Monday 30 August 2010

Distinctive Monday...


So here it goes, the first instalment to this design blog.

This Monday I am going to review a mobile phone that I believe took touch screen devices to a new level. And NO it isn’t the iphone, sure the iphone made touch screen devices iconic and current, but the device I have chosen is the HTC Hero/T-mobile G2 Touch which was released last September in the UK by HTC.

The Hero was a revolutionary Google Android phone that experienced record sales in Android devices. The success of this was mainly due to the new HTC sense integrated into the phone, which took the Android experience to a new level. However, from a design perspective I also believe the phone was so popular due to its distinctive shape and universal features that fitted so well with the new Sense software.

Get to know the Hero.

HTC Sense with Android:
So lets get the software out of the way. HTC sense had its debut on the HTC hero and was described as an innovative alternative to the normal Android platform. It brought an aesthetically pleasing interface that was of universal design with ergonomics as a key motif. This makes the system easy to use, quick and allowed room for dramatic improvements that enhanced the Android interface. Features such as sync contacts with Facebook and the new home screen layout made it easy for users to quickly look at messages, phone calls…you name it through each individual contact. HTC sense also brought in the aspect of complete customization to the operating system and allowed up to 7 home screens. This improvement to the basic android system gave users much more freedom to make the phone feel like their own, using enhanced widgets from HTC and the android market to quickly view pretty much anything the user wanted. These improvements are a good example of how simple improvements to original ideas can make a product sales dramatically increase. The sharp increase in HTC android powered phones after HTC sense came out has made HTC use sense as their unique selling point in all of their android products. Talk about success…

A wonderful picture showing the 7 homescreens of HTC sense. These are all completely customizable giving users choice and enhancing the user experience of the product.


The Shape, size and Form of the Product:
A very distinctive feature of the Hero is its ‘chin’. This design feature makes this phone very recognisable across the world aesthetically. Alongside this, it also brings several benefits to the phone and user experience. The chin orientates itself towards your mouth when you are having a lovely conversation with whoever (or not so lovely conversation with insurance companies, Student finance and other related crap). This orientation makes the microphone within the phone pick up voice much clearer creating better conversation and microphone quality. The most outstanding benefit the chin provides is protection. The chin allows the phone to be put screen side down without the screen ever coming into contact with any surface…clever. This is an impressive design feature incorporated by HTC that prolongs your screen quality from scratches. However the Chin has been very controversial with users, but from a design perspective I believe it is very impressive, hey what do you guys think? Leave a comment below ;)

Picture showing various angles of the Hero, giving you a good idea of the aesthetics of the product. Particularly note the chin feature that gave the product the element of innovation and made it unique.
The shape of the hero is pretty basic to put it bluntly. However basic is not a bad thing and some of the most successful designs come from basic ideas. The shape is based on a general touch screen phone shape that is pretty much…. Big screen, few hard key buttons, and shape the rest of the product around that. However the introduction of the chin makes the phone unique and slight curves around the edges makes the phone very good in the anthropometrics department. The phone fits my hand perfectly in portrait and landscape mode. The materials used in the shell of the product also enhance its experience. HTC used a very strong ABS as the shell that can undertake damage from drops. They also cleverly coated this material in a thin layer of vulcanised rubber. This enhances grip of the product. Another little clever improvement HTC have made using a basic material. The weight of the product is a little on the heavy side for my liking, which pulls down the products ergonomic design. However, the weight also makes the phone feel solid and of good quality in the users hand.


