Recently picked up an article about the usability of a mobile phone setting in the UK quality newspaper the Guardian: iPhone download setting doesn’t stop downloads – and can cost users dear.

The problem it outlines is a disconnect between the mental model of the users (what do I expect this setting to do?) and the mental model of the system (choice of words / interface copywriting, and the way the feature is then actually implemented). If somewhat misleading, it isn’t outright deceptive, and it’s probably an edge case (few people will in fact be affected by the issue).

Morris says that he understood the “Use Mobile Data” switch to control whether apps would be downloaded over the mobile network, and that if it was off that there would be no download.

Why is it news? Because smartphones are used by an increasingly large portion of the population, and because such minute details of the user experience have an increasingly large impact on tangible issues, such as people’s phone bill. (Also, I suspect the Guardian has a policy of vigorously reporting tech issues, perhaps encouraged by the increasingly large traffic they get when covering such topics.)

Another issue highlighted here is a challenge to Apple’s policy of delivering a consistent level of quality across hardware, software, service, and packaging. When interacting with any Apple tool (iTunes, the carrier settings on the iPhone, Spotlight search in OS X, etc.), the experience is supposed to be positive, obvious, and free of surprises.

Obviously, Apple lavished tremendous high-level attention on delivering the perfect experience to AT&T subscribers (activation difficulties around the first iPhone were corrected quite quickly). It then proceeded to replicate this experience with other partner networks across the world, and generally did a stellar job. But managing the experience of such a complex product is a huge undertaking, composed of thousands of tiny interactions that all add up. For example, the issue mentioned in the article above occurs while roaming outside of your home phone network, when starting to download app updates over wifi, and then moving outside of wifi coverage back into 3G roaming.

I suppose roaming is one of the key issues in negotiations between Apple and carriers, which might explain why this feature was implemented differently for AT&T and the UK’s O2 networks. Or it could come from the asynchronous evolution of Apple’s offer in different territories:

That is clearer in the US, where Apple has enabled the iTunes Match service which allows people to synchronise their music libraries with the cloud. There, the setting (which reads “Use Cellular Data” and defaults to off) has explanatory text saying “Use cellular network for iTunes Match and to automatically download purchases.”

As a user of an iPhone supplied by Japan’s au mobile carrier, it seems obvious to me that the feature set degrades the further away you get from Apple’s power base: Siri doesn’t offer directions outside of the US, au was allowed to ship crippled phones that support neither iMessage nor FaceTime (not even over wifi), and neither visual voicemail nor tethering. But within reason, the feature set isn’t the driving factor in picking a product and sticking with it.

Wherever you buy them, Apple’s products still deliver an incredibly pleasing and consistent experience, over time and across generations of devices, across different sales channels and user support touchpoints, as well as across networks and territories. It’s an amazing feat of industrial management, which very few other brands have even attempted. I’m still angry about the ugly duckling offered to me by SonyEricsson and Vodafone a couple years ago — it wasn’t even that bad a phone, but was so poorly put together I sent it back after a week.

As pointed out elsewhere, this extremely polished end-user experience is probably the single most important ingredient in Apple’s ability to command such a large price premium over the competition: all other aspects (hardware, design, software, service, functionality, usability) are matched or topped by other vendors. But nobody else quite knows how to put it together the way Apple does.

Just noticed a very interesting practice from Amazon: the first three search results of the next page are pre-loaded.

One issue with search engine results pages is that people only rarely use more than the first page for a given query. Depending on the browsing context and the user’s purpose, Amazon probably sees a bit more use of its subsequent results pages, as people are using them as an alternative to browsing, or simply display more persistence because they’re pretty sure Amazon actually has the product they’re looking for.

Google focuses on the first page. Google Live Search constantly updates this first page of results, progressively increasing its usefulness, by making the best possible use of the input supplied by the user. I would guess this has marginally increased the success rate of Google searches, while further reducing the use of page 2 and more.

When clicking on the link to get the next page of results, there are a few moments when the screen is bare of useful information. Many services have started to refresh the results inside the existing page, with Ajax, which avoids having to re-draw the entire screen, and probably helps maintain the user’s context.

For example, LinkedIn scrolls back up, fades the current results (I blanked out the names on the screenshot below), and displays a “loading” device until the new results are available:

Still, the Amazon solution goes a step further: even for highly-motivated users, those few moments when the screen isn’t offering any information relevant to the task at hand are an invitation to switch to another task. With a fairly simple technical trick (keep 3 search results hidden to mitigate the wait), user time spent on system tasks (waiting for information to appear) is cut down to almost nothing. I expect Amazon has seen a significant rise in the usage of subsequent search results pages.

Today, some colleagues and I have met with several potential vendors for professional services and software we will need over the next several years. Based on the same brief, we were given one solid presentation, one excellent presentation, and also a dreadful one that inspired a disparaging Star Wars comparison (in a private email to my colleagues).

