[IxDA Discuss] Motorola Motofone User Experience

[Vinay Rao]

Hi Josh

As someone who has significant HF, ID and IxD (Each in their 
conventional walled-garden definitions) experience, I would agree with 
Dave that there are fast blurring boundaries between these disciplines. 
I trained many years ago as an ID'er, and practised hardcore ID till we 
realised that there was a serious disconnect between our original design 
intent and what hit the market after the GUI team were done with their 
work.

We now approach ID and GUI together under overall UX, though admittedly 
they have significantly different deliverables to different teams. Look 
at the devices around you. Each comes with its own method of 'scroll' 
and navigation that is dependant largely on the style of the physical 
interfaces on the device - joystick/ 5-way key/ side-scroll-wheel/ 
dedicated keys and soft keys, etc. Eg. as an ID'er I'd want intuitive 
user reactions to say answering a call, increasing volume, skipping a 
song, without even having to look at the screen. There are still 
interactions.

GUIs work best as extensions of user's mental models, while the physical 
interfaces are extensions of natural (physical) and learned (mental) 
human gestural abilities and styles. When you ask "By what medium beyond 
the GUI is this phone responsive to user behavior?" you are making a 
sweeping statement that there is nothing more in the dialogue between 
user and product beyond a screen. As an IxD'er you have probably 
conditioned yourself into making you purchase decisions on the 
quality/type of the GUI alone. But in the real world out there, the user 
sees this as a unified experience.

And then there's the style thing, which really is the game I primarily 
play. Moto's tried to make internationally acceptable 
black/dark/mysterious phones within which you can have 
Indian/European/American style skins on the GUI without looking 
seriously discordant. I'm not sure if the other phone manufacturers have 
been as successful.

I havent seen the Moto presentation (It does not work from my location - 
India). Is there any other method to copy-paste and host it elsewhere so 
that it can be seen out of the US?

Vinay Rao
Bang Design

Joshua Seiden wrote:

> By what medium beyond the GUI is this phone responsive to user behavior?
> Sound design is important, but in the case it's not richly interactive.
> Tactile feedback is important, but again in this case it's not richly
> interactive.
> 
> So--in this case--the richly interactive portion of this experience lies in
> the software response to hardware. And--again in this case--the software
> responds by means of a GUI. So, are they not thinking about it, or just not
> talking about it?
> 
> JS
> 
> On 12/7/06, David Malouf <dave at ixda.org> wrote:
> 
>>
>>Joshua Seiden wrote:
>>
>>>Because without software, it's either ID or User-centered design. That's
>>>doesn't mean it's not interesting or valuable. It just means it's not
>>
>>IxD.
>>
>>hmmm? I disagree with that statement.
>>While I agree that a digital component is almost always require. Digital
>>does not mean "GUI". (I'm interpretting your use of the term software to
>>mean software with a graphical user interface).
>>
>>Phones had an IxD component before they ever had a screen display.
>>
>>How the phone responds to different interactions? What if it was only an
>>IVR system behind it?
>>
>>GUI is not the only thing that makes IxD.
>>
>>
> 
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