…but that’s all.
by Andrew CrowDavid Haskin wrote a piece for ComputerWorld entitled “iPhones trickle into the enterprise”. One of the best quotes from the article comes from a CIO:
“I have nothing against iPhone. It’s great,” says Manjit Singh, CIO at Chiquita Brands International Inc. “But we’re a BlackBerry shop, and I don’t think iPhone brings anything new to the table. It has a great user experience, but that’s all.”
I’m not sure what to say about that last bit except that is summarizes the frustrations that product and experience designers face. Features, ecosystem, support, UI and industrial design all add up to the experience that you’re producing.
To be fair, Singh seems to be implying that for their sales force, the Blackberry handles their needs better. But, his words have been echoed by others when comparing simple, focused products to those with lots of bells and whistles. This quantity over quality argument can keep products from having the focus they need to stand out, solve user needs and ultimately be successful.
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June 8th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Our company (www.foviance.com) have both iphone and Blackberry users amongst our staff and it is fair to say that whilst the Blackberry users don’t feel as ‘cool’ as the iphone users they are just as happy with the usability of the device. For sure the iphone has some really nice features but they are different really nice features to those that the Blackberry has. For example the usability of the address book integration with the phone dialer is excellent.
I think if there is one thing that the introduction of the iphone has proven, as the Razor did before, being an anything ’shop’ is a little naive as technology moves faster than any of us.
June 8th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Paul, I totally understand that Blackberry users are loyal to their devices and find that its experience fits their needs perfectly. Though I’ve tried to be a Blackberry user in the past, it didn’t solve the problems I was looking to have solved.
One of the points I was trying to make with the original post was that great user experience is often considered a nice-to-have or something that is tacked on later perhaps by making a slick UI. Many product designers fail to realize that the user experience is an actual feature and one of the most important ones you can build into a product.
The quote above seemed to downplay the product experience in search of newer and more features.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
This is not restricted to iPhone versus blackberry. The world of enterprise software/product design is ( and I suspect, will) always remain torn between the new and the traditional. Its extremely hard to bring in any sort of “radical” changes into the enterprise world ( even tabbed browsing with Firefox can be considered radical in many cases!).
The quote reflects the attitude of the enterprise toward user experience in general. Breaking rules and shifting paradigms doesn’t seem to impress most folks in this world. At the same time, not using the latest phenomenons ( social networks,tag clouds, the works!) in the design is also considered negative. So, these users pose an extremely challenging situation for the UX designers, who need to balance the old with the new in a very smart way in order to sell their designs.And it is this tricky balancing act, that sometimes reduces the role of the designer into the guy who “makes it look better”.
June 9th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
The quote doesn’t make sense to me. From what I understand, he is saying iPhone and Blackberry are equal, except that iPhone has a ‘great user experience.’ Well then that means they are not equal. In fact the user experience, to me, is on the top of the list when comparing or using technology. How can user experience be so under valued? It would be interesting to hear the CIO’s definition of user experience. Perhaps we are talking about different things.
June 12th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Perhaps it’s a difference between a task-based and an experience-based point of view. They can both accomplish the same tasks (thus equal). But the iPhone experience is better. Maybe as designers we need to realize that some people aren’t as wrapped up in the experience as we are.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:04 am
What I find interesting about this is that there seems to be an underlying assumption that ‘experience’ is a functional, tangible thing and that by virtue of performance one experience should triumph over another.
But my gut feeling about the comment “we’re a BlackBerry shop” is that it does not rest purely in concerns based on performance and features, but on brand. Blackberry’s brand is centered around business usage, the iPhone brand is not. That is not to say that the iPod cannot be considered by some as a tool for business, but there is a natural, and emotional barrier for businesses users to overcome before they will consider the iPhone.
I’m reminded of a rant I overheard recently delivered by an IT manager who was deeply upset about the rise in the number MacBook Pros he was having to supply to people outside of the design team. It went something like “Why do they need Mac laptops? It’s like giving people Porsche as company cars”. I would surmise that in the IT manager’s mind the Mac brand represents luxury rather than business value, I would also guess that he was concerned about an extra overhead in terms of all of the Mac IT issues that he is less well equipped to support. Similarly, I believe that many of the consultants he supports would prefer to walk into a business meeting armed with an IBM Thinkpad, rather than a Mac, purely to meet an emotional desire to appear business like.
When we’re designing experience I think it is important to remember something that marketeers have known and traded on for years: if you want people to buy into a product, it’s as much about packing, and taking care of the emotional aspects of the experience, as it is the function and the features of a product.