Comments on: It’s The Prejudice, Stupid

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:18:25 +0000

Russell I think you have hit on a real funbdamental issue here. It’s so easy to pontificate about the exciting new behaviours we are seeing which are undoubtedly shaping our future. But the realities of transforming the industry in this Digital Media Economy is much more complex. And the issues you raise are among the key ones. I have cross posted here (http://brandsdigitalmediaandme.blogspot.com/2007/07/weve-become-temporarily-obsessed-with.html) with some other references on this subject.
Great blog!

By: Werner Egipsy Souza

Werner Egipsy Souza — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:08:43 +0000

I see an opportunity here, for someone who designs phones and services for the Sprint 1000.
Since they seem to always have a lot of feedback about the service, and be very prompt about reporting errors, they would help improve the overall experience for the other consumers, who couldn’t care less if it worked or not. The latter would typically be saying “If it works, Great! But if it didn’t work, I ain’t using it.”
When I look at a phone, I look at it from the view of whether my mum would use it. That usually removes all the typical paradigms which come out of working in the mobile industry.

Werner

By: Antoine of MMM

Antoine of MMM — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 23:38:18 +0000

My point is really; when should a company give up on their customers because those customers don’t understand their products, when plenty of other brighter or more technology minded people do understand?

They shouldn’t. Unless somewhere in the product planning, acceptance, or marketing phase someone forgot whom the device would most likely be assumed by. If you want techies to get it, you price and market it that way. If you want novices to get it, you price and market it that way.

Looking back on what I typed earlier, I spoke of user interaction being more thought out on the developer, marketing, and carrier side. It would have been better if I would have looked at what you wrote thru the user experience side of things. Which includes what I wrote, but goes down to that overall company and product vision that any company inevitably wants users to take from them when their products are being used. Sprint seems to have missed out on this one if one just judges some of the accounts of those who have been cut off.

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:49:46 +0000

David and Antoine

I fully agree and have written lots before about usability. But this is a different issue from product design (though related). My point is really; when should a company give up on their customers because those customers don’t understand their products, when plenty of other brighter or more technology minded people do understand?

And yes, obviously we should always strive to make products more usable.

Russell

By: David Beers

David Beers — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:21:24 +0000

I’m with Antoine on this one: the real duty that technologists are shirking is the design of simpler mobile technology and computing products. I don’t think the failure to do this has to do with prejudice toward people with low IQs, I think it has to do with a blind spot in the minds of the product designers who can’t get past the idea that the way to make a product better is to add a new feature, implement a hot new technology, or deliver it in a tinier form factor without regard to the impact on ergonomics. It’s not just people with below-average intelligence that suffer from thoughtlessly complex technology products. Anyone who needs to focus their time and energy on the things they are trying to accomplish during their day rather than on their gadgets pays a price.

By: Antoine of MMM

Antoine of MMM — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:42:47 +0000

You stated:

As technology gets more complicated - and it’s going to get harder to use before it starts getting significantly easier - how much of a duty of care do we owe customers to help them make sense of it?

If developers and marketers would take the time to build complete and usable solutions, instead of maxmize time to market with feature creep and little attention to end-user experience, maybe then the calls would not be as frequent. I place the blame one Sprint for QoS and end-user experience for their models if it is that the reasons for these 1000 being dropped has to do with those two items specifically.

I do agree though that UI/UX should err on the side of “stupid” (to pull the term’s usage in your posting). Building solutions that have the feature needs to continue to stimular the more intellectual users, while not having an intimidating paradigm for not-so-intellectual ones would have a better effect on maxmizing the accessiblty and usable of mobile tech for all. If you will, take a little bit of what Apple/AT&T did with the iPhone/iTunes/celluar bit, add some attention to detail across the prodcut lines, and then market a solution that is simple, rather than just “ooh look at this feature.”

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:54:17 +0000

Anonymous

If you actually read my post, I haven’t criticized Sprint or passed any kind of judgment on this. I was just using the story as a jumping off point for a post about theoretically discriminating against people with low IQ and the elderly. In fact, I specifically said that they were within their rights and that the Sprint 1000 weren’t necessarily stupid either, to try to show I was making a general point about society and the direction we were going in.

Russell

By: anonymous

anonymous — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:31:31 +0000

But see the article over at the Consumerist, where a Sprint insider says that the customers in question were actually gaming the system for free Sprint service, rather than having legitimate problems with the company.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/exclusives/sprint-customers-terminated-for-complaining-too-much-were-scamming-sprint-for-free-service-277026.php