User Expectations

This fastcompany article is an interesting writeup of the expectations of users today.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665491/what-the-jawbone-ups-failures-tell-you-about-ui-design

This is a review of a product (a wristband and smartphone app that track your wellness) that has spots of brilliance interrupted by transitions of annoyance. Follow his progression:

· The wristband itself is superbly designed

o track how much you’re walking, exercising, or sleeping; upload data to the app,

· The software is too buggy and confusing, the user experience too unresolved.

· The wristband, which has a speaker jack clearly hidden on one end, has to be plugged into your phone every time you want to refresh your data. (Why no Bluetooth?)

· Imagine if the wristband was constantly communicating data to your phone.

· introduces just enough friction into the process that it never quite integrates seamlessly into your routines

· Simply having to take the wristband off, uncap the end piece, plug it into your phone, load up the UP app, and then have it synch means that it becomes another chore

· we are approaching a point where if something matters to your life, it’s on your smartphone

· (On a smartphone) The apps themselves are stripped down to their functional essence, so even though they’re always present, it doesn’t feel like any of them are claiming more attention than we want to give.

· there’s too many paths for ultimately doing the same thing. You can go around in circles on the thing, and that quickly becomes exhausting

· it leaves you this constant nagging worry that no UI should ever create: Am I doing this the right way? You feel lost, in a very high-tech manner.

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