I often say that if cell-phone companies had invented the automobile, we'd still be on horses. It boggles my mind how people are unwilling to pay a few extra dollars for this or that [insert grocery item] or spend hours researching the best deal to save a few bucks on a flight from Milwaukee to Tampa...but they don't bat an eye when paying $80-$150 a MONTH to do something that (mobility aside) they could do for a fraction of the cost from home, the office, over the Internet or a pay phone.
I lump myself in the above group, so I'm not making fun of anyone. I just think we are convinced by all manner of surreptitious means, to NEED to use cell phones, and that the fundamental billing model of the unusable "base rate" plus tacked-on cost of value-add features is the first clue that "they aren't in it for the customer." I realize you're making a design point, and I'm not in the mobile device business, so I'd be interested to hear what those designers say. Due to my opinion stated above, my working assumption is that designers build mobile interfaces to allow the business to configure them as they need to. You don't have to build a battery meter that's always 3 points higher than it should be, you just have to build in a way for the business folks to tweak the baseline. The business takes it from there. Bryan http://www.bryanminihan.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher Fahey Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 11:28 AM To: IxDA Discuss Subject: [IxDA Discuss] IxD Ethics: Business vs. User In the "fundamental tenets of design" thread, I had written as my third rule "Don't lie" (right after the similar "Show sleazebags the door."). I really believe that, and as interaction designers I think we run into this question far more often than we think. Apparently lying to the user is fundamental to at least one business sector: Mobile phones. Mark Hurst writes [1] that mobile phone companies lie to their users in several pretty big ways: 1) The signal-strength bars on your phone usually exaggerate the strength of the signal. 2) The batter strength indicator also exaggerates the power left in your battery. Both lies serve the same purpose: To encourage people to use their phones. Apparently, people don't use their phones as much when the signal is weak or their battery is low, so by lying they drive up the minutes. Some people, including Mark, speculate that the carriers also use dreadfully long voicemail system messages to drive up minutes (ever call someone on Sprint? It takes 45 seconds to actually get to leave a message, which I suppose helps your provider, not Sprint necessarily -- maybe there's industry collusion there, too). Obviously all of these decisions are GREAT for business. I can easily imagine that if all of these practices were stopped, phone usage overall would decline by a few percentage points, which could make the difference between profitability and losing money for the company as a whole. And users don't seem to mind -- what they don't know doesn't hurt them, right? What do you think? Would you ever design a system this way, putting the business's needs above the user's needs? Even to the point of lying to the user? Those of you in the mobile device business, are you familiar with this practice? -Cf Christopher Fahey ____________________________ Behavior biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com me: http://www.graphpaper.com ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
