3GSM was overwhelming - Any trade show that takes you more then three straight days to walk through is. From system integrators, content providers, enablers, device manufactures - the industry has indeed matured.

Out of the hustle of such a big event, there is one mega trend that I’d like to focus on - the death of the closed garden and the emergence of the smart pipe.

To understand why this is happening I think we need to quickly examine the role of the ‘Garden’ and see how it came to be in the the first place.

Many Internet years ago, when the world wide web had just started reaching mobile devices, when such devices were few, when they were expensive and of with horrible quality of service - mobile operators felt obligated to fill the default Internet home page with mobile adapted content. This, in turn, was supposed to have given users a good enough reason to surf from their mobile. The mobile content market was non existent and there was simply depth for users to find their own content. In addition, the companies providing mobile content were inexperienced and scarce. WAP was a techie buzzword, but all consumers got was a poor and slow experience, very much inferior compared to what they were getting used to on the PC.

Ego was (and still is) another factor. Yes, pure ego. Mobile operator executives believed (some still believe) that the mobile Internet should not be free as the “PC” Internet. The basic “rational” was that since they controlled the ‘gateway’ already they could and should control the content. This attempt is similar to what AOL has done very successfully for a long time - provide your subscribers with a content portal through which most of the content was consumed.

Most users have supposedly basic needs and when information is prearranged for them - they supposedly just use it, many times being unaware of the rich world beyond the fence. In the regular (PC) world it would be unheard of to have your ISP control your content but in the mobile world it became the de-facto reality.

The accumulated result drove many operators to try and develop in-house content divisions whose sole purpose was to fill the portal with content and services. Since part of the problem was the scarcity of the content, this was a necessary evolutionary step for the mobile Internet to develop. Someone had to get the snow ball rolling.

Today, I believe, the snowball has reached its critical mass ad guess what? People want more. Almost all new devices come with Internet connectivity, screen quality is good, connectivity fast/er, mobile content is abundant, mobile applications easy to install, WAP is rich, an open mobile billing ecosystem is in place, there is an understanding that the mobile web is different (more passive then active), services and sites have developed accordingly and most importantly users are getting more sophisticated. They actually know how to reach the web, save bookmarks and change default settings, all in all leading to the maturity level required to change the closed garden model as we know it.

My argument is not that the portal is dead, but that it can no longer be closed. Operators must focus on two major and parallel agendas:

1. Provide users with selected, popular, edgy content through the portal - a good example is mobile TV. Mobile TV broadcast is not mature enough to be outside the portal.

2. open the portal and work hard on partnering / enabling third party, independent, niche content/service providers serve users directly. Let users roam the mobile Internet world and reach places that are far from the portal as could be - and actually promote it. When more users will roam free, the more they will understand how to use it better and increase their data consumption, overall benefiting the mobile operators more then anyone else.
The almost incredulous statement I am making is that there is such a thing as mobile Internet. There isn’t! The mobile device is only a terminal. The Internet is the same Internet only viewed by a different lens. Its the years of indoctrination that have led most people to perceive them as two separate universes.

For several years now I have heard Mobile operator executives fearful of what they call becoming a dumb pipe. I don’t know who invented this word, but the psychological association in it has made the industry paranoid of what can be (and in my mind should be) the modus operandi for making loads of money - and its far from being dumb.

Becoming a pipe that effectively channels content while creating adequate processes for billing, content delivery and quality of service assurance (and a ton of other things) is very sophisticated, far from dumb. Dumb is thinking you rule the world. Smart is understanding your users want more choice then you (as an operator) can ever supply. Happy customers and loyal. That is the focus.

Focusing on loyalty through openness and wide selection of added value service, whether in house or external, is the right challenge ahead. Trying to win ground by holding on to something that is not yours is a battle all ready lost.

      

I am hectically preparing for 3GSM in Barcelona next week. A great venue by all standards. As a presenter, there is a mountain of collateral to prepare - the service overview, the technical white paper, the content provider offering, the mobile operator offering, the stand background, the poster, the this, the that.

