Ali, it is obvious, you really don't know what you are talking about when it comes to the iPhone. "people are complaining"? huh? people are still buying them off the shelves, not b/c of marketing but b/c of the fetished customer base that keeps telling all their friends to buy them. The problem is that NO SINGLE CONSUMER PRODUCT IS FOR EVERYONE. This is why there is not a single consumer market where there is only a single player, except for when monopolistic non-fair trade practices are in place, or when patents are too strong to break.
Sooo... the reality is that people aren't being thoughtful in their advice to others and so people who probably shouldn't be buying the iPhone are. ME? you I've begun research on how to bring mine to the afterworld (started on EDGE and now on 3GS). I've been a windows user most of my adult life (though am happy on my recent acquisition of a Mac.) But the point is that amazing design went into this device and in my previous job at Moto i got to see 1st hand why great companies can't even come close to emulating it even when we said it was our goal to try. The culture is preventative (to jared's point). This isn't about trade-offs. This is about understanding that while we as interaction designers have one set of roots in the world of user experience design (UCD/HCI/etc.) we also have deep roots in design (visual, industrial, etc.) which themselves have evolved to be more about problem defining/solving and then envisioning those definitions and solutions visually then about the final forms themselves. This means that what is most important is figuring out how to solve the problem that need solving and not about applying a singe toobox to everything you do. Sometimes you needs a surgeons toolset and sometimes a dentists and then other times a plumbers! The point of great design is not to constantly apply the same toolset, but to figure out which is the right one(s) (gotta allow for hybrids). I do disagree with Jared. I do think that "design great products" always includes thoughtfulness of the user in some way. That does not mean applying standard UCD practice, but it does mean including (not focusing) the people in our solution set. Of course, you have to sustain a business, so all those other pieces need to be involved. But truly successful business (and the bottom line is not the sole arbiter of success--something that was bothering me in Jared's posts) does need to be profitable (or at least sustainable--not the green kind) in order to be a success. But ali, it does sound like you are still tilting at windmills. -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44980 ________________________________________________________________ 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
