Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Ease of Use

I was thinking lately about the evolution of the relationship between persons and  desktops and from there to notebooks and now into a new world of tablets and smartphones.  Its amazing how human beings can be adapted to any situation in order to be more productive, competitive or whatever facilitates their lives.

Many factors are contribuiting that the world of desktops and laptops and even netbooks would be part of the history. One key point is the term "ease of use" (EOU). One of the big improvements of smartphone and tablets is the ease of use of doing everything from taking a pic to write an email to connect to internet with just a click or tab. This is based on a EOU approach. A person without any knowledge of computers can do all things without any problem and even more without knowing what is happening from behind.

I would like to put and example on that, if i would like to upload a pic into my facebook account using my laptop or dektop, first i have to take the pic then downloaded into the computer, put it into an especific file folder then go to facebook, check the pic upload option, then look for the pics folder, fin de pic and finally click on upload.  All these can take minutes of my precious time. In other hand with a smart phone or table just take the pic and then go straight to my facebook account, where is phissically the pic ? I really dont care. Objective accomplished.

One conclusion about all these is that software industry needs to face these facts thinking about the final user. Users dont care about proceessing power or storage capacity the only things is the device can do what they want. If a new business models dont consider these facts they will be part of history.

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