I overheard the following two conversations while traveling on the train. Now, I don't regard them as proving anything, but they are pretty illustrative of some notions I've had for a while. The first one was among a group of middle-aged women who were returning from a shopping spree in Amsterdam:

"Your battery's out? Here you can borrow my phone."
- "I don't know how to work your phone."
"It's a Nokia, you should be able to figure it out."
- "Not every Nokia's the same you know."
"Yes, that's true..."

This struck me, because ten years ago people were saying the exact opposite: "If you know how to operate one Nokia, you know how to work all of them." I had the impression that that was no longer the case with the huge portfolio and array of different user interface concepts Nokia currently has, but I was kind of surprised at 'regular users' expressing this idea.

The second conversation I eavesdropped on was among four tentysomethings, one of which was complaining about her previous mobile phone:

"So previously I had this Samsung, with one of these little touch menu-thingies at the top. And every time I tried doing something I would accidentally touch this menu thing and it would start doing something else. It drove me nuts, really. Finally a while ago it broke down. It just died. I brought it to the shop to be repaired and they told me it needed a new mainboard. That would cost me 240 euro. I was like: "Byeeee!" and I bought this thing, which cost me 50 euro. No way I'm buying a Samsung again."

For me, this conversation supports the notion that even though the usability of a product was so poor as to drive the user nuts, she did not return it or complained. But when buying a new phone, her repurchase intent for Samsung had diminished somewhat. Usability is a long-term thing.