So here I am trying to do what most people do before a show and then it strikes me what a waste it all is. We all know but hardly admit that most of these papers will be thrown away or at best looked at very briefly. And what do we do about it? Nothing.

This stupid (sorry, couldn’t find a better word) march of industry clones that exchange papers from one hand to the next and on to the closest waste basket. We often even deliver the paper overseas and back into our offices and then throw it or put it on some shelf to stand there as a silent testimonial “we were there” … but rarely look at it again. The one or two times we do take another look is come preparation time for the next show – then we pick it up and see what interesting ideas we can use for this year’s show – and so the paper parade continues and no-one is shouting that the king has no clothes.

It’s not that the information within is useless, it has some (limited) value. That too is usually filled with empty promises and a stack load of buzzwords. That I could take. But why for heaven’s sake do we need to kill so many trees in the process?

The same info, the same sheets should not leave their original electronic formats. They should stay on websites, PCs, USB drives, you name it – put please do not print it.

We can be very critical of our politicians for not doing enough to save the world BUT WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT in our closed garden? NADA.

I would like to see the first mobile / web / telecom etc. tradeshow pick up the challenge and declare – PRINTABLE MATERIALS ARE BANNED!

Simple and to the point. It will not harm the venue quality, even help it. All these carry-on bags are useless. You want to give me something – tell me where to look it up online, transfer me an electronic file. Anything but paper.

It is we that are destroying the forests in Brazil, not someone else! Its about time we put an end to this killing spree.

Gil Rosen

      

In a recent Podcast I heard in Marketing Voices Jennifer Jones interviews Guy Kawasaki on impact of social media on marketing. At the start of the interview Jennifer and Guy deliberate on the meaning of Social Media and without missing a beat Jennifer defined social media as “… its blogs, wikis, Pod Casts…its literally everything that is Web 3.0…its really communicating socially” . 

Huh?…wasn’t that how we defined web 2.0?. ..and why didn’t Guy stop her and ask if she made a mistake and meant 2.0. This got me thinking. Over the past year or so, after the initial hype and euphoria, everybody felt that web 2.0 was over used.

When it begun, it had almost the same sex appeal as “Je t’aime” (French for I love you)
but now after 2-3 good years of this ‘era’ being around, if you ask five industry professionals if they work in a web 2.0 company they will most likely try to disassociate themselves from this definition and try to find a more concrete one. “Web 2.0 …oh no, we are more of a Peer 2 Peer broadcast video network community” in any case the point is clear – Web 2.0 is cliché’ , its broad, its almost meaningless..

With all due respect to our contemporary Gurus and whom ever else is responsible for this, the name they chose could not have been worse. What does 2.0 means? That its after 1.0? …what was 1.0? how is 1.0 different then 2.0?

This is why its an oxymoron that people who were / are responsible for the 2.0 mistake are now trying to find a new, sexier, more advanced niche name and of all possible options are opting for Web 3.0 as the next buzz name.

Revolutions and wars should be named. Just recently we had a war in Israel and as strange as it may sound (needing a name to the war that is) NOT having one had an adverse effect on top of the natural adverse effects caused by wars - No name to put on memorial tomb stones, inability to refer to it in follow up legislative actions etc. And guess what the result was, they called it the “2nd Lebanon war - or war 2.0. The “Industrial Revolution”, The “Digitization Revolution” , The “ Communist Revolutions” etc. etc. – when you hear the name there is no debate on what the core change / focus was about. Referring to a revolution numerically (2.0) causes the existing “loose ball” confusion.

If the micro cosmos is the Internet, then its revolutions, rather then being referred to as numbers - Web 1.0, web 2.0 etc., should have been named after the core change they brought about - the public network revolution – that was the core benefit, being connected. The WWW is the name of the first revolution. From there the word witnessed the birth of HTML, hyperlinking and the birth of the first GUI browsers and online content and the de-facto accessibility to that content by the lame man. That is the Digital Content Revolution. A mass archive of billions of pages was created in a matter of a few short years and was accessible from anywhere.

