Nokia and I are getting divorced...

by Gus Desbarats, Chairman, TheAlloy

C3, my last Nokia?

I was at a ‘mobile for seniors’ conference. I must be getting on because it all seems, to me, to be simply about avoiding the really bad usability that still all too common in the mobile world.

My new Nokia C3 is a case in point. I use an I-phone for mail and apps but my also want a small robust reliable and easy to use phone. As a phone designer I’m always on the hopeful look out for something that will actually generate enthusiasm. That hope has been more and more forlon. Nokia usually comes closest and my 6300 was one of a long series of ‘goldilocks’ just right designs. When the charging plug finally gave up the C3 seemed the closest replacement, If only.

Here are some of the changes on my ‘new and improved’ C3:

• It has more options I don’t want: like browsing the internet, slowly, in impossibly small type.
• It is now 5 fiddly touch screen clicks to silence the ringer (nice one touch camera though….)
• It took 15 minutes of menu fiddling to guess my way to the Bluetooth pairing menu. (bearing in mind I’ve been designing device interfaces of all types for 25 years..)
• It has automatic ‘cheek activated’ mute in call. (lots of fun..)

I was overseas when it prompted me to set my mobile voice mail number under the 1 ‘one touch’ key. Being clever I set the number to +44901 thinking this would work. Wrong, I should have remembered the networks have cleverly coordinated things so 901 works anywhere. OK score a point for Nokia? No, since that prompt, I’ve been unable to find anywhere, and I really mean anywhere, any option that will allow me to change the number changing of the ‘special’ 1 messages one touch key. (I can of course program the other one touches). I’ve been looking for months, rummaging the menu like some sort of digital ‘lost sock’ drawer, without any joy. I’m sure someone at nokia knows where the option is. Solution welcome!

I dropped it once and the touch screen went blank. It got repaired under warranty but I lost my holiday photo’s… My old phones have been dropped repeatedly..

I now have not one, but two entries for every phone in my phone book. I need to keep my phonebook on my sim so I can dial out from the steering wheel controls in my car. If I do that I can’t use the ‘touch screen’ tiles. When I tried to copy a few over that I ended up creating unwanted duplicates of every entry.. I’ll fix it eventually, but why can’t the tiles also accept links to sim numbers?

Ovi also comes across as a net negative on this form factor. It has made it so much harder to get ring tones that I really can’t be arsed.

I also assume that Nokias desire to channel revenue through OVI is why my C3 has no free games. Do I care enough about games to my own pull teeth through the impossibly small slow and complex experience of chosing and buying a cheap game? No. The people Nokia has disappointed are my daughters 9 and 12 who can no longer be saved from their perception of terminal boredom when stuck somewhere away from their multiscreen home IT lab.

Of by the way, I of course can’t read the screen in sunlight, and the on-screen dashboard is of course totally impossible to pick out of virtually any background. I had to spend a few minutes photographing different coloured object until I found a mid tone colour that allowed the graphics (that trivial stuff like signal, battery and ringer status..) to be legible

So in a nutshell, the company that has probably sold more phones than any other seems to have forgotten how to get the basics right. Not a great place to be given Nokia’s less than stellar performance in smartphones.

A few years ago, in the 2 years before the i-phone launched we were making the case to the industry that touch screens were the only simple way to interact with compact multifunction devices..

A few years after Apple has redirected the mobile herd, I fear it is now stampeding away from the 2/3rds of the market who still walk into stores saying ‘I just want a phone that does calls’ . It’s as if the car business in the 30’s had declared that the future is trucks…hmm if I know one thing it is that someone somewhere will see the millions to be made from simple ‘non tech’ mobile device and service propositions.

It might even be Nokia, but that hope is looking pretty forlorn. Will the C3 be my last of 7 Nokias?

Distopian Visions

Well, its been a little busy here over the summer, hence the drop in blog posts… One thing promted me to get back to this blog.

Fast Company recently tweeted a link to a video posted on YouTube by Ericsson - shown below. It aims to describe the Internet of Things in a more trendy way, as The Social Web of Things.

Essentially the video outlines a well trodden but preposterous path that technology companies use to show us in a clunky way what the future will be like.  We have seen several of these before (remember the “internet enabled fridge” that would order your groceries for you when you run out?) and this version integrates the “home” as a social networking friend, looking after your wellbeing and making decisions for you.

This excellent blog outlines some of the reasons why this video is a little creepy, and I do not want to repeat the points made.  More than anything, the video demonstrates, par excellence, exactly why this will NOT be the future of communications, and why all of the wonderful possibilities offered haven’t been as successful as they could have been – This is a case of technologists looking to apply their technology to human behaviour, and not being led by real needs and desires.

I am at a loss to understand how a global multi-billion dollar company created a video that showed how Kubricks 2001- A Space Odyssey vision of HAL has somehow been  taken as a good thing . The idea of a ‘jealous’ smart home trying to drown out the telephone call of a girlfriend is not a dream I nor anyone I know have.

Innovators need to understand more about people to balance their technical knowledge, as commercial success is not driven by technology alone, but by how it can enhance our lives. Technology is an enabler, not a solution.

This is true in almost all aspects of life.  Technological advances in cars have made us faster, more responsive, safer and more comfortable drivers.  But we are still the drivers, not passengers to a machine.  Email, social networking and mobile phones enable us to communicate more effectively, but few, if any of us, would let machines write messages for us.

The vision in the video is one that will not become reality.  Not because the technology is not available, but because it does not respect what makes us human: the ability to make decisions for ourselves.  Technology is best considered as our servant, not our master.