So what goes into a good pre-sales meeting? Here are a few suggestions, if you’re on the agency / supplier / vendor side:

• start with a big question: the audience engages, as it creates a sense of co-ownership of the meeting
• listen to the client: weave their points into your own narrative, make them feel smart and understood
• bring knowledge to the table: ensure participants learn stuff they didn’t know, or get to think along new lines
• keep your team tight: don’t bring an army, only people who can contribute to the conversation
• know your stuff, in particular know your own products and services (no, it’s not that obvious!)
• … and this ought to be obvious as well: joke with your client, not with your colleagues

What makes your meetings tick?

Recently, a Google employee called Steve Yegge posted a very long message about a few things his former employer, Amazon, does better than Google. It was intended to be an internal message, not something public, and he therefore made statements he probably would have avoided otherwise. But he published it to the whole world by mistake, and the quality of his observations ensured instant popularity for his post.

Yegge’s key point is that Amazon approaches its business with the ambition of building a platform, while Google is focused on the development of individual (and discrete) products. And the problem with this approach is that very few people, in computing, have ever been very good at reliably predicting what products consumers want. Many companies create a couple of very popular products, but very few can reproduce this outside of their initial business, or maintain that business in the face of changing conditions.

Working for a manufacturer of physical products, I could not help but wonder how we stack up, however distant software development may seem.
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When our competitors get hacked, we take notice. For some reason, the Playstation Network breach made people less worried than the Adidas event yesterday. So I wrote a quick response which I’d like to share here.

Preliminary reports about Adidas suggest their sites may have been serving malicious content following a security breach that gave attackers access to the sites’ HTML but not to the databases (no user information has been exposed).

Their response has been praised by security experts as prompt and appropriate. They’ve basically done the right thing.

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Held in west Wales, the 2011 DO Lectures brought together an array of goodness, and I’d like to share a bit of that experience. (Please note I’ve killed all raving superlatives, as they were cluttering the text, but consider them implied everywhere.)

• the speakers presented original points of view, through stuff they’ve done, are working on, or have unique knowledge of, and that is either at the forefront or on the exciting margins of what is being done right now
• topics were juxtaposed just so they could spark a richer understanding (I got called out for using the word “parallax” to describe this)
• different degrees of involvement of the speakers: small, affordable ideas as well as huge, world-impacting projects, but most of them enthusiastic and passionate, with skin in the game
• professional and consistent emceeing that summarized key issues at different points, brought cohesion, and kept the proceedings moving smoothly
• the common motivation of attendees, and their caliber, ensured lunch-time conversations were substantial and earnest, freed of the petty concerns of profit-making or industrial optimization
• the friendly and respectful atmosphere made us sometimes shy of tough challenges (I think Zach and the Chief Juicer got off easy), but provided the right environment for a wealth of new or unfamiliar ideas to be considered
• Wales isn’t merely the venue: its geography and political climate are integral to the purpose of the lectures, and provides a frame of reference to welcome international input
• the weather, landscape, accommodation, camping, food, entertainment, all were conducive to a sustained mental effort and if anything, I found the intensity of people’s involvement actually increasing over the course of the 4 days

Overall, deliberate variety brought welcome complexity to the event, giving depth to the exchanges, on stage or off. The conversations I participated in at DO will keep on giving, as I ruminate through the material I’ve had access to.

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Over the past 8 months, we’ve launched the new My ASICS service to help runners train for marathons and other races, and it achieved a reasonable level of success. This has been my priority project for over a year, and I have invested a lot of my experience, skills, and energy into its production. I’ve had a decisive influence on a large number of the choices we’ve made throughout the project. In many ways, the project is my baby: not only picking key vendors, but also guiding their work to a fairly advanced degree of detail.

However, the launch of this new version in January was only one step along a journey (started almost a decade ago by some of my colleagues and an innovative vendor). Since the launch, we’ve moved on to yet another step, where I must let go of many decisions, for the good of the project. On running, Mairéad has more sense and experience. On features, interface design and user experience, we’ve hired several specialists because they do a better job than me. On graphic design, Ryan has more taste.

It’s not about being passive or indifferent, but it’s about creating the conditions for a larger team of professionals to do awesome work. My strongly-held opinions haven’t vanished, but I need to be very selective about where I bring them to bear: in understanding the business context of the product, in developing the case for it internally and to the world, in fighting for resource and mindshare, in helping the team gel around a common goal, in ensuring we’re always faithful to the brand. But increasingly rarely in helping cut through tangled opinions by making product decisions myself.

What a challenging experience! Previously, I felt that consistently enforcing my opinion was my best guarantee of achieving a better product. As we were throwing away the old product and therefore starting from scratch, my job was to make something new exist out of mere ideas. That’s something I enjoy, and feel I’m pretty good at. It’s also something I believe a single enterprising person can do this quite effectively.

Now, I have to be much more selective about trusting my gut or brains, and must often overrule these to follow the recommendations of other team members. Indeed, we’re now improving what’s already here. It requires a very different instinct. Also, it’s something a team of people is perhaps better suited to achieving.

To continue pursuing the same goal (making the product a success), I must stop doing what’s worked so far (putting more of myself in the project), and start doing the opposite instead (making more room for other people). (Well, okay, perhaps the project would have been even more successful if I’d put less of me in it right from the start — but that’s academic now, obviously.)

Challenging shift, and bitter-sweet: I realize it’s also quite rewarding, because things are getting done that are much better than I’d ever have done them myself. Go team!