Eye on the UI: the need to differentiate - page 2

Who owns the UI?

Companies such as TAT and Handmark have built their businesses around working with handset makers and operators on the user interface. TAT CEO Charlotta Falvin claims that her company's offerings sit on 10 percent of all mobile phones out on the market. Falvin said TAT's role in the design of UI is to bridge gaps between the desires and strategies of vendors and operators, a tricky proposition since operators, vendors and independent service providers all want a piece of real estate on the phone--and in consumers' minds.

"Nokia wants it to be a Nokia experience, Vodafone wants it to be a Vodafone experience and Facebook wants it to be a Facebook experience," she said. Success in creating a differentiated UI, however, will not be based around who is the first to market, or who makes the best partnerships, Falvin said, but on "who makes the best experience."

Handmark tries a similar approach. One of its main products is Pocket Express, a cross platform application that gives users access to news, sports, weather, stocks, travel and entertainment applications via a single interface. Wugofski said that the service has 2 million active users.

In general, Wugofski said that the user experience needs to align with the device that it's on and around how that device operates. "Users use lots of different applications," he said. "For your app to be successful on that phone, it generally has to follow the same paradigms [of the phone]."

Following through on that point is even more critical if the UI is going to be used on multiple platforms. The user experience needs to be tailored and optimized for different devices on different platforms. "If you're looking to leverage distribution opportunities that are out in the world today you have to make your service available on lots of different platforms," he said.

Delivering on the UI potential

Wugofski said most of the handset makers he works with are not making major design changes to their platforms, unlike Palm with its new WebOS operating system (which took the company years to develop). Instead, he foresees the top two, three or four handset vendors experimenting with radical UI design changes over the next few years, and then others becoming "fast followers of them."

"We're going to have a period for the next couple of years where people try some things in terms of big user experience design and then we're going to settle down," he said. The reason things will settle down is that most consumers don't like to have to continually adapt to radical changes in their mobile experience.

Nonetheless, what is innovative, what will appeal to consumers, is something that handset makers may find elusive.

"I think it's going to be delivering on the promise that is both complex and intangible," Jackson said. "That's the problem with the UIs. It becomes more of an academic or philosophical [question]."

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