However the content revolution was limited in its participation mainly to the enterprises of the technically savvy. Common people did not contribute to most of the web content. The old publishing powers who dominated offline continued to dominate online. Come the User Generated Content phase (also known, in parts, as web 2.0).

The democratization of web power, the massive shift of content generation from the established publishing powers to the individuals. In terms of the ‘history of humanity’ This is just important and the Print Revolution. This is the age where I, Gil Rosen, which represent no one but myself can write these very words and have them read by people in the US, Korea, Australia and Germany – where I know some of our readers come from (Hi ).

Parallel to this, another major shift we are witnessing is also revolutionizing business and social economics. The ability to deliver business applications over the web has decreased significantly the power of the large enterprises who controlled the OS and other core applications and the those who distributed software under mostly draconian terms.

Today, small business can access and use business application over a browser in a very effective pay per usage model with great. The “Empires” of Microsoft, Oracle etc. as we know them, no longer have hegemonic control over how our desktop look like. Small creative companies such as Zoho, 37 Signals and others can reach the masses with very little resources and no international presence.

Because the above two trends – User Generated Content and Software as a Service, have been sitting under web 2.0 - the name has been emptied of its meaning. It can be named “The User Generated Content As well AS the SaaS Revolution” but that would of course be ridiculous. Not less ridiculous is calling it Web 2.0.

Numbers mean nothing. And this is why we dislike web 2.0. because we don’t know what to associate it with.

So with all due respect to the gurus who bestowed 2.0 upon us (and I do really respect them) they made a grave mistake and I don’t see anyone saying anything when the term 3.0 is being thrown around. I would have loved to hear Guy stop the interview us soon as Jennifer mentioned the term web 3.0 and say…”hold on there” as a marketing guru at least I would expect him to say…this name is meaningless…its empty.

Twenty years from now our children will study and analyze what happened during web the 2.0, web 3.0…??!! I hope not. I studied about the Industrial Revolution, the War Of Independence, The Civil War and some others – regardless of whether they brought about wealth or carnage, at leas they had a proper name.

      

iSee thy iphone and iThink
Will my iWallet weather in iBlink

iDream thy iPod iHave will stretch
and into an iPhone will iMiracle create

Hey Steve iHope, iDream thy truth become
iDesire thy iPhone to be my one.

iHope thy wait will be iShort
iPatience can not uphold

Oh thy iPhone what have you done
An iChild and iDiot I have become

When you look at the iPhone, whatever you think about it - one thing can’t be ignored:

THE DESIGN IS NOT JUST THE SURFACE, ITS IN THE TOTALITY OF THE PRODUCT.

Noone can escape that notion. Just like fractals, the closer you look, the more evident the design DNA is.

Take the Motorola razor, the winner of numerous design awards and undoubtedly the phone that saved Motorola. The design of the clam shell is unique, the phone’s dimensions are impressive but when you look beyond the skin its shortcomings are in abundance - Motorola have failed to expand innovative physical design to the other ‘parts’ of the phone. Motorola traditionally deliver one of the worst graphical user interfaces of any mobile phone on the market today. There is a total disconnect between the shell (literally speaking) and the inside.

The revolution that Apple brings to the mobile phone industry is its TOTALITY, and its not ‘clam’ deep.

I sometimes look at the Razor with all its awards and think that Motorola might have fluked it.

Why? because it was inconsistent with anything they did in the past, because ever since they did it, their biggest innovation has been to change its colors, because its all about the clam and not about the GUI. It’s a very good design fluke.

Is the iPhone a fluke?

All of the lame prophets (myself included) of the iPhone imagined an iPod with a keyboard. We took two existing bricks (phone and music player) and imagined how they looked after a head on clash.

