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EETimes: iPhone success? "It's the User Experience, Stupid"
10 comments- TAGS:Apple, barcelona, iPhone, mobile world conference, user experience
- IT TOPICS:Hardware, Macintosh & Apple, Mobile & Wireless, Personal Technology
The EETimes is covering the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and in particular one focus group that is trying to figure out why the best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc. - the iPhone.
Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for Adobe, cited a study showing that 77 percent of iPhone purchasers described themselves as "very satisfied" with their user experience.
In an ominous note for mobile operators, the iPhone respondents credited their happy experience not to AT&T, the channel through which iPhone services were delivered in the U.S, but to Apple, the device maker.
The panel, whose title was It's the User Experience, Stupid agreed that iPhone represents a model for mobile operators to follow, but they reached little agreement on how to follow.
One direction, advocated by Lucia Predolin, international marketing and communications director for Buongirono S.p.A. of Milan, Italy, is to manipulate users by identifying their "need states" — including such compulsions as "killing time," and "making the most of it" — and fulfilling them subliminally.
Adobe's Murarka proposed a more technological approach to improving the user experience, satisfying the mobile phone subscriber through better interface design. Sarah Lipman, co-founder and R&D director for Power2B, suggested an almost mystical solution, somehow tapping into users' "neural networks" to navigate a mobile phone interface "using touch and pre-touch input."
The responses are almost laughable. The obvious answer that no one wants to articulate but statistically is being shoved in everyone's face is: customers want less carrier intervention, fewer "services" from carriers and easier access to Internet content. In fact, from a consumer standpoint, the carrier should be all but invisible. Of course, the panelists representing the phone industry don't want to bring this information home to their employers.
The trend in the marketplace has always had carriers trying to move up the value chain with additional service offerings. Very few have succeeded. One particular victory has been Danger/Tmobile's Sidekick. However, most of these offerings tend to infururiate the customers rather than create value.
From personal experience, I can say that the number one reason for me leaving the Vodafone Nokia N95 was all of the "services" that Vodafone stuck on there. Vodafone Radio, TV, "enhanced" webpages, etc. None of them were at all useful, they all snuck money out of my pocket and they were all impossible to remove. I actually went through the steps of unlocking the Nokia N95 from Vodafone solely to remove its "services" but stayed on its network.
This current model reminds me of AOL's in the late 1990's. Most people wanted AOL to get out of the way so they could just get on the Internet. AOL wanted to monetize its own content and tried to enforce a walled garden - but in the end, failed to do so. It is now mostly just an ISP like everyone else.
Panelists cautiously agreed that the current user experience — at least compared to the iPhone — is not very good. Predolin said that one problem is that many people are reluctant to tap the vast potential of mobile communications — especially the mobile Internet — because they fear the eventual cost. With so many telecom companies advertising heavily the cost of their services per minute, users hesitate to explore possibilities that might devour their precious minutes.
Predolin said that this deadline consciousness is so strong among mobile users that they even constrained their consumption of minutes in a Buongiorno-sponsored trial in which participants were given mobile phones free for a week. "Operators are putting together cost plans that people can't understand," said Predolin. "It is not just cost but the way you market your cost."
This translates to fewer plans, simplified billing, no hidden charges etc. When you sign up for an iPhone, you see AT&T a few times in the iTunes setup and then hopefully, you don't see them again until your monthly bill comes along. One price for unlimited data, no catches - except international roaming. Even international rate plans have been simplified somewhat.
This is exactly what I want. I don't have to think about data usage and I know exactly what my bill is going to look like at the end of every month.
Somehow, Apple convinced its telecom partners to get out of the way. It took over the experience and simplified it down to the basics. By removing the telecom from the equation, Apple increased the level of its customer satifaction.
The message that the telecommunications companies must take away from the success of the iPhone is that they should stay out of the user experience as much as possible. At the end of the day, the core competency of the wireless carriers is to deliver data (and voice) communications, efficiently, reliably and hopefully simply.
Everything else is just interference.
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