The iPhone has been out for a couple of weeks now, so apparently that’s been enough time for someone to look into how the new “revolutionary” handset is being used. Chicago-based usability consultancy User Centric, Inc. has announced that it has conducted a test with iPhone customers who purchased the mobile phone on the first day it was released. This study was conducted to identify overall ease-of-use factors and general usability issues among the very motivated early adopters, and see what their experiences were like during the first week of ownership.
“While multi-touch technology has been around for over a decade, the unique form factor of the iPhone is very compelling as it opens the door to a whole new set of user experiences. The first few days after launch spawned reviews of the iPhone, but we wanted to conduct the first independent and objective study with actual iPhone users to separate analyst opinion from the actual everyday user,” said Gavin Lew, Managing Director of User Centric.
The findings suggest that these early adopters were satisfied with the visual voicemail, interface for music playback, and for making and receiving calls. No surprise there. But the study also found that users were somewhat frustrated with text entry SMS, which is also no surprise since the lack of keyboard makes texting a bit of a pain. Likewise, users weren’t happy with the Google map feature or their Web browsing.
This is just the first of such studies that User Centric plans to conduct. What will be really interesting is see how the Mac-faithful adapt to the text messaging and Web browsing. We’ll be watching to see what User Centric reports.
Overall a A- for the iPhone.
Horizontal typing outside of Safari & Flash support inside Safari would raise its grade.
Access to some type of file storage, and upload-ability of files to the net (like to Flickr) would make it a solid A+
Let me say, first off, that I’m not a Mac user. That said, as an iPhone user for almost a week now, my initial opinion has changed dramatically over a few days. At first, I was worried about the interface, and it did in fact seem clunky for some tasks (for the most part, the ones that did not score well in this study).
However, after a few days, I find myself rather proficient at typing, since the keyboard tends to sense what you’re trying to type and autodetects. Once you get used to that and learn to trust it, typing is faster and easier than on any keyboard-equipped phone I’ve ever tried.
As for Google Maps and the Internet, I suppose both would be subject to where your using it. I live in an area that has pretty good service all the time, and I find that the EDGE network, while slower than I’d like it to be, is not nearly as intolerable as I expected from reading reviews. If the network were any slower, though, or spotty for service, I’d understand why that area would fall behind in the study. From what I’ve heard, though, AT&T has been hard at work upgrading it’s EDGE network (which I find ironic since they’re also trying to improve and expand the newer, faster 3G network), so the internet and maps features should hopeully also improve over time.
I’ve had my iPhone for a week and the problem I’m having so far is that I can send text but cannot receive texts outside of the AT&T network…I was on the phone for 2 hours between AT&T and Apple – both of which were blaming each other for the issue which I believe is some network problem since it seems to recognize the iPhone as a landline and not a cell. Frustrating. Not sure if anyone else has had this issue…the Apple store I purchased from had not heard of this as of this week.
I never heard of that either but I have heard that when you type, you have to trust yourself and the keyboard. This apparently raises your accuracy amazingly. I think that any lack of features were purposefully done to make the 2G iPhone a must-have. All of technology works this way. You have to make it a vulnerable invention. If you can’t make it practically obsolete within a few years, then it’s a bad investment.