Apple’s approach was different. To come up with what we see today there must have been such a revisit to the whole concept of the cell phone, that the WHY’s must have been flying left and right. Why keyboard, why right, left,center key - why, why, why. And when the pieces were put back together (with talent of course) the outcome is as great as the guts it took to do it.

Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and company had more resources and time to focus on phones and yet what we see every year is an iteration on the year before. And when they do come up with something innovative (Razor shape), its good enough for them, they’ll take care of more innovation next year/release/model. They (mostly) treat mobile phones as plastic commodities that need better screen resolution and memory for the next release. in contrast and much like the iTune-iPod symbiotic relationship, iPhone is not only about the inside and out, they planed a whole eco-system.

Apple has yet to prove the iPhone is a big seller, have yet to prove its reliability as a cell phone, have yet to prove their sustainability in the mobile industry - that is in their future. What they have proved is that design and engineering should be and are meant to be one of the same. That separating the two creates less than perfect results.

Design is not king - Design-geneering is.

      

Deadpool, fuckedcompany, bubble bubble bubble…say “natural selection, stupid”
That sums up what I have to say about all this deadpool mania. This start up is closing, the other one is cutting down, the third is cutting costs….”oh my god, the burst is imminent”.

My theory is that if everyone is raising money, hiring, launching successful ventures, making money, listing on the NASDAQ, showing double digit CAGR year after year….Then we are in La La land and the end is probably near.

However, when unsuccessful ventures close down, cut costs or simply loose to a better competitors - that is what I call natural selection. Using Wikipedia, it sounds like this:

“the process by which individual organisms [replace with: companies ] with favorable traits [replace with: features/ service / community] are more likely to survive and reproduce [replace with: spin off / grow / make money/get bought by Google ] than those with unfavorable traits [ replace with: bad execution / unlucky].

Natural selection is healthy. It makes sure that players that are there in the long run are the better ones. It makes sure that the ones that have been around make adjustments to the everchanging enviroment and not sell you the same thing over and over.

So say thank you to all those ‘deadpools’, they made the ones who are still around probably a notch better.

      

Whether it was their intention or not, the “GUI statement” is a defining theme for the new Microsoft spinout social network.

Every flow, from the registration, navigation to the opening of a new window, is different than what you have been used to. For the first few minutes I felt like I landed in widget land. I am not implying this is bad, it just takes a while to adjust to.

A few notes from my brief first impression:

1. Taking a brave GUI direction has its hitches. I once got totally lost in my lateral browsing trip and since there was no traditional use of the browsers’ back and forward keys it was hard to get oriented. I finally pressed “home” and had to guess my way back to someone else’s page. Suggestion - if you are doing an application that is totally based on flash provide a ‘path memory’ or some other type of ‘bread crumb’ mechanism.

2. Free form windows do provide freedom and personalization options that are beyond the boring drag and drop options offered by Netvibes or other me2.0 website around, but in extreme cases there were so many of them (widgets) open that i got dizzy (or maybe I’m getting old).

3. First time run - an often underestimated process was thought of very well, maybe too well. I got to the stage where I wanted to just start and the website still took me by hand from one point to the next.

4. Eco-system - bought myself a nice background for 0.40 Waller cents. I could see this picking up. If Second Life got people buying virtual real estate for money why not here

5. Advertising free environment - in the words of Kozmo Kramer “Its very refreshing..”

6. Question - what’s the plan for mobile? i think all social networks today need to plan for mobile access and interaction. Mobile is part of our life - it needs to be part of my social network.

My recap is as follows:

I have personally been part of many projects that wanted to take a leap, planned a leap, sketched a leap but eventually just didn’t do it. There are always 1000 reason why not - “people are not used to it”, “the CEO doesn’t like it”, “we don’t want to be first”, “its great but lets do the regular version and leave that for future versions (which are never done), “lets do the funky design in a special tab we’ll call “the lab” and on and on - you name it, the excuse exists.

What I really like about Wallop is the guts! The guts to try something new, the guts do to it all the way and not half assed, the guts to leave advertising out and build a whole eco-system/marketplace before they have critical mass, the guts to create a currency (Wallers), translating to the bottom line of the guts to do what you think rocks and go all the way.

