Unpack a Mac
by Alex Horstmann | 11 Apr 2007 | Permalink |
Macarati, User Experience
I have to say, I think that I may be hooked! Even after I had bought my Mac and I was waiting it for it be designed in California, manufactured in Shanghai and assembled in Cork and shipped to me I was having moments where I was wondering if I was doing the right thing. But then it arrived…
It was as if I had reverted back to my childhood opening up a new box of Lego. Like Lego, Apple seems to have put thought into the packaging of their merchandise. Not only have they excelled in industrial design when it comes to their products but they have also designed their packaging to compliment the product.Just like the interface to a piece of software, the packaging of the Mac sets the tone for what the new owner should expect from their new purchase. Top quality and well designed packaging says “prepare yourself – what’s inside is even better”. As long as the product lives up to the expectation set by the packaging, then a winning combination has been achieved. It worked for me. I was impressed with the packaging and what was inside has impressed me more.
Perhaps an analogy can be drawn to UIs here. They are the wrapping around an application. If a user is presented with an easy to use UI then they are going to trust the software that they are using. If the UI is cumbersome and hard to use, the person trying to extract data from it will be more sceptical of the results.
Making the UI usable from the very start of the user experience is the key, in my opinion. There is little point in having fantastically thought out wizards if the user has difficulty in finding the wizard in the first place! A shabbily wrapped product shouts poor quality, software with a badly designed UI does the same for software.
Apple takes time to design their packaging (and their UIs for that matter!) and UIs in software take time to design and even more to develop correctly. In an “agile” world that’s hard to do, but not impossible. Scott Ambler outlines one possible approach here, and discussions on the Agile Usability Yahoo! Group indicates that User Centered Design (UCD) and Agile Methodologies may not be incompatible.
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