The cult of consumerisation
Friday, February 3rd, 2006Internet Explorer Beta 2 was released for review recently, and like Windows XP before it, it got a default mickey-mouse theme, with giant icons and completely different UI conventions from the business software that windows always has. With Windows XP though, it’s a few simple clicks and you’re straight back to the classic simple, professional view, IE 7 doesn’t have that capability, in fact in the classic view the new UI looks absolutely awful, I simply couldn’t find out how to work the thing, please MS don’t forget some people use the browser as a business tool.
The simplification and consumer focus is possibly a good idea, there’s certainly a market there that needs to be met, Windows Media Player is a consumer application so looking like it just fell off of the disney channel is perhaps not a bad thing, the browser though isn’t so simply a consumer application, it’s used daily on intranets by professional users, changing UI’s are a dangerous thing, simplified UI’s are simply not what this group need, they want consistency with their other applications. I fear it may be that Excel will have a nice mickey-mouse UI that forces existing users to completely re-learn their workflows. I fear this is purely a desire for the UI to look cool, completely ignoring the actual users.
This same problem has hit notebooks, it’s almost impossible to buy a laptop now that doesn’t have a widescreen, covered in logos and looking space age. To me these look completely unprofessional - a widescreen is only useful for watching DVD’s on - word documents, web pages etc. are portrait, minimising height is not helpful here. I would feel very uncomfortable walking into a pitch carrying one of these laptops, the only laptop I would comfortable with is of course the ThinkPad, but if lenovo decides to follow this consumerist targetting since leaving IBM, I’ll have nothing at all, and I might as well walk into meetings with the full mickey mouse ears and hope people can see the message behind the presentation.
Despite everyone on the web talking about the “long tail…” what actually is happening is everyone is chasing the biggest market - the consumer market. I recently needed a USB hub, they all were covered in bright flashy lights and big colourful buttons and … they simply weren’t something I could bring out next to the nice professional looking RFID readers they were going to sit next too.
Maybe I’m wrong and no-one makes judgements in the first moments of meeting you, perhaps it is purely the message and the presentation is immaterial, but I fear it’s not, and without the right presentation, I feel uncomfortable.
People, please don’t forget the professional user as you try to make your product more appealing to the incidental consumer - certainly there are more sales for the consumer, but the professional will pay more, and is much more likely to be loyal and upgrade more often. Don’t forget the professional, please!