TechScribble

Ponderings on Business & Technology

[techscribble]

Don't Underestimate The Importance Of User Evaluations

I have recently carried out a Task Based User Evaluation on a Smartphone application prototype I created, and I was surprised by the results.  Concepts that seemed intuitive and made complete sense to me completely baffled the majority of my user base.  Don't misinterpret this, I am by no means suggesting that they were 'dumb users'.  This was a real eye opener as to how when developing a concept, your ideas are always going to seem intuitive to you.  They're bound to if you think about it, you had them.  This is where so many systems go wrong, be them software based or not, what seems intuitive to the developers is not always that intuitive to the users.  In the case of my prototype, I had used a number of metaphors to represent various functions.  I had come up with these metaphors and so they made logical sense to me, but all my users disliked one metaphor in particular.   Each user separately suggested the use of a common metaphor, they all knew what they wanted, and they all wanted the same thing!

Remember, dumb users don't exist, there are just poorly designed systems!!!

[techscribble]

Google's Privacy Policies - A Chance For Apple To Cash In?

Recent announcements of changes to Google's privacy policies have understandably caused a bit of a stir. The thing people worry about most I think is the idea of a Big Brother type society where nothing you ever say or do goes unnoticed, in essence the idea of privacy disappears.

Whether or not these changes to Google's policies are the first steps on the road to a society similar in some way to the one Orwell warned of in his novel '1984' is not for me to say. Advancements in the past have often caused undue concern. My old history teacher once told me, that with the first railways came the fear that pregnant women would miscarry if they saw fast trains passing by, due to the stress such speed would cause!

Whether people's concern is unnecessary it is certainly there and probably not going to disappear anytime soon. I see this as an incredible business opportunity for one company in particular... Apple! Apple is sitting on piles of cash, and like most businesses it is always looking for ways to make it grow. If apple where to provide a service similar to that of Google (initially free email accounts and a search solution) with the promise that it will respect the users privacy I think that this would draw even more people to the Apple product family.  What do you think?