Interactive products are very interesting and highly innovative products that are enticing to the market especially now in the changing world where most people demand for products that is sophisticated yet with the easiness and convenience of using it.  Thus, the interaction design of the interactive products are pivotal as it creates a representational dialogue between the people or the users and the intelligent products.  As the evolution of technologically driven products has recently become more complicated but gaining support in the marketplace and acceptance from the users.  Interaction designers with capabilities to innovate and redefine the features of these mini powerful interactive products that would cater to the many disparate people who have diverse taste and preferences.  As the number of people wanting this interactive products increases, interactive products on one hand, have become a lot more functional and operable.  Additionally, equipping it with more features, functionality, and capabilities.  Moreover, the success of interactive products in the marketplace depends on the three factors namely, the design of high-quality, engaging interactive experiences and good interaction design.


In this paper, we would be exploring two interactive products hardware, one that is greatly designed and the other one as badly designed.  Along with the brief analysis and description of its hardware aspect, an explanation of what makes it good or not good, the usability principles and the drawing of conclusions that would be based on the assessment and the analysis of the good and bad interactive products.  For the well-designed interactive product, iPod would serve to be a great example, as it is loaded with great features and user-friendly interface and the hard to resist design which makes it very pleasing and popular.  On the other hand, the badly designed interactive product is a mobile unit from nokia and that is N3650.


 


The Ipod 60 GB model


 


Description:


For people who need to have a dose of their favorite music and videos everyday, instead of buying two interactive products, all can be found in an iPod 60GB model from the makers of Apple Computer.  Indeed, an interactive product that has successfully incorporates both sound and vision into one amazing gizmo. Not only does it come up with innovative design but it gets rid of the bulkiness and come up with a slim design that surely is appealing and in fact, emulated by some competitors to their products.  The hardware input and output components of an iPod dock connectors, 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack, an audio and video output and the s-video output.  With the size having a height of 4.1 inches, width of 2.4 inches, depth of 0.55 inches and a weight of only 5.5 oz, an iPod spells handiness. 


Analysis:


 


An iPod equipped with a stylish Apple Click wheel makes accessibility a lot easier as one can browse on the entire music, photo and video library features of the gizmo with just from one thumb makes it a well-designed product that suits the taste of the people.  In terms of learnability, despite of the fact of its sophistication yet simplified accessibility for the user makes the iPod very learnable, even without going to the fuzz of learning everything in the manual.  The speed, accuracy and memorability aspects of usability is reinforcing for the users since learnability aspect is easy and can be readily gratified.  Moreover, with the first four aspect of usability being gratified, the level of satisfaction for that matter would likely increase.


 


Conclusions:


 


            The impact of iPod in the market creates and provide alternative means for the people to enjoy both music and videos altogether with a style.  iPod’s design, innovative features and the easiness of browsing and making use of the gadget, seemingly does not need improvements anymore. Although, the constant redefinition of its functionalities and the operability, would make the iPod product stay long in the market.


 


The N3650


Description:


            Nokia being the most preferred mobile phones makers for some time is known to bring out innovative line of phone models.  However, with the tough competitors around producing their own innovative and stylish phone models  it is really hard to tell if Nokia still is the most preferable brand.  The N3650 of Nokia packed with features such as an integrated video recorder, player and camera, among the first to offer the MMS, wireless technology devices such as bluetooth, triband, and so on, are innovative features that people can indulge into.  Nevertheless, the design of Nokia with its bulkiness, makes it not interesting for the people who prefers to have smaller enhanced mobile phones compare than that of bringing a phone that cannot fit in to the jeans with small pockets.


Analysis:


            N3650 did not make it big to the market because of its bulky design and discouraging keypads which makes the model badly designed.  Discouraging in a sense that the letters are far from each other making the manipulation less interesting, especially in the composition of an SMS.  With the uninteresting look of the keypads and the distant keys makes the browsing quite difficult particularly for the inexperienced users.  The learnability of the phone is not that easy because of its complexities there is an obvious need to go through with the manual.  Further, the speed and accuracy would be limited to a minimum of the fact that the keys are distant from each other.  Likewise, the memorability would be susceptible to forgetting since the learnability as what has been stated is not easy.  Lastly, the level of satisfaction aspect would likely be low.  Low satisfaction because with the degree of difficulty in the learning aspect combined with the minimality in speed and accuracy makes the users less satified with the product.


Conclusion:


The point of interactive designers of Nokia is to produce a design that is innovative but with the distant keys, which may at first be attracting because of its uniqueness, would in the long-run makes it less interesting.  In fact, as Nokia sense the unattractiveness of the distant keys, they follow-up the N3650 with an N3660 that has improved design and keypad.  People would always prefer handiness in the design of the interactive products and demands for easiness  in the operability.  Therefore, the design of N3650 makes it discouraging even if it been equipped with innovative features.



Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com


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