Online resource about consumer product usability:Nokia's Take on Participatory Design: BetaLabs and OpenStudio
On the Nokia BetaLabs website users can download, try, and comment on a beta release of applications that Nokia developers are currently working on. The site seems to hit the mark. The SportsTacker application was wildly popular, users provided tons of suggestions, and gave the developers the insight that the device could be used way beyond it's original intention.
Eventually more than 1 million people downloaded the program and used it for sports the developers never dreamed of, such as paragliding, hot-air ballooning, and motorcycle riding. More importantly, the users avidly provided criticism that Nokia then used to make improvementsThe BetaLabs site also features a blog to in turn respond to user feedback. Currently it's written by one person, Tommi Vilkamo, manager of Beta Labs. However, Vilkamo is planning to turn the blog over to software developers themselves, so they have direct contact with customers. "Before, there were too many middlemen between developers and users," he says. Hear, hear.
Read the full article at BusinessWeek: How Nokia Users Drive Innovation.
[via Core77]
2 reactions:
It’s a start, but seems more about market research than usability (what people want, rather than what works well). The dream phone designs are creative but they tell you more about the concerns users have in life than what kind of phone would actually work for them. For usability, suggestions from users are most valuable when they are the beginning of a conversation.
True, the dreamphone designs in itself are not sufficient to make a usable product. That would require stuff like field studies to study actual user behaviour, early exploration and testing of interaction concepts, lab usability tests to test dialogues etc. However, I do think that making a usable product should start by exploring what the functionality is that users would like and need in the product. And that's partly related to marketing, as people buy products based on feature sets, but what functionality a product has also to a large part determines the quality of interaction. Trying to cater to a target group like (say for instance) seniors with a phone that was meant for businessmen is not only foolish from a marketing point of view, it will probably also lead to a group of very confused users. But I agree it's not sufficient to make something usable. And in that sense: yes, studies like these are 'the beginning of a conversation'.
Post a Comment