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The End of the Tunnel
personal
March 20, 2004, 11:50 AM
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Moving Outside the Device
design, systems
March 19, 2004, 03:31 PM
I've been the proud owner of an Apple iPod for a while now. Although I'm happy with my purchase, I do have some issues with the little device. These issues can be summed up in a sentence: it doesn't really talk to any of my other devices. Not that its alone. My devices in general are a rather antisocial bunch.
I generally listen to my iPod on my walk to and from work. When I get home, I remove it from my pocket and plug it into the computer to recharge the batteries. Assuming I haven't pushed "pause", why not have the song I was listening to immediately start up in iTunes? I generally want to at least finish listening to the song that was currently playing when I arrived home. But my iPod only talks to my computer to synchronize my music collection. Which is wonderful functionality, but since they're talking to each other already, why not go a little bit further?
Likewise, when I get into my car I often want to listen to my music collection; I have a cd player but choosing and transporting all those little plastic discs is a pain. Since my whole collection is on my iPod, why not provide a car radio that I can slip the device into (Kenneth calls this the "iPod ker-chunk slot") so that bringing my music with me is dead simple?
This is what distinguishes experience design from product design; experience designers consider the interfaces and interactions that appear throughout the whole system the customer is a part of. It's not enough to create products that provide point solutions but don't integrate with the rest of the customer's world; the smart consumer wants his problems solved by his purchases, and these problems span his interaction with any particular device.
The good news is that I think Apple, at least, gets this philosophy. It remains to be seen where they'll go with it, and who will follow.
Posted by Kenneth on March 19, 2004 at 03:47 PM
The only problem with this post is that you never actually use your car. :-)
Posted by Sarah on March 20, 2004 at 03:27 PM
The iPod car stereo is coming this summer.
http://www.vwvortex.com/artman/publish/industry_news/article_650.shtml
Jesse showed us this in a project meeting recently. You will be able to control your iPod music through the console car stereo display.
Posted by Dave on March 21, 2004 at 11:24 AM
Actually a bunch of people do that Im all cool
car mod and hack their car to pieces getting the iPod to install:
- Audi
- GTI
- General Enthusiests site (I dig the center console version)
As far as the I'm lazy and want to plug in my iPod now instead of finishing listening to the song
issue. The iPod has the ability to do what you are asking for with the audible books that they sell through iTMS (i.e., iTunes will start reading the book from where you left off on your iPod when you sync). I don't know why they don't have that enabled for regular songs. Maybe you should submit a RFE.
P.S. - You should enable attributes on the comment HTML. I can't add title to my abbr tags!! :-p (So whats the point....)
Posted by Jed Wood on March 25, 2004 at 10:02 AM
Last summer I did a user research internship for Palm, and we ran into this over and over. The crazy workarounds that people had set up to allow access to "their stuff" from multiple locations were pretty incredible.
My big request is to have an incoming mobile phone call auto-pause an iPod, and resume upon hanging up- just as iChat AV and iTunes currently work. Obviously that'd be tricky for Apple, but seems much more doable for integrated devices like the higher-end Palms.
Posted by Rob on March 30, 2004 at 10:27 AM
Good point, Jed; the mobile phone thing is another connection I've always wanted to see happen. I wonder what the best way to realize these sorts of "holistic experience designs" would be. Should multiple companies make devices that are capable of interconnecting through standard ports? Should one company design and build all the products that make up the experience (this has classically been Apple's approach)? There are advantages and disadvantages for both these routes.
Maybe I'll think about that one some more and post about it separately.
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Feline-Centered Design
design, funny
March 15, 2004, 06:37 PM
Tycho from Penny Arcade has a rant up today about the failings of his automatic cat litter box. One of his complaints is that the box doesn't even appear to have been designed to fit a normal-sized house cat. It's interesting to hear a customer's perspective on why it's important to user test your products, even when some of your user population isn't human...
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Sorting Environments
design, usability
March 14, 2004, 09:28 PM
My friend Jeff Howard was showing me a research project he'd been working on for his miLife project a couple weeks ago, and now he's posted about it. He's basically conducting a card sorting exercise, except the cards contain pictures of various kinds of environments like conferences halls, bus interiors, scenic natural vistas, etc. His team is asking users to arrange the cards along a continuum of which environments they feel more or less mobile in. I believe they're also asking users to arrange the environments along another continuum of how remotely connected to others they feel and how connected they wish to feel. Note that Jeff's online prototype doesn't work as well due to the small size of the cards; the actual physical cards are larger.
It's an interesting spin on the typical card sorting procedure; the pictures may evoke a more emotional response from users which is more appropriate for this particular study than the short words used in navigation hierarchy studies. It also helps give the users more context than a typical interview question such as "name five places you feel mobile in" would, while avoiding the cost of having to find users actually sitting around in all these environments.
Email Rob:
Email Rob: