This week Research in Motion announced the Blackberry Bold. I don’t really care too much about the specs, I assume smartphones pretty much do the same thing on top of the basics – email, music, photos, web browsing etc. The two things which count the most for me are design and battery life. I don’t know anything about its battery but this thing looks good:
The early Blackberries did not. I’m sure they functioned perfectly well but it is clear nobody really cared what they looked like. And in the early days it didn’t matter as Blackberries were the only show in town when it came to portable email. More genrally mobile device design has been absolutely shocking. Motorola phones looked ok but the UI is awful, at least it was when I had one and I never went back. Nokia are getting better but still put out some terrible looking devices like the E61 and Prism range.
There is one simple reason for the recent focus on better mobile design: Apple. Jobs-era products are always beautiful and when Apple entered the market they set an exceptionally high standard with the iPhone. People can harp on the lack of 3G which is a dealbreaker for most people in Europe. I would never buy a non-3G smartphone, in fact I doubt whether a smartphone lacking 3G can be described as such but this is a temporary problem. In his keynote announcing the original iPhone Jobs said the stumbling block with 3G was battery life and once they had sorted that out the iPhone would have 3G.
RIM had already started tidying up their act in anticipation of Apple’s entry with the Pearl and Curve. With the Bold they have opted to stick with the keyboard which is the Blackberry’s main distinguishing feature. I think this is a good call, RIM have managed to evolve the design of the Blackberry in a way which has struck a good balance between capturing the sleekness of an iPhone in a device which is still recognisably a Blackberry. If they had gone the whole way to a iPhone style touchscreen they would have lost. When you start to play your opponent’s game you are dead because you can never be the original. A Blackberry without a dinky keyboard is not a Blackberry. The name itself comes from the way the keys make the device look which underlines the importance of design.
Everything flows from good design. The reason facebook is better than MySpace is that it has far superior design. Pages on facebook are clean and uniform whereas MySpace is an eye popping mess. Facebook has deteriorated with the proliferation of external apps leading to attempts by the company to simplify things again. I don’t think there is much mileage in being ‘the new facebook’ but it would be inetresting to see what would happened if someone launched a new social network with a simple design and minimal features.
On our statup we hired a designer before even a developer. When the developers did come on board I emphasised the importance of our design. I wanted it to be stark and different as I think there is no value looking similar to every other website, in startups if you are not radical you are dead. Why would anyone switch to something that is 5% better than the incumbent? Design is not all of this but it is part of it.
The Modernism exhibition at the V&A had a big influence on me, in particular the work of Ladislav Sutnar. When I wrote the design spec for our site it was Sutnar’s influence that I emphasised, in particular the simple shapes and the almost monochrome, sixties look – the banner for this blog is a Sutnar design. The V&A summed up Modernist philosophy as:
Modernists had a utopian desire to create a better world. They believed in technology as the key means to achieve social improvement and in the machine as a symbol of that aspiration. All of these principles were frequently combined with social and political beliefs (largely left-leaning) which held that design and art could, and should, transform society.
I am struck by the paralells between Modernism and web startups. I recognise the tendency of startup founders to proclaim their companies as changing the world. This is rarely true on an individual company level but together we are all part of the patchwork of ideas which make up the web and put together the impact is undeniable both in commerce and beyond.
Barack Obama is rasing more small donations than any other candidate in history to the extent that this is now his main source of funding. This is a far better way than reliance on large corporate donors or state funding. Another example is Kiva which has used the web to connect people in the first world directly to those in the third world. Microfinance is a much more efficent way of redistributing wealth as it makes a direct connection between people and ultimately it is trade, not aid, which will bring an end to poverty. And it is the web which is helping make it happen.
The most interesting iPhone app I have seen so far is one that turns it into a remote for Apple TV. Judging by the activity from Apple and MS in this area both agree that integrating currently separate devices is they way forward. And what better way than to control your TV with your phone. I always wondered why I ended up with six different remotes.
