“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein

Trend Radar 2008: Device Usability

Thursday, January 3, 2008 | 1 comment

Legend has it that John Rubinstein, father of the iPod, left Apple last year because he and Steve Jobs could not agree on one fundamental usability element for the iPhone. Rubinstein wanted the iPhone to have a keyboard. Jobs didn’t.

While the iPhone has broken many records in achieving better usability, the lack of a keyboard still remains a problem. The product works better as a media player, phone and “read” device, and not so well as a “read/write device”, which computers have traditionally been.

In 2008, we can expect that device vendors would be experimenting further with various elements of usability challenges that stem from extreme miniaturization.

And that would not only be for the smartphone family of devices, but hopefully other, still somewhat clunky devices like the GPS. Today, software usability in even the top range of the GPS products are still pretty poor.

For the Convergence Device Movement to continue marching forward, a key factor will continue to be simplication of the user interface.

Apple is leading the way. But other device vendors also need to come with their own breakthrough ideas.

This segment is part 2 in a 13 part series Miniaturization →
Jump to part: The Convergence Device Movement, Device Usability, Miniaturization, Simplicity in Design, SaaS in the Enterprise, SaaS in SME, SaaS Impact on IT Infrastructure, Offshoring, Verticalization Everywhere, Emerging Markets, Turnarounds, Edutainment, Financing, Roll-Ups, and Acquisitions