Oh, Nokia. If only designing an innovative smartphone was as easy as flicking a few of your switches.
ON ITS “Conversations” area of its Web site, big mobile phone manufacturer Nokia is asking its community to help design the next smartphone:
This isn’t just about creating the next-gen smartphone; we want you to think beyond that. To avoid creating some kind of unweildy beast, we’ve created a six-step process where you get to vote for the features and functions you think are most important. Every week we’ll tally up the votes and display the defined spec.
Is Nokia crowdsourcing its next smartphone design? Or is it just creating the illusion of interaction with its customers?
This is not true crowdsourcing. This is a popularity contest, an echo chamber in which people relate what they think they want, not what would actually work for a design that sets out to break the mold and create something new. Think about it: Can you imagine a “crowd” coming up with the iPhone three or four years ago, based on what was available in smartphones then? I don’t think so.
True crowdsourcing would use the crowd to tell you how people actually use smartphones and how they want to use smartphones. Not by asking them, because real designers know that people notoriously say they want things they don’t truly want, or they confuse features with the underlying needs that could be better met by features they haven’t even thought of before.
My guess is that this design effort won’t net Nokia much more than they already think they know.
For example, how many people in the “crowd” know the difference between capacitative and resistive screens? I don’t off the top of my head. And does knowing the difference mean I automatically know what the pros and cons of each are. And if I have to Google it to fill out a simple poll, you’re diluting your “crowd” into a self-selected subset of engineering nerds (and we all know what design geniuses they are).
And screen size? Most people in the “crowd” wil likely think bigger is better without knowing what the ergonomic and weight tradeoffs of such a choice would be. These are considerations designers would take into account. A “crowd”? Not so much.
And can you imagine what the “crowd” would’ve told Apple four years ago about keypads? Apple struck out on its own here, convinced it could offer a different type of keypad that wouldn’t have won a popularity contest back then but would work, and would allow other design features that contributed to an overall, cohesive design masterpiece, rather than something created from a checklist generated by random polling. Same with secondary buttons. How are regular people expected to know enough to weigh these options?
I’m disturbed by the ways in which the term crowdsourcing is being bandied about these days. Crowds can process or give you data that can help you discover patterns you might not otherwise have seen. But to impute expertise for a very specific task (i.e., product design) stretches crowdsourcing’s promise beyond what it can deliver.
I showed a friend the the Nokia survey and his response was, “You want to know all this? Let me grab my iPhone and I’ll tell you.” ‘Nuff said.
Yah, this Nokia idea is pretty see through. I don’t imagine the info gleaned from these few control handles is even enough to make a clear design choice. It’s kind of like letting the Family Fued survey make tech decisions, that show got cancelled and at least 2 of it’s hosts met untimely ends… nuf said. The real thing is the whole concept of “smartphone.” Okay, it goes online; you can get your email, find stuff on a map, have a library of music and books, but come on, what is there after that? “Handy-level” “ghost-radar” have you browsed through the app-store recently? The whole power behind the so called “smartphone,” which FYI is constantly changing the spelling of words I type to ridiculous things because it thinks I want to spell Niki instead of nokia, (Just say’n) the real power is the Internet. Speed up my network connection! Is that a good enough idea to help any smartphone designers? Oh… Wait… They can’t control that. So nokia or apple or google or whoever pats them selves on the back for delivering some great new piece of technology with proprietery software and features and relegates the whole driving force behind their product to phone companies more interested in blue to orange changes and naming football stadiums then providing high-speed Internet to mobile users. Here’s my user feedback, maybe a “smartphone” designer can use: you are super powerful multi-billion dollar corporations who crush software companies and bloggers who defy your ideals of making people smarter through phone use, stop acting like you live only by the mercy of out dated institutions. Do I need to remind people that AT&T stands for American telephone and TELEGRAPH! You want smarts out of a smartphone? Make it slap somebody everytime they download a dog bark-to-English translator app.