. A media center should aways provide support for the most common formats per media type. I never understood why Sony only supported MP4 which is not very common yet. Nonetheless, even with DivX support there is still a lot of other stuff to improve in order to make the user experience really good. Here’s a couple of them.

Managing content

In order to get a movie or any other type of media item on the PS3 you have basically three options:

1. Burn the file on a DVD and copy if from the DVD to the local harddrive.
2. Copy it onto a Flash memory card/stick and copy it from there.
3. Put the file on your own web server and download it from there using the PS3’s web browser.
4. Install a UPnP server on your computer and stream (or copy) it using the ‘Media Server’ function.

Now, option 1 will waste a DVD, option 2 is a hassle and option 3 requires you to be a nerd. Option 4 is by far the easiest one except for the fact that you first have to install a UPnP server that works well with the PS3 (e.g. MediaLink or TVersity). Once installed, you’ll simply see your files appear under the ‘Media Server’ link automatically. Voila, zero interaction required!

Why is there no standard easy way to get media files on the PS3? A very important element of the success of the iPod is the fact that it is so easy to manage your collection of songs and get them on the iPod. Apple treats the Apple TV in the same way it treats the iPod and hence getting files on the Apple TV is really easy. Why doesn’t Sony distribute a very simple application that allows you to manage your media and send files to the PS3? I think most people will not be able to put files on the PS3 unless Sony supplies a simple media management application. Simply say which files and folders should be synced to the PS3 and hit the sync button. And while you’re at it Sony, please include a free UPnP server for all our streaming needs!

Subtitles

Anyone who watches movies a lot knows that subtitles are very important. Yet, you can guess by now, the PS3 doesn’t support subtitles at all! We Europeans love to watch a Spanish, German, Italian or even Russian movies but we really need the subtitles to understand the movies. There are several simple subtitle formats out there such .srt or .sub which any decent PC media player will play nowadays. But the PS3 won’t play any of them and therefore I can only whatch movies on my PS3 that I can understand well without subtitles, basically just Dutch and English movies in my case. I guess we’ll have to wait for another firmware update from Sony…

‘Skimming’

An other thing the PS3 is lacking is skimming. I am not sure ’skimming’ is the right word but what I mean is the ability to step through an entire 2 hour movie in just a couple of key presses. The Apple TV does this when you use the left or right arrow buttons. It skips about 10% of the entire movie with each click. So if you want to go to a specific spot in the movie, you can get near to the point in just a few clicks and then fast forward to the exact position. The PS3 does not offer such functionality so the only thing you can do is simply fast forward all the way to the desired position.What makes this even worse is that fast forwarding just doesn’t work when streaming a movie from a media server. UPnP is not supporting this very well. Again, on the Apple TV it works like a charm when streaming movies from iTunes!

So although my media experience has improved now that I can play my DivX movies and I have a good UPnP for my mac, there are still some aspects to be approved. Let’s see what the upcoming PS3 updates will bring us!