The Danger of Platforms
January 25, 2009 – 17:23I’ve been trying to get myself into a bike riding regimen for a while. Being a naturally lazy person (its the ADD!), I set myself with milestones to encourage me with my day to day operations. Otherwise, I don’t get anything done. The milestone I set a week ago was this – Until I reach 40Km of bike riding in a week, I wont buy any new bike gadgets. For there are so many wonderful bike gadgets out there…
In order for me to meet my 40Km milestone, I need to ride my bike to work. The showers at SAP close at 09:00, meaning that between dispersing the kids to their respective educational establishments to all the rest, I need to be out of bed by 06:30. Like most grown men, I use my cell-phone as my alarm clock. During all my cell-phone usage years, I have made a point to stick with Nokia only. They have the usability thing going. Alas, a year ago I was handed a Sony-Ericsson K350i. After a week in which I deleted 3 contacts, I pretty much got used to it. However, this morning, instead of being woken up at 06:30, I naturally woke up at 07:45. No biking, no coffee, quick quick quick to work. An investigative comittee was formed (my wife) and revealed the following. The phone was stuck (all night!) on the following screen:
Save before Exit?
What happend is this. I edited the time of the alarm and exited the “organizer” app. A normal assumption would have been that I wanted the alarm time changed –> save the new time and exit. What happened is that some development platform / OS (The K530i is running a Sony-Ericsson proprietary OS) had the following logic: “Object Changed, User Wanted to exist –> Ask user if he is sure”, with no regard to what the object really was. It makes perfect sense to have the “Are you sure” question on Contacts – You don’t want to accidentaly delete them, but for times on you alarm clock?
Another example for this is when you start up your K530i. Instead of just starting up, it has a question for you – “Do you want Flight Mode or Normal Mode?”. Here’s a safe bet – 99.99% of times such a phone is started you want the normal mode. For those 10 jet-setters who open up their phone during flight – they’ll manage. The number of times, on the other hand, in which I’ve opened up the phone, forgot about this question and found that I’ve been ‘off’ for several hours – that’s a class action waiting to happen.
Bottom line – Forget the platform and showing off you capabilities – Know your use-case. What do people want when they set up their alarm clocks? What do they want when they turn on their phones?
As for the bike gadgets – they’ll have to wait until next week.
