What’s wrong with this picture (set)?

Image 1

Image 2

I noticed a small issue with eBay’s picture uploader.  Can you see it?  Icons are controls.  Controls should do what they indicate in the manner that they indicate.  So if your control indicates that it will rotate a picture counter-clockwise, it should do that.

This is a tiny issue, sure, but it confused me for a few seconds when I was listing my previous phone.  And these little confusions add up to a customer experience that’s not as great as it could be.  If you want to put out a great product, you need to get fanatical about the little things.

Dealing with Unexpected Barriers

When purchasing decisions involve heterodox interests, sales difficulties increase exponentially. A perfect example is enterprise Gmail. Gmail is undeniably a better-designed email product than most companies use, but Google butted up against unanticipated resistance when selling Gmail to enterprises. It turns out that enterprise purchasing decisions are far more complex than a single users.

The IT guy at my work and I talk often about what it would take to move our firm from Lotus to Gmail (consensus: an act of god). He pointed me to this article from CIO: Why Enterprises Are Moving to Google Apps, Gmail. Here’s what I found most interesting:

Perhaps most significantly, at a Google Apps CIO roundtable event in San Francisco this week, Google announced that enterprise users of Google Apps could access Gmail through an Outlook client. The company hopes it will quell the protests by users who have become tethered to the desktop app and who, as a result, have sometimes hindered enterprise adoption of Google Apps.

“For me, it eliminates the last hurdle or mindset for letting go of [Microsoft] Exchange or the Exchange mentality,” said Bob Rudy, vice president and CIO of Avago, a semiconductor company that moved its employees over to Google Apps, during the event. “This will help with adoption.”

It turns out that people don’t necessarily want better email (at least not in the sense that Google initially thought).  Sometimes they just want a better version of their current user experience. Sometimes they even want something you never even imagined could be important.  From the consistently excellent IgnoretheCode (aka, Lukas Mathis):

If your users reject an improved user interface, you need to start out by figuring out exactly what motivates them to prefer the more complex solution.

Of course, there’s more at issue here than UI, but the general point remains. When people reject an objectively better solution (at least in your eyes), you better find out why.

Use cases for the iPad (so far)

From Engadget:

New screenshots make the iPad seem less like a giant iPhone

I’m not ordering a first-gen iPad, but that’s not really a relevant data point (my dad and my fiancee have both already placed their orders, so it’s not like I won’t be using it).  That said, I’ve been noodling on what the possible use cases are for the device:

• Frequent Traveler
  Frequent traveler with no need for heavy-duty business computing (e.g., modeling), but wants access to their digital media on the go.  Easy to toss in a bag and go.  Usage breaks out by travel scenario:
  
  1. Waiting for the plane - music, games, news (if 3G)
  2. On the plane - music, reading (Kindle app)
  3. At the hotel - email, news
• Connected home - Entertainment
  Device lives on the coffee table in a tv room, waiting for use.
  
  1. All-home remote - in the connected home, this thing could be the greatest universal remote ever (music, movies, lighting, etc.)
  2. E-reader - it’s every coffee table book (and novel) in one
  3. Quick access internet - need to settle an argument? Look it up without dealing with a full-blown computing experience (or a mini screen)

• Connected home - Organization
  Device lives on the kitchen island.
  
  1. Organization - scheduling, grocery lists, reminders, tasks
  2. Entertainment - music (through networked speakers
  3. E-reader - morning paper?
  4. Quick access internet - see above

• The “Why Not” Purchaser
  Purchased by someone with cash to burn as they walk by the Apple store.  No use case in mind.  Just seems like something cool.

So really we’ve got three use cases and a purchasing motivation.  Focusing on the use cases, two themes emerge:

1. A good indicator of usage is where the device “lives”
2. The device just might be the digital equivalent to a summer home

As to point 1, I imagine the need to let the iPad “live” in a common area (rather than in a charging dock next to a wall) is why SJ was so adamant about the 10 hour battery life and the ability to hold a charge. People are fundamentally lazy—if the iPad isn’t sitting in front of them at all times, they’re not going to use it enough to develop a bond.

Regarding point 2, I don’t see anyone buying the iPad as their main (or only) networked digital device.  That’s not to say the thing won’t be a roaring success—at the moment, the pre-order figures are outstanding—that’s just to say that the device, even if it lives up to the hype, probably won’t change the world so much as it will change the computing usage of many affluent people.

And all that is fine.  The iPad doesn’t have to change the world to be successful.  So long as the software reflects its hardware, I’ll be satisfied.  You rarely see Apple try to cram a usage into the wrong hardware.  The iPad is neither a mouse-and-keyboard-driven laptop nor a pocketable phone/connectivity device, and I expect the OS to reflect that.

I’m excited.