To often these days we see great companies that churn out mediocre products because consensus had to be reached up in the management clouds. This could very much have been the reason for spinning out of Microsoft.

Being bold will not however buy you success, just like a party, the success of a social network is not all about the surroundings…but rather “Who’s in da’house” - The setting is great…lets see who they invite.

kudos to Karl, Sean and the rest of the team, this is a rocking start - good luck!

      

Now that we are turning the page on another calender year in the Anno Domini (A.D) era lets not forget where it all started. A spin-off from the established mainstream ‘company’, a small group of renegades, led by a visionary started a bootstrap operation with no VC backing. Using (what we call today) web2.0 viral marketing techniques, the Apostles spread the message to the rest of the world.

2007 years and 2.1 billion users later…An additional ~1.04 million new believers a year, EACH YEAR …. Christianity is the world’s largest religion.
That is a whopping achievement for a once bootstrapping start up from the Holly Land. This multinational organization with branches and believers the world over started with one person, one idea, one passion, one vision, whatever you believe in - that is inspiring.

So to all my Christian friends, readers and to whomever else plans to celebrate this occasion - have a HAPPY NEW YEAR and don’t forget where it all begun

      

Finally…..

Hey, I think they waited so long, now it needs to come out equipped with a camera also. No multimedia device can be without one …hope that won’t delay the plans to 2008

      

I just returned from a four day trip with the family. That is my family, myself and 2.5 suitcases full of unneeded luggage (the notorious “Dump the Closet” system which sucks in mainly woman - you don’t choose what the kids are going to wear so you just bring their closet).

Anyway, I took my 4mpx Canon and the Nokia N73 equipped with a 3.2mpx camera with me. Before this vacation it the thought of leaving the Canon at home was inconceivable. I used to own a Sony Eriscsson with a 2mpx camera, which was very cool, but not nearly a real camera. Pictures were OK but once less then optimal lighting conditions set in the quality diminished quickly.

Not so with the N73.

When you say “camera phone”, you usually don’t mean a camera but a phone with a cool add-on. With the N73 this is not the case. Equipped with 1G memory card, I took 10’s of photos, a few short videos and came back a happy camper. The Canon didn’t even leave the hotel room. You can always use Picasa or Photoshop to apply your own special touch, but its really not necessary. Look at the below…honestly…does it look like a phone took that photo?

Press photo to see larger version

The N73 and the SonyErricson k800i make an important mark in the age of convergence. A Camera Phone (CP) TURN to Camera and a Phone (CAAP). The AA nuance is not trivial. This means I will probably not upgrade my 4mpx Canon rather prefer an upgraded release of any CAAP that will be equipped with a better lens. True - camera’s are not dead but pocket cameras are dying. For us, casual snappers that fill our Picasa / Flickr web albums with loads of senseless family, friends, you name it moments….a CAAP generation will be the obvious choice.

Now where do I see the regular digital camera market going? First of all it’s about innovation. A wi-fi phone, a super slim phone (that doesn’t hurt lens quality) Anything to make it super cool and worthy of carrying it alongside my CAAP. I can imagine more JV’s in the likes of SonyErricson - A NokiaNikon etc. is not something that would surprise me. In the same way the iPod has to be equipped with a 20G-40G memory for me to consider it over my …once again phone. Here too the manufactures will have to keep on their toes and provide extra value over an above a developing CAAP category.

Whichever way you look at it…the chasm has been crossed. Long live the CAAPs….

      

I can’t explain the EXACT reason for writing this post NOW but I’ve had it with the Beta label abuse. Beta used to have a meaning, it marked the beginning of something. It set your expectation level, gave a good young company a break. Actually, I do know…I read the completely uninteresting post in techcrunch about google’s new employee stock option plan …yada…yada…yada….what it made me realize is that “Hey….you ain’t no start up anymore…”.

