I distinctly remember an era of the Macintosh operation systems (early to mid 90's) when the slowness of the disc copy function was a primary complaint. In a subsequent release, the progress meter was sped up and then disappeared sooner, then there was an additional delay... before the copy function completed, in the exact same amount of time. and The new visual messaging certainly broke the wait into more smaller pieces. It did make the time pass quicker, but certainly was a deceptive slight of hand. There was, however, not stated promise from apple about increased speed.
Mark On Tuesday, November 13, 2007, at 11:32AM, "Christopher Fahey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >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 >____________________________ ________________________________________________________________ *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
