Subscribe
RSS news feed
Add to Technorati FavoritesRecent Posts
- Cuil bursts onto the semantic search scene
- iPhone 3G, and Mozilla show user adoption to new levels of Power
- A Business Model or Architecture for Web 2.0
- Innovation Brief
- Socio-Technical Systems not IT Systems (‘The Dreyfus Moment’)
- Business Technology not Information Technology
- Exciting IT? Come to the Dark Side.
- ASAP is dead! Long live ASAP!
- New Web 2.0 services; Data Portability
- Innovation Brief
Navigate
Search the blog
« iPhone: did we hear a monkey there? | Main | Consumer Power »
The ‘chase of the face’ – the Rich Interfaces of Web 2.0
Do you read the instruction manual for anything these days? Chances are the answer is no, certainly true in my case, when I am only prepared to consult the manual occasionally to find some particularly obscure but desirable feature. On the other hand my late father, also an engineer, would patiently read every page of a manual before he touched the product. Why the change in a generation? More importantly, why does it matter?
My dad only had the occasional ‘appliance’, in his case a video recorder, or a television, and came from a generation where care was needed to operate correctly or damage would result. At the scale of the number of appliances he possessed, times the number of functions on each, very low, it was quite feasible to learn by heart the unique operating instructions for each. My sons on the other hand come from a generation where they are surrounded by countless, and ever changing, ‘devices’, covering everything from a PC, to a Smart Phone, and countless other devices. Every one of which is loaded with functionality to a point that much of it is never used; however just like advertising, where the problem is that 50% is wasted, but no one can tell which 50%; the manufacturer never knows which features each person will choose to use.
In short we know we can’t learn the thick manual so we expect the features to be presented in such a way that we can intuitively, and instantly, get the basic use from the device. Our patience is low and if we can’t get along with them, we throw them out and buy new. Now at one level this may seem to be good for the market to make for more sales, but actually I am not so sure that it is working that way right now, and more importantly think increasingly it will not work that way.
Let’s go back to phones, one of the major Mobile Telecommunications companies operates a scheme that allows you to try a new cell phone for 30 days, if not satisfied then you can return it, and swap for an alternative model. One of their people told me that people who replace a phone with a later model from the same manufacturer rarely come back for a swap. Changing from one manufacturer to another manufacturer, and there is a high exchange rate, and guess what? Yup they go back to a phone model from the original manufacturer.
So the lesson seems to be that we learn a particular user interface, it becomes instinctive, and we are not so keen to relearn a new one, but we can accept and adapt to more features added onto the existing interface. In short it’s a great example of brand lock, and the best way to sell more is to introduce more features to encourage existing users to upgrade. It’s a pretty good argument to explain why Microsoft, with its familiar Windows interface, eventually triumphed in business smart phones, while existing market leaders with high penetration of the general market have found it less easy.
Now lets compare this to another trend, that an increasing number of people have better systems at home than at work, make more choices on what they choose to load on them, and use, from the Internet. What choices will they make for the home user interface? What are they using more and more to guide them around this increasingly complex world? How does this relate to the way they are choosing to use content, communicate with people etc? How will they start to behave in work? And if I look round my colleagues I can see more and more demanding at least some degree of user rights on their PCs, and in the case of Smart Phones they want, and get, choice in which phone the company will supply them with.
It all makes me very thoughtful about the way rich interfaces are developing in Web 2.0 and the longer term impact on the business systems. Will people expect the same freedom to choose what interface they work through? What has happened in the cell phone industry around user interfaces would suggest this is a distinct possibility. If you change the user interface then it would seem likely you will change the way that the user works, and so on. Try thinking about what you and the family did on a PC over Christmas and what were the most used interfaces for those activities?
Posted by Andy Mulholland on January 15, 2007 | 
Digg this | 
Seed Newsvine
TrackBacks
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.capgemini.com/cgi-bin/blog/mt-tb.cgi/99
Comments
# on January 15, 2007 10:14 AM, Joost van der Waa said:
Good thoughts. Interesting what will happen when users are confronted with the new look and feel of Office 2007.
Three options: people find it easier and they will embrace the product (look what happens with Google and Apple products), or people will hate it and switch to an alternative like Open Office (which looks rather like the current MS-Office), or (and that is the most likely thing to happen), people will be forced to use the company standard. Guess who will be happy in the end.
