On Sat, 14 Jun 2003 13:24:13 +0200
"Johan Bengtsson" <johan@doberman.se> wrote:
> Question: Are there no usability experts at the Japanese manufacturers?
> We have a bunch of interaction designers here that could design better
> user experiences in their sleep. Is there something about the Japanese
> engineering culture that keeps interaction designers out of the design
> process?
I think I have mentioned this before. It's a real gamble when you get a
new phone here in Japan. I have had the really bad experience of
changing to a phone with more features only to find within 5 minutes
that it is frustratingly irritating to use.
Previously someone mentioned on this list that Japanese magazines have
reviews of the phones so I searched for an article on my terrible phone
(an Au Kyocera of a few years back) and the magazine gushed about how
good it was!
If the models on display were fully functional instead of mockups I
think people would choose the most useable phone if they had time to
play with it. Right now, in most cases you can only decide from the
external styling and the feature list.
Recently I bought a new Japanese electronic dictionary and spent a good
30-60 minutes trying out the other models. I actually changed my mind
about which I was going to purchase once I discovered how to use an
important feature that one mode had but the other model didn't seem to
have.
I blame a lot of usability issues on customers not being able to choose
a more usable model over a difficult to use model.
Received on Mon Jun 16 06:35:15 2003