Apple iPhone, Personas, and Matthew-centred design

I drove up to Sydney from Canberra this weekend with a few friends to see Sun Tzu’s Art of War by the Sydney Theatre Company. We all had iPods, and the car stereo had a handy 2.5mm stereo jack, so we went through everyone’s play lists at various times to pass the time.

Pippa, who had a nice black glossy iPod, mentioned she was intending on buying the new iPhone when it came out. Now that it’s out, and the reviews are flodding in, I’m wondering whether or not to replace my old Motorola Razr.

Don’t get me wrong — I love my Razr:

• It’s small — only 14mm thick
• It only weighs 97g (3.42oz) so it fits in my suit pockets without bulking them up
• The bluetooth is good enough for me to plug in my tiny Plantronics 640 headset and walk around most of the house without it disconnecting
• The voice dial is handy in the car
• It does sync with Outlook (most of the time)
• It plays MP3s (even as ring tones)
• Even after several years it still looks cool

…but my Razr:

• Doesn’t have a good enough camera. And since I own a Nikon D70s — which is too large to carry around in my pocket — having a spare light-weight camera handy is starting to be of some importance to me
• Doesn’t have any external media slots, so moving files on and off through the USB port is impossible without special software. The storage space is also very small. If I can have 8GB on my thumbdrive why can’t I have that and more on my phone?!
• Can’t play or record video (it has the first generation firmware) and even if I could, the screen is just way too small to be of any use.
• Isn’t easy to use when it comes to browsing the web — even with Opera mobile installed

I’ve been thinking about the iPhone ever since Stephen Collins began to wave his arms excitedly about it. It looks cool, but will it meet my needs?

As an information architect, user-centred design is the philosophy on which alot of my work is based. It suggests that users needs and wants are important in working out how something should look, feel, and work. Does the iPhone meet my needs?

Personas are a great tool for understanding and documenting users’ needs, particularly since business requirements, programme requirements, and organisational drivers don’t necesarily cover user-needs at the sort of level shown below. Applying this technique is also a way of “eating my own dog food“: that is, using Personas as a way of understanding what my own needs and working out whether or not the iPhone is the right choice of phone for me.

Matthew (Male, Australian) is a 30-something management consultant who works primarily in the area of Information Architecture. He spends a lot of time on the phone — talking to clients, to other consultants, and to his friends — so purchasing the right phone is very important for him.From a mobile phone, Matthew wants:

• it to be lightweight enough to carry in his suit pockets without the ‘buldge’ effect
• it to have hands-free modes and voice-dialing, particularly for use when driving
• good battery life and to be able to replace the battery when it shows signs of dying
• to be able to easily store information on it in the same way he uses his USB thumbdrive
• to easily store appointments and calendar events
• to have synchronisation between his Outlook (and other) calendars and contacts
• to store and listen to music (all 30+ GB of MP3s)
• to use MP3s for ringtones
• to store and watch DIVX video (of which he has a lot of at home) when he’s waiting at airports
• a good camera to use on-the-run when he doesn’t have his Nikon D70 handy
• to have a friendly web browser (like Opera for mobile phones) for checking simple things like movie times
• a product that looks cool

If we were managing a business and were looking for a phone for for employees we’d probably make a list of business needs (good phone, quad-band, robust, multi-purpose, etc), determine whether the iPhone meets those criteria, and then roll them out to your workers — I don’t think workers would complain if they got one of these.

I think, though, that if you wrote out Personas for typical workers, you’d probably find a whole bunch of needs outside of the business requirements, that wouldn’t be met with the iPhone solution. This is something that I find on a daily basis — business needs don’t necesarily correspond to users’ needs. A good BA will know this. Part of an IAs job is to document these needs (often as Personas) and ensure that part of the design and end-product takes these things into consideration.

I don’t know what I would design as a phone (there’s probably a blog post in there!), but putting my needs in terms of Personas shows that the iPhone won’t meet some of my wants and needs (if in doubt, check these needs aganst Wikipedia entry on the iPhone for its technical specs).

If you know of a phone that will meet my needs then please let me know. In the mean time, I’ll settle with using my Razr.

M