I run a start up…I have a less the 20 people on board…I am scrambling for funds, when we release a version, its a beta. But google…???…sorry…GOOG, your all grown up now. Yes, you are super cool and your apps rock!…I love gmail, gtalk, calander, picasa…the lot, really BUT please do me a favour, if Gmail is beta…then my first release is preAlpha. There isn’t a letter in the Greek alphabet to describe the stage I’m at with my service if Gmail…a 2 year old (even more) or Google news are still Beta’s. Be brave Google…don’t worry, I will hold your hand…move on (and don’t give me some sh@@#$ about it being a legal reason)
Let me and the other young, new, rough entrepreneurs and our new ‘failing services’ reclaim the beta badge for real. And when we are all grown and mature I promise to move on. Honestly I will…within two years or an IPO …whichever comes first

      

For me, as a marketer, the words “Chaotic” and “Marketing” must not be juxtaposed. I like to quote Drew Neisser of Renegade Marketing’s mantra, which is “know thy target audience”. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that spreading your message in a chaotic manner can not be good marketing practice.

However, an article I read today in the NY Times, “Hottest Ad Space in Times Square May Be on Tourists’ Cameras“, suggests the opposite - that we are at the dawn of a Chaotic Marketing era. Let me quickly recap the essence of the article:

The sequence goes like this:1. Times square has become hot property for event marketing (A.K.A - offline marketing)

2. The zillions of tourists that roam Times Square take pictures and videos

3. Vids, pics and ‘experiences’ get blogged, posted on the “Flickrs” and “YouTubes” Etc.

4. Off line Ad/Event exposure is magnified exponentially to the online audience.

As a general “awareness trick”, this sounds like a brilliant way to get the biggest “bang for your buck” for your advertising dollars. You can also acquire “cool” status for doing unconventional stuff…but is it?? Would an advertiser dare insert a TV ad without selecting the placement? Would an advertiser let a random computer program decide that a beer commercial is to be aired in the morning, in between “Days of our Life” and “Seaseme Street”?? Or in short, can marketing be Chaotic and still be successful?. Why do brands accept chaotic placement when it comes to the Internet when this rule does not apply to other mediums? Are the basic physics of marketing being bent by the new reality of social media?

I don’t believe there is a clear answer yet. We are witnessing many marketing experiments with unclear results. So what if a 14 year old person in the UK saw a clip on YouTube of the MasterCard event - is it relevant?. Will the brand be planted in his subconscious only to come of age later? Was this the audience the marketers were expecting? The audience they pitched for during budget time? Does anybody know the identity of the the online video audience in the first place? The answer is NO - NO and NO.

So why do it…is it really that pointless? The answer is NO!

What we are witnessing is the evolution of social media. The brave few ‘freaks of nature’ that defy conventional marketing and do these “senseless act of marketing” are the ones that are helping shape our future. No less. By spending a few random dollars they are participating in the biggest human social experiment called ’social media’, where the audience is not measured by a ‘people meter’, Nielsen or any other skewed system and where the media belong to the individual. After all, how can you explain the fact they are encouraging people to take pictures of their brand despite the risk of having them posted who knows where?

They are not risking but joining. The social media revolution is happening with or without brands. These brave experiments are just attempts to join the ride. In the long run - these will not be the rules… remember…evolution…this is just a phase. Future marketers in the same space, doing similar things will know much better about the effect of their campaigns. They will know exactly who did what, when and how. A whole eco-system of technology comps and services will catch up and be ready to service them.

A case in point is a very interesting start-up called Collactive that is spear-heading the space of social media marketing. If you are a marketer you should check them out. Like them, many other companies will follow and with the help of technology order will be restored to the marketing space.

‘Cause if you ain’t superman, you ain’t breaking no laws of physics!

      

When I first Techerd (“TechCrunch read”…I techerd..u techer…did you techer?…) about Like.com launch a few weeks ago I was really intrigued. The service, powered by Riya, was described as “.. the first true visual search engine, where the contents of photos are used to search and retrieve similar items”.

Now this is not a post about investigative journalism. I happen to be intrigued as this coincided with my bi-annual search for my next watch. Sometimes this is just a fantasy search and sometimes real - a fact only other watch freaks will identify with. In any case, the search was on. The borders of this search were wide – off and online. From regular stores, through ebay, amazon and onto any place I could find something new and original to satisfy “DA’crave” (this time - large dial, vintage looking dive watches). So here comes like.com and provides me with an opportunity to genuinely test innovative search technology when all I have in my mind is a fixation for large dial, vintage dive watches. Go figure. But if you think of a Like.com real life scenario, this is a great way to start.

What you need when you search Like.com are visual anchors, in my case the likes are Vintage Omega or Panerai. All I can say is that the search was magical. The first big difference I noticed, and this is where innovative technology provides exciting results, is the fact I found watches and brands I would never have found otherwise. A kind of lateral journey that takes you to places you never visited, thus providing the true added value of internet search.

You start with the original visual anchor and get a ‘should be improved interface’. You then point to point to visual features that generate further search results. As a sidenote, Like.com can definitely invest more in usability. It starts easy and gets complicated – too many tuning dials and radio buttons to select from. Imagine searching in Google but always seeing the advanced search fields. Overkill. Keep a clean interface, provide the main visual search tool and hide the rest. But since it is an alpha, I let go. When come the gamma …I won’t (why doesn’t anyone launch a gamma?? :/ ).

Without that simplifying mass market appeal will be low and Like.com will be positioned as a high end search engine – and that’s too bad because it’s not. For most people on the planet (homo sapiens at least) visual search is as natural if not more natural then contextual.

Bottom line - Like.com is a clear winner. As a user I expect to use it more and more and let other people know about it because its very useful. In the context of the ‘industry’ I expect some interesting things to come. I see Google or Yahoo munching this small company up before their niche market hits the masses. Good luck and thanks for the ride.

      

Still under the influence of the 2006 Usability Day, I want to make a case in point about the importance of usability and how it effects us throughout our life. Last week my car broke down and it got temporarily replaced with a Mazda. Below you can see two photos of the car’s dashboard - during the day and night.

As you can notice, the Mazda designers thought an all red panel would make it look really cool. If the color luminescent blue is taken by the Germans then “lets use red”. The result may look nice (if you are into red) but from a usability standpoint - pure hell!. In my case, new car & unfamiliar buttons, this was impossible:

1. I want to turn the volume up - its the round red button

2. I want to manually change channel - its the round red button

3. I want to turn up the heat - its the round red button. I want to turn up the heat just a tad- turn towards the red light …no indication when to stop (button rotates forever), Turn heat heat down - turn towards the red light…you get the point.

4. I want change to preset station - its the red button again. Which one? Guess and find out.

5. Change to CD - that’s right…. its the red button

Wherever you look, whatever you want to do, RED RED RED….all cluttered nice and cosy like one big happy family.

The problem which made it worse is the fact that I wear glasses for night driving. This means that anything I look at below the ‘frame line’ I see fuzzy - unless of course I tilt my head down, which you don’t want to do while driving.

Here is a short run of what I would expect:

1. Make use of conventional graphics / icons and make them big enough to comprehend with a quick glance

2. Use different colors to indicate different functions (the classic blue to red to indicate moving from cold to hot air)

3. BIG FONT!

4. Make some kind of hierarchy decision - highlight what is important and don’t give every bottom the same level of visibility. After all, I change channels WAY MORE than set the clock –> why is the time setting button the closest to me?

Cars, websites or other digital applications…its all the same - hierarchy, core and context, create flows, think of the real life scenarios…make it simple, let users test…let users test….

What perplexes me is that a huge car manufacturer like Mazda can produce such a result. Didn’t they give anyone other then themselves a chance to test night driving?? I bet my money that I’m not unique and that more than 5 out of 10 people would say the same.

Bottom line - Mazda’s red dash is a usability RED hell.