Android to Focus on “The Experience”

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Android to Focus on “The Experience”

Posted by Zealot on Jun 16, 2010

This post was published 1 year 11 months 8 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.

Michael Arrington is reporting at TechCrunch that he has heard from several Google insiders that the powers that be at Google are not happy with all of these proprietary skins created by vendors to run over Android, such as Motoblur and Sense. It seems they feel that the UIs slow down the device and just don’t show it off properly.

However, these same insiders admit that, typical of a company founded and run by engineers, the focus from day one with Android has been the feature set, not the UI or as some call it, the “User Experience”. Vendors feel the need to skin Android because without the fancy bells and whistles, they fear it wouldn’t stand a chance against iOS or the newly consumerized Windows Phone 7.

Apparently that “engineerz RULE” concept at Google is changing. They say that Google is happy with the current feature set of Android and will focus most of the R&D for awhile on the User Experience, to make all this skinning unnecessary. A big push is underway to massively improve the Android UI for the release after Froyo, called Gingerbread.

It seems to me that recent moves by Google would support this change of mindset, or at least the DESIRE to change the mindset. After all, they headhunted UI design expert Matias Duarte away from Palm. Duarte is credited with creating the User Experience for the Palm Pre and webOS. Before that he created the Hiptop UI for Danger which is regarded as a watershed moment in mobile phones and was the predecessor to the Sidekick phones. He also designed the UI for the now defunct but somewhat legendary Helio phones.

His hire would make perfect sense if Goggle is really intending to focus on the User Experience in coming releases. If anyone can shake up the look and feel of Android, it is Duarte (or J Allard, but he really isn’t a phone guy). The question is how Google’s engineer driven culture will deal with him, and if they will allow Duarte the freedom to make the changes that are needed. If he clashes with the current culture the way Allard clashed with the sales-focused culture at Microsoft, that could end up being one nasty batch of Gingerbread.

Stay tuned, this sounds like it will get interesting.

Tagged with Gingerbread, User Experience

Zealot (839 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, HP Mini 311, iPod Touch 3G, iPad 16G or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Wil Wheaton!).

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http://www.productiveorganizer.com Kyith

i think i can really do without sense ui. i would rather use the base ui and these sense ui just slow down the phone.

also the ui kit probably dun look as fancy compare to wp7 and ios4
http://twitter.com/mobilitysite/status/16336497686 mobilitysite

Posted: Android to Focus on “The Experience” http://bit.ly/bCQKzo
http://www.productiveorganizer.com Kyith

i think i can really do without sense ui. i would rather use the base ui and these sense ui just slow down the phone.

also the ui kit probably dun look as fancy compare to wp7 and ios4
http://timbrydges.com/121/the-unselfish-marketer-membership-site-update/ The Unselfish Marketer Membership Site Update | Tim Brydges

[...] Android to Focus on “The Experience” | Mobility Site [...]
http://www.svpocketpc.com Pony99CA

What Google (and Microsoft with Windows Phone 7) are forgetting is that OEMs want to differentiate their products from the competition. A custom UI does that. Without that, you have to differentiate with hardware (but with a high minimum spec, there may not be much room there) or applications (but many people call pre-installed applications “bloatware”).

Another advantage of a propriety UI spread across platforms is that you can keep people wanting to use your phones even if they switch platforms. So somebody used to TouchFlo or Sense on Windows Mobile who is switching to Android might be more likely to choose an HTC phone with Sense on it. If developers can actually write Sense UI applications, that can buy even more lock in.

As long as it's easy to turn the custom UI off and revert to the standard OS, I don't have a problem with them.

Steve
http://www.svpocketpc.com Pony99CA

What Google (and Microsoft with Windows Phone 7) are forgetting is that OEMs want to differentiate their products from the competition. A custom UI does that. Without that, you have to differentiate with hardware (but with a high minimum spec, there may not be much room there) or applications (but many people call pre-installed applications “bloatware”).

Another advantage of a propriety UI spread across platforms is that you can keep people wanting to use your phones even if they switch platforms. So somebody used to TouchFlo or Sense on Windows Mobile who is switching to Android might be more likely to choose an HTC phone with Sense on it. If developers can actually write Sense UI applications, that can buy even more lock in.

As long as it's easy to turn the custom UI off and revert to the standard OS, I don't have a problem with them.

Steve
http://www.google.com/profiles/116333709033748211378 doogald

That is, of course, the issue with HTC Sense on Android – you cannot truly turn it off. You can choose a different Home launcher, but Sense is far more than the launcher – HTC has customized the People app, the Photo viewer, the Browser, the Messaging app, and the Dialer, just to name a few – and they do not give you stock alternatives to these, and Google does not provide them as apps that you can install.

Android to Focus on “The Experience”

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