User Experience is More Than Design, by Jeffrey Veen

User Experience is More Than Design

The Wall Street Journal's venerable Walt Mossberg spends some time with the unattractively-named Network Walkman NW-HD1 from Sony, and compares it to Apple's fourth generation iPod. And he finds that the product's name is the least of its problems:

While the new Sony is smaller than the iPod and has much better battery life, it is markedly inferior overall.

What's interesting about Mossberg's assessment is that he honestly could care less about the technical specifications that most product marketing so rabidly promotes. Sure, the battery lasts much longer than the iPod's 12 hours, but how often does that really make a difference? On that nonstop flight to Sydney, maybe. But day to day, features like transferring your songs to the player are more important. And here, the Walkman falls woefully short:

For my test, I used a very modest collection of 431 standard MP3 files. SonicStage 2 refused to transfer 15 of the files, posting a nonsensical error message. After that, it took an agonizingly long two hours and 13 minutes to transfer the remaining 416 tracks to the Walkman. By contrast, Apple's iTunes software transferred all 431 songs to an iPod in about four minutes.

This because Sony's mp3 player can't actually play mp3s -- it coverts everything to some strange proprietary file format first. And once your music is finally on the thing, you've got to figure out how to make it play:

There's a button on the player called "Mode," but to set the "Play Mode," which controls the order in which songs are played back, you have to press a separate button called "Menu." By contrast the Mode button switches the screen display between artists, albums, genres and so forth.

I can't even figure out what Mossberg is talking about; imagine what it must be like to switch to a new album while driving?

The point here, of course, is that technology is only one measure of success when it comes to product design, be it on the Web or in the physical world. When I speak about the factors involved in evaluating effective Web design, I often pull up this image:

Clearly, both Apple and Sony understand the importance of the bottom circle; the desirability of their products is undeniable. But desirability from a design perspective is only part of the equation. Apple understood that bringing the same deep commitment to user experience to the technological and financial aspects of the product were also required. If you have an iPod, it shows every time you use it. Plug it in and iTunes launches. You'll see that it has the same attention to detail as the hardware, with consistency in interaction and labeling. Your gadget will automatically sync, so now all the music you've ripped or downloaded recently can come with you. It uses Firewire, so it takes no time at all. Click on the iTunes Music Store and the same interface takes you through the intuative shopping process. Compare that to the Sony experience:

I couldn't figure out how to make it shuffle through the entire song library, even after poring through the 45-page manual. Two Sony officials gave us conflicting advice on how to do this, but their advice didn't square with the manual, which is full of discussions about things like "play units."

I don't deny I'm both a fan of and an apologist for Apple. But the Sony experience described in the Journal just makes me shake my head. Bad technology decisions marketed poorly are as much a part of the user experience as architecture and interface design.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 28 July 2004 at 4:35 PM. It was filed under Technology.

Comments

1. On 29 July 2004 at 9:04 PM griff wrote:

Another Apple advantage is in the "digital lifestyle" concept that Sony owned at one time.

Apple has connected the dots with seemingly unrelated hardware and software. For example, if you can work in iTunes, you can work in iPhoto. Interfaces and concepts are similar, playlist and albums are the same {Both a subset of the Library}.

Then there is the interaction between apps. iMovie recognizes iphoto albums and itunes music seemlessly.

This is amazing to me since Sony was the first to push the digital lifestyle concept. How could they go so wrong?

2. On 30 July 2004 at 5:49 AM Jim wrote:

"I don't deny I'm both a fan of and an apologist for Apple."

That explains all. You could have specified that at the begining to save people from reading all. At the end, everybody went with Microsoft, instead of proprietary,expensive and less quality Apple who lock-ins people.

3. On 30 July 2004 at 8:32 AM Mike Rundle wrote:

Jim, don't you have anything better to do than spout off incorrect and un-founded information?

Explain to me how the Apple iPod's user experience is trumped by other players, or how WMA is not proprietary, but MP3 (a certain music format that the iPod loves to play) is? Explain to Jeff and his audience how the iTunes Music Store locks you in, even though the DRM built into the AAC codec lets you play songs on multiple computers and burn it to a CD multiple times, as opposed to other subscription-based services that shall remain nameless.

You should have left your email address, because everyone knows that anonymity != courage.

4. On 30 July 2004 at 9:01 AM kev wrote:

So true! Apple understands user experience from end-to-end. That's why integration of player, jukebox, and store is so crucial. Same goes for computing - hardware, OS, software (esp. iLife).

