Mobile Monday – Zurich 2 March 2008


Mobile Monday, an occasional evening for people interested in design and usability in the mobile phone industry, was held in Zurich on Monday 2 March.

I was asked by the sponsors HP and Swisscom to address the audience and chose as my title “I’ve never used that”.

On my first day at Orange marketing executive Richard Brennan pointed out that research showed that 90% of people used just 10% of the available functionality in a mobile phone. That research came just as Orange were launching the infamous SPV Microsoft phone, which heralded the start of the open platform race between Symbian, Microsoft and now Google Android to create a platform for applications and tools that would transform the phone from a communication device to a data munching pocket PC.

Up until last year though, the promised avalanche of customer demand for mobile internet and applications did not occur. After 5 years of mobile internet enabled phones, US and European usage was up to about 18% of Smartphone users accessing the internet once a month. Big deal.

Then came the iPhone. By making the fundamental decisions right to create a truly internet ready phone, such as a big enough screen and touch technology to replace buttons, even the first 2.5 G iPhone was at 98% internet use straight away. And with the 3G phone, it continues to dominate internet data ahead of the me-too chasers from LG, Samsung and Nokia. By opening it’s system to developers, the Apple Apps have for the first time become easy for users to download, find on their phone and use. Some apps are making good money already, the ultimate proof of customer and business value

My experience in the mobile phone world had shown me that the prevailing belief is that is much more important to launch technology than spend tome making it usable. The Mobile world is full of technologies and applications that fail and deliver no ROI. But this is often put down to the slowness of customers to embrace new innovations on their mobiles which they see as essentially a communication tool and are afraid of issues such as data costs and short battery life.

Both the SPV phone and the iPhone have internet browsers. But it has taken 5 years until the format for delivery was found. If I look at other breakthrough technology and service leaps in mobile, such as mobile and fix line convergence, push to talk, sms, mms, applications, some never make it but those that do seem to take about 5 years.

And from my point of view, the reason it takes so long to achieve success is very largely due to design and usability. For my talk in Zurich I created a new law, one which I hope will be proved wrong but I fear will not:

““It takes 5 years before a new mobile technology becomes usable enough that people will actually use it.”

This law is a damning indictment on the developers of mobile technology and interfaces. How can they justify such a slow return on investment? And why has this happened?

In my view it is down to the culture and nature of mobile companies that are dominated by technology driven assumptions of use and marketing efforts to get to market fast.

The end result is anything but fast, or successful.

The conversation in Zurich captured many thoughts about companies who launch when design criteria have been achieved, rather than just technology ones. The original Palm Pilot and the iPhone are famous examples. I can name any number of examples of mobile companies launching and then living with disappointment, wondering why success did not come.

I suspect there is a similar law in web development. In the internet world, the 3-5 years rule is thought to be more to do with the natural rate that the public learn and understand the value of services. Recent successes in social networking such as Facebook and Twitter may prove my law wrong. But I would argue that they were well designed and thought through from the start, and that allowed reduced the barriers to use and benefit.

In addressing what I believe are the answers to poor design affecting adoption and success, I mentioned the Amazon Kindle. This remains my favourite example of a great product hidden by unlovely design, The Amazon replaces a book, that gorgeous, tactile, drop in the bath and dry out (as some else said) object. The Kindle is a white slab of plastic with horrible buttons. The new one looks a bit better, but I do not believe that great company Amazon understood how important design would be to the success of the Kindle.

Some one in the audience was aghast that I could suggest that Amazon did not understand design. But that is exactly what I believe, and I believe a great many other companies are incapable of taking design seriously when it plays such as important part in how we chose and live with every thing around us. After 25 years as a designer I am amazed, and occasionally exhausted, to see how removed from business decisions design remains in the minds of senior leadership. How can people not see that this matters and be so inconsiderate and believe that their role does not include responsibility for something that will make or break their businesses.

But it seems that Amazon do agree with me, because their new Kindle is a vast improvement and my return from Zurich coincided with a Twitter from Steven Fry commenting the Amazon have been to the Apple Design School (now there’s an idea!) and the new product was a vast improvement. That’s three years of putting up with a rubbish design then, perhaps my law is improving.