Orchestrated user experience...

I have a lot of time for Barbara Ballard. She understands UI issues well. I couldn't agree more with her recent lament about disjointed mobile user experiences:

"And Sprint does not do particularly well, as written by many bloggers recently, in no small part because Sprint’s decisions are frequently dominated by which potential provider makes the best promises. The user experience team is brought in after the supplier relationship and requirements have been finalized. Device manufacturers are not much better. Decisions are made on cost and speed of implementation, and not full user experience."

I don't agree with "requirements have been finalized", although I guess it's a matter of definition. For some, merely expressing the need in a slide for a service is a complete statement of requirements.

An orchestrated user experience seems to be bottom of the list in most mobile services projects. What is seldom appreciated is how critical orchestration is to service adoption, usage and therefore revenue. It's like saying we need a speedometer and a fuel guage to build a car and then sticking the fuel guage in the boot (trunk) because it's easier to put it near the fuel tank. Of course it works, but it's damn inconvenient and frustrating. This example sounds so stupid, right? Believe me - this kind of dissonance exists in many mobile services teams.

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Tags: mobile, mobile UI, service orchestration, usability