Most people don't seem to understand it - although when it works, they love it. They clamor for choice, but in many cases, their choice of crucial parts breaks up the integration, and creates problems.

Our world offers us two paths: a la carte or integrated set. Think set menus vs. pick each course yourself. Think travel packages vs. pick each activity/hotel/airline/car yourself, etc. The integrated set is not better in every arena but when done right by people with real expertise and at a reasonable price (for the extra service), it beats a la carte hands-down.

Apple provides the integrated experience done right for both computing and music. Sony is actually trying to do the same as Apple in music, but doing a poor job of it. And WMA stores, jukeboxes, and stores offer a la carte. Your choice!

5. On 30 July 2004 at 3:06 PM Ron Severdia wrote:

There's a balance between having the flexibility and freedom to do what you want (e.g. with your MP3s) and having a seamless end-to-end integration by a single company. I think Microsoft has OVERintegrated their software but UNDERintegrated their hardware integration. Whereas, Apple has managed to maintain a strong balance (except for the dark days of Mac-cloning . . ) :)

The question is: Who decides this within a company? Is it done by committee or a single individual? Is it based on research, intuition or a little of both? When does one override the other? How long does it take for a company to recover from bad user experience decisions and what effect does that have on their bottom line? How can this be calculated and demonstrated?

6. On 31 July 2004 at 8:35 PM Martey wrote:

"Explain to me how the Apple iPod's user experience is trumped by other players, or how WMA is not proprietary, but MP3 (a certain music format that the iPod loves to play) is?"

I think Jim was referring to operating systems as opposed to music file formats; if I buy Windows XP, I can install it on any x86 machine I want, while OS X will only run on Apple's computers.

7. On 2 August 2004 at 10:44 AM Charles wrote:

Um, Martey, good luck at finding an x86 machine you buy that doesn't already have a Microsoft OS installed. Microsoft is all out trying to discourage that - always has.

Sure, if you look very hard, you might find a Linux-installed PC for sale. But it'll be a challenge.

And if you wanted to be truly masochistic, you could anyway take the Darwin source and recompile it for x86 - it'd run. You wouldn't get all the OSX interface, but you'd have the underlying functionality.

8. On 2 August 2004 at 2:44 PM Martey wrote:

Charles, it is relatively easy to find x86 machines without Microsoft operating systems preinstalled. If I build a computer myself, the only operating system on it will be the one I decide to buy. I am pretty sure constructing a PowerPC machine from scratch would be more masochistic than recompiling Darwin on x86.

Secondly, a number of online retailers sell x86 computers without Microsoft operating systems. For example:

- Dell Precision "n Series" workstations (Red Hat)
- TigerDirect's "Systemax" (Lindows or no OS)
- WalMart's "Microtel" (Lindows)

The point of my earlier comment was not about Microsoft's dealing with OEM operating systems, but about hardware. While it is more difficult to find a x86 computer without a preinstalled Microsoft operating system, it is far from impossible. On the other hand, finding an PowerPC computer without an Apple operating system preinstalled - indeed, finding a new PowerPC computer not being sold by Apple - is far more difficult (if possible at all).

9. On 3 August 2004 at 9:50 AM Chris Adams wrote:

Martey: there's this niche company which also sells PPC computers without an Apple operating system. They're really small so it's hard to get in touch with a salesperson but they do have a website at www.ibm.com

Sarcasm aside, there's been a bit of a shift in the industry. We used to talk about lock-in in terms of programs but in the post-web era it's all about data and in most areas the people pushing closed formats are losing - the biggest exception is probably MS Office because that's one of the few areas where a single vendor has such a ridiculous percentage of the market. Personal electronics are basically the opposite: switching devices is almost trivial but anything which requires reripping 700 albums is a complete non-starter. I'd think twice even if the device was free - my time isn't.

10. On 9 September 2004 at 4:39 AM Apollo wrote:

I've found Sony's audio hardware to work quite well, but their software and proprietary reliance has been a huge downfall for me. I've had a Mini Disc player by Sony for over a year now and found it extremely frustrating to use the software provided with it. Not only was it slow and not user friendly, but the inability to convert some audio formats made the program one I would use very rarely, keeping my MD's static for months at a time. When I switched to Linux as my main operating system the problem got worse. Since Sony's software is proprietary and they don't support Linux, there is no way to use the device under my operating system of choice.