Mon, 07/28/2008 - 16:59
Guest column: Apple's iPhone - almost a decade after Motorola's Taichi
In the latest Interfax guest column, Jonathan Li, managing partner of Asentio Design, shares his experience designing touch screen mobile phones for the Chinese market and his views on the iPhone's success in creating an entire consumer experience. The following is a personal opinion piece by the author. Its publication in no way implies that Interfax shares the views expressed in the article.
- Jonathan Li, managing partner of Asentio Design
Shanghai. July 28. INTERFAX-CHINA - For millions of people, especially in the west, the Treo (launched in 2002) and the iPhone (launched in 2007) are the first touch screen mobile phones they have ever encountered or thought about. They would probably be surprised to hear that the Chinese market has been using touch screen mobile phones since 2000 with at least a hundred models available today.
I came to China in 1999 to design Motorola's first touch screen mobile phone, the A6188 (a.k.a. Taichi). Taichi was designed for the Chinese market with a large touch screen for handwriting input, and no keypad. Born and raised in the United States, I would never have imagined that one day I would live and work in China, let alone design for the Chinese market. Fortunately, Motorola's Beijing research and development team was creating Taichi by integrating their Angbao touch screen pager with the successful L2000, a GSM tri-band phone, and they required a user interface (UI) team.
As we were getting ready to launch Taichi in 2000, Ericsson was also launching their first touch screen phone, the R380, which had a keypad that flipped open to reveal a touch screen. During these early days of touch screen phones, there were no color screens. Instead, you were lucky to get a four "color" display where you had black, gray level 1, gray level 2, and no color. However, we were able to get some basic transitions such as the phone application sliding down from the top of the screen to convey that the phone sat on top of the PIM (personal information management) applications.
A year later, Motorola rolled out an improved Taichi, the A6288, which had a better processor and more PIM applications. However, it was not until the A6388 (aka the 388), which featured a thinner size and sports car-inspired industrial design, that Motorola shipped a large volume of touch screen phones and truly owned the market.
Color screens started to make their appearance in 2002 and Motorola quickly added a 65K color screen to the 388 to extend the life of the model. By this time, we were already working on designs for the next generation of touch screen phones that would eventually result in the A760 (launched in 2003) and the MotoMing (launched in 2006). By 2003, the touch screen mobile phone was very popular and ODM (original design manufacturer) companies such as TechFaith had started producing their own touch screen phones for their customers.
I left Motorola in 2002 to lead the design team at E28, where we created the world's first Linux smart phone, the e2800. Why Linux? Unlike other operating systems such as Windows and Symbian, Linux does not have an obligatory UI layer. As a result, engineering and design teams are able to define the entire UI experience.
Since 2003, color screen, camera, and processor technologies have continued to improve. Mobile phone manufacturers release better hardware as fast as possible in an attempt to grab market share. Unfortunately, since software is much more difficult to develop to a schedule than hardware, UI design requests were often viewed as cosmetic changes and given the lowest priority.
Thanks to the success of Motorola's family of touch screen phones, Chinese manufacturers (using the MTK solution) treated touch screen as a minimum requirement and soon the Chinese market was flooded with low-end touch screen mobiles by 2006. Hiring local and inexperienced design firms, Chinese manufacturers have only been able to copy other designs instead of innovating.
Meanwhile, at the top end of the market, Samsung, LG, and Dopod (aka HTC) were launching various flavors of touch screen phones and user interfaces. With huge design teams, Samsung and LG's UI teams have been able to achieve some nice animations and graphical effects. However, despite a big co-branding play with Prada, neither LG nor Samsung have been able to pull off an iPhone-like success.
Dopod, constrained by Window's OS and UI, created their own UI layer and made a great strategic move to launch their phone (not their first touch screen phone) during the iPhone hype. Thus, while the UI is an important part of iPhone's success, the UI alone is not enough to make a product or a company successful.
Apple is on target to ship 10 million iPhones because it has designed the entire consumer experience. From the initial awareness of the iPhone, to the anticipation created by Apple's savvy marketing team, to the purchase at a beautiful Apple store, to the use (this is where the UI and iTunes comes into play), to the reflection of the experience, Apple has truly created a strong personal experience with its brand and products.
Where it was once difficult to get alpha blending and sexy transitions, today, UI designers have a large palette to work with. But, just because you place an infinite number of colors in front of a painter, you are guaranteed neither a masterpiece nor a business success. It is amazing how far the touch screen and user interface industries have developed in the past ten years.
About the author: Jonathan Li is a managing partner of Asentio Design, the world's first Personal Experience Design studio, where he leads the design strategy and interaction design teams. Previously he was responsible for designing the user interface (UI) for the world's first Linux smart phone as Director of Interaction Design at E28 Ltd. Before joining E28, Li created the UI for the world's first Chinese handwriting recognition phone and led a team to deliver over five successive generations of touch screen smart phones for Motorola. Li holds a Masters degree in Human Factors Product Design from Tufts University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