# on January 15, 2007 11:42 AM, Waldo Smeets said:
I actually think this is exactly the problem of the current interfaces; whether it's on the phone, web applications or your desktop. Too often the interfaces are defined and restricted by the technology provider.
My girlfriend actually got a Windows Mobile enabled phone before the weekend and indeed; the phone looks and feels like a windows machine. I wonder whether it's the appropriate approach though. Somehow a Start menu just feels completely wrong on a phone; it doesn't appropriately use the available screen pixels. Yes, it was familiar to her, but not intuitive neither a great user experience.
We've still got a long way to go with this. The way I work with my phone interface is completely different then my girlfriends, the way a teen works with a IPTV is different then the way my grandma would. Even the way I use my phone in the dark is differently then how I use it during the day. So why just a single interface for a device????
Instead of just using something existing (from a UI point of view) doesn't mean users will immediately adapt your interface. If it doesn't support the desired task in the most optimal way, there is a big chance something else will be better.
Especially in the Web 2.0 times we need more Design Led Innovation, but for consumers as well as enterprises.
# on January 15, 2007 8:46 PM, Bhaskar said:
Nice thoughts.!!
# on January 18, 2007 1:44 AM, ayyaz said:
User Interface for each man made device evolves. At some point in that evolution features change irrespective of consumers attachment with those non-intuitive features! Very rarely, a product is design intuitively, someone with some decision making power likes a UI without the knowledge of how well (or badly) it will be received by the end users. Similarly, from Web 2.0 perspective, vast number of decision makers will give a go ahead to, for example, Ajax powered UI just because of its looks or sake of it!
# on January 19, 2007 9:55 AM, andy mulholland said:
Its interesting how much we all care about the way the interface works, and i guess it will be interesting to see what Apple have done with the i Phone. I wonder if the next stage beyond the MashUp which is the way we individually want to see the 'content' we will see an ability to make a MashUp of a user interface becoming the next frontier. Seems somewhat inevitable to me as with the growing functionality and range of devices it will otherwise become too difficult to cope
andy
# on February 1, 2007 10:58 AM, Tarun Chandel said:
Usability and Design are the two most researched topics and still people are not confident about what a good design is?
You made a good point that we get used to certain way of using things and we don't like to change. But the other reality is that along the way comes a product which is far better and simpler to use and we all hop on to it like crazy. Take for example Google, a simple, clean UI and it has changed the face of web, which used to be cluttered to every pixel. Look at Google Ads, non intrusive, simple and making more money than any other type of ads. Take for example ipod, simple dial and a plain smooth body.
The problem with this kind of UI is that not everyone webpage and product can have it and not everyone is from the same school of thought. The better UI is that which can be costumised for every user. Where a user can decide what he wants where. Take for example Google's Personalised page, Pageflakes. Something like Greasemonkey which takes it all to next level, where a user decides how a page will look like.
# on February 3, 2007 7:33 PM, andy mulholland said:
Some interesting comments here and the introduction of Greasemonkey brings in another thread that has been in my mind for some time. Will our interest and focus shift to the tools by which we define what we want to see and how in the future as opposed to accepting the predefined user interface in the manner of the original post?
i reckon it will move that way but not sure how long it will take or what might be the immediate drivers
andy
# on February 7, 2007 6:49 AM, Tarun Chandel said:
I think, like any any other change, this will also take it's own time. For any change to take place and people to use, there is a need of a "Catalyst of Change". Take Ajax for example, a mesh up of JS, XML/JSON, XHTML etc. these technologies were always there and some companies were already using them. Microsoft came up with the first draft of it much before it hogged up the limelight, but they scrapped it as it was of no use to them.
It was much later even after the launch of Gmail and GMaps, that Jesse James Garrett came up with this term Ajax and that too just to woo the top management. If he would have used tems like JS and XHTML in his presentation he would have never got the approval for the project. To cut the long story short, he coined Ajax and suddenly the whole world woke up to this cool tech. The term was the catalyst of change, which made people (those who play safe) use this technology meshup.
There are people who live on the bleeding edge of technology for them anything out of lab is a must try, but to make everyone else use the technology takes time, takes a catalyst of change.
Greasemonkey is also nascent but a powerful shift in the way we will interface with web.