Do you ever accidentally call people on your iPhone?

On Saturday I was holding onto my phone, doing lots of things, and noticed I accidentally called a friend.  My iPhone showed that I was 15 seconds into a call to my friends Tracey & Vito.  (Hi again if you are reading this.)   This is not the first time this has happened.  I remember accidentally re-dialing a Hilton in Boston once.  After a friendly hello and sheepish explanation to the reservation clerk, I hung up.

On Saturday, I hung up on the accidental call and then purposely called my friends back to say hello and explain that my leg accidentally called them.  What a nice way to say “Hi” and add a little humor to one’s day…

If you’d like to avoid doing this you can put your iPhone in sleep mode and lock your touchscreen: http://www.ehow.com/how_2274575_lock-iphone.html.

iPhone sleep-wake button

Locking your phone will conserve your battery’s usage too.

Do you have a story about receiving or placing an accidental call?  Please comment.

Checking Your Calendar and Talking on the iPhone at the Same Time

Palm Pre

I was watching a demo of the Palm Pre which shows multitasking features and really great “Synergy” which allows you to check all your email in one place or view all of your contact information from one place and much more.  See: Palm Pre Video.

iPhone Calendar

With my iPhone I can talk on the phone and check my calendar at the same time.  BUT it’s hard because I can’t hear the person talking to me very well when I’m looking at the calendar.

Apple- can you please make the volume higher on the iPhone?

Communicating Design

Here are some great points made by Keith Robinson, of Blue Flavor, in his talk on design process and deliverables.

1. Documenting your design decisions is important, but it’s not the document, it’s the communication that matters. Involve stakeholders and communicate.

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2. The Design Process you use depends on the projects needs. Here are some design deliverables and guidelines for when to use them:

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3. Don’t use deliverables to build consensus. Designers should make the design decisions! Weak design consensus results in weak design. The designer should present the decisions 1^st and then create high quality deliverables. Great designers show stakeholders that their issues are understood, have a history of great work and can tie designs back to goals and use user research results.

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4. Use a project brief. Focus on problems, not features. Clearly set goals and make sure all team members have reviewed the brief.

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5. Create personas with all stakeholders and use the personas in scenarios.

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6. Screen Description Diagrams are a great way to describe in detail (using real data) what you want to include on the screen. You should prioritize each screen element and describe how each element reflects the user’s goals. Leave out the visuals here to give the visual and interaction designers more control later.

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7. Use wireframes to communicate interaction and layout. Be as detailed as possible. Annotate thoroughly to describe interaction. Also, remember to “move on” after a set number of iterations-> the goal is to create an app, not a perfect wireframe.

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8. Keep your style guide short and up to date. Kevin uses 37 Signals whiteboard for his style guides.

Sean Kane’s Netflix User Research Story

Sean Kane http://seankane.wordpress.com/ told a great story in his talk at the Web App Summit. It is a great illustration of how keeping your companies/customers goals in mind and doing user research will translate into increased sales and satisfaction.

Netflix was evaluating a few different methods of allowing customers to view movie trailers.

Method 1- simple viewer that allowed customer to: a. play the trailer b. go to the next film c. put the film in the queue

Method 2- allowed customer to: a. chose the films of interest b. play the selected trailers c. go to the next film d. put the film in the queue

Method 3 – allowed customer to use a carousel (a very nice interaction design pattern) to: a. chose the films of interest b. play the selected trailers c. go to the next film d. put the film in the queue e. have more VCR like control of the screening such as fast forward and rewind

Netflix also (wisely) tested a few other great ideas and different combinations of these features.

Sean asked the audience to indicate by a show of hands which method they would choose. From the back where I was sitting, it looked like 95% chose Method 3, including myself.

Conclusion:

Method 3 was the preferred way to view trailers.  It was the one customers preferred to use.  They spent the most time screening the movies in this user interface. The customers did not, however, put the movies into their queues to rent (purchase).

Method 1 turned out to be the way customers put the movies into their queues for rental (made the purchase). It made it much easier for the customers to actually watch the trailers and realize that –“hey this movie looks cool”.

Part of what makes Netflix great is that it helps people find movies they love, that they would not find themselves.   Netflix is different from its competitirs because it understands customer goals.  Through user testing, Netflix found that the simple (not so usable and boring) interface was what helped their company and customers reach their goals.

A good user research study doesn’t just ask the user what they think is cool or what they want.  It doesn’t always recommend the most “usable” solution.   A good study keeps in mind the users goals.   This Netflix story is an excellent example of how a good user experience goes way beyond usability.