Before the iPhone was introduced, almost all mobile phones offered more or less the same functionality and utility. Aside Apple’s marketing prowess that ignited a huge demand, what distinguished the iPhone from the pack was its rich user experience. Similarly, in order to be competitive, applications, of all kinds, must nowadays go beyond their mere functionality, utility, usability, and efficiency. They must become brandable and desirable. Starting with trust, desire turns into loyalty, which can quickly morph into advocacy which is a key indicator of long term customer value and retention.
For the longest time, the usability world was divided into two extremist camps – those who think with their left brain (developers from Mars) who produce efficient but unusable and ugly applications, and those who think with their right brain (designers from Venus) who thought that the web was created to showcase their artwork. Currently, users are demanding new computing paradigms and expecting that their applications mimic their world by adapting to their needs instead of them tolerating the idiosyncrasies of an application.
The World Wide Web started as a communication platform, morphed into a publishing platform, and evolved to become an application platform. The reasons for the success of the browser are obvious: standard interface, global access from anywhere, easy deployment, easy maintenance, easy to use, and no training required. The biggest disadvantage of the browser is the limitations of HTML and its inability to offer the richness of desktop applications.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario