Design doesn’t matter does it? Well at least not to all.

While checking my daily news and blog sites this morning I came across an interesting and almost comical video previewing the new Spirit Treo Pro cellphone. Well nothing here is really interesting except for witnessing how flawed and backwards the usability is on this thing. The best part of this rather bland video starts at around the 3:20 mark. There is a demonstration of the new IE6 browser for Windows Mobile. Unstable connections, pop up warnings, too many menu options, slow rendering, awkward scrolling, ..etc. Yep it looks like a Windows product to me.

TreoCentral Sprint Treo Pro Unboxing and Hands-on video

I don’t want to get into a PC verses Mac argument here (seriously I really don’t) but I am often baffled by how the Windows community finds this type of trash acceptable. This is Microsoft’s (the industry leaders, the biggest company in the world with the most developers) answer to the iphone OS or the Safari browser?

What is the value of design? The reason the iphone just like the ipod dominates the market is not for what is in the box but for what is not. The reason everything else fails most of the time is because their idea of competing is to add more and more while placing next to no value on design. More features does not equal more value. The true value is usability. Of course Apple could and will add more usable features in future releases of the iphone OS. There is plenty of room for improvements but even as it is now the user experience is enjoyable, unique, and focused. Whether you like or agree with their products or not you can not deny they take the user experience into account almost as top priority. I do not know about you but using IE6 on Windows Mobile does not look much fun. Did anyone from Microsoft even use this thing before it was released into the wild?

I suppose the point of the rant is the value of design is often (or should be) invisible and assuming it has no value if not obvious can really make or break a project. Just having a “feature” is not good enough without design taking a major role in the offering. What is going to separate anyone for the competition is not just about having “things” like the others do but making sure the “things” you do have are done well.

** Note to Microsoft - You might want to start by allowing the name of the application to fit onto the screen if it is so important to have it there in the first place.

“Internet Explore” - man is that lazy.