Technology and key features!
Technology is important in product design. A product that will push the market forwards will 8 times out of 10 endorse recent technology. HTC certainly ensured this phone would be up to date with technology at the time of release and the future. The screen is a 3.2-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with 320x480 HVGA resolution. This was a large resolution screen at time of release but this has soon become the normal in touch screen phones. The touch technology is very impressive and still beats most phones released today. It supports haptic feedback, multi-touch and probably the most important feature of the android system…long press. Long press brings a quick way to access pop up menu’s in applications and makes the user experience much easier to use and fast. The screen also has a polytetrafluoroethylene coating that protects the screen from grease marks and scratches. This smart material also allows easy wiping away of any marks by using your jumper basically, easy. Definitely beats flapping around for a ‘screen friendly’ cloth. The phone has a 5.0 megapixel colour camera with auto focus. Although phone cameras are rubbish compared to proper cameras, this camera still beats many phone camera’s today, apart from one thing…NO FLASH….I mean seriously this could have been incorporated into the phones design with some thought….surely. Another feature of the hero that is a very important piece of technology is the Trackball. Although I wouldn’t call this new technology, I think it is a vital feature of the phone as it allows users an alternative way to scroll and navigate their way. Successful products usually give the user the choice of doing something, as this opens up the target market considerably. These are my top technological features of the phone that paved its success. The phone also holds the latest wireless interface making wireless connection easy and effective increasing consumer satisfaction. There are more, but you wouldn’t want to read more of my ramble about technology, but feel free to look it up…. So mooooving on….

Picture showing the Trackball and hardkeys in more detail. The trackball is an important piece of technology that allows the user choice on how they navigate.
The auto focus 5 megapixel flash is a great camera for phone standards. HTC used this technology to keep the camera relevant even now...but where is the flash?!??!
… to the more basic features that also make this phone great. One of the key selling points of the product is the 3.5mm headphone jack implemented into the design. This feature is a universal component that allows hundreds of different products to be plugged into the phone. This opens up the product to many more potential buyers and therefore HTC designers did a wonderful job of introducing this into the phone. The Hero was one of the few phones that had this feature creating a competitive edge… and since then most phones are adopting universal features such as the standard 3.5mm jack. The other feature I also want to give a mention is the USB interface integrated into the software and mainframe of the phone. HTC gave this a multi-use purpose, which once again opens up the target market. Obviously the phone connects to your computer by this way, but more cleverly the USB lead connects to the wall plug making it a charging point. This is also clever from the manufacturers perspective as it saves money as the mould is not as complicated to produce.
The 3.5mm headphone jack is another design feature that appeals to potential users. Millions of people have headphones and other products that fit this. 

The Good Design in a nutshell…
SO Time for a round up session of what is good about the design of this product. The innovation and flare shown in the shape of this product really does impress me. The aesthetics of the phone are brilliant, almost daring, but it is clear HTC wanted to make this phone distinctive, unique and ‘quietly brilliant’ for their new software experience. The sleek look makes the phone modern, almost futuristic enabling it to keep modern with phone fashion over the next few years. HTC sense is also an outstanding development from HTC design team making the ergonomics of the product one of the best. The user experience is absolutely stunning making every task fun, easy and most importantly quick… well relatively. The technology integrated into this product also enhances the user experience and keeps the phone modern and competitive with phones been released today. This phone is also a great example of how simple materials can have a huge difference on the products quality and function. Vulcanised rubber and the polytetrafluoroethylene coating added to previously known materials makes the user have a better relationship with the product as they just make life easier and have significant purposes.


And the Bad Design + my Improvements…
There are several minor improvements I would make to this phone if I personally designed it. I would use more of the space around the edge of the phone by either making the overall size smaller, or by making the screen bigger. This would make the product look sexier in my opinion and would have made the screen size more competitive with phones today. I would also make the ‘geeky bits’ more relevant such as the phones ram, which should have been 512mb instead of 288mb. Again this would make the phones life longer as it would be more competitive and people would not feel the need to get the latest phone with more ram and a bigger screen each time one is released. This personally annoys me how the phone market expands so quickly and a lot of people feel the need to get the latest phone… its just such as waste of materials and manufacturing energy when you can make products have a longer life with slight improvements. Another key improvement is the need of a flash… I am sorry HTC but you could have easily incorporated a flash for the camera. This would have increased sales further more because a lot of people love using camera’s at clubs, parties etc, but at night this camera is virtually useless.
I believe they could have made more use of the space where I have highlighted to make a bigger screen, this would have made it even more competitive with bigger screen phones. I also believe they should have designed a flash that could fit where I have dabbed in orange.

Finally…
SO the HTC Hero is a great piece of product design. It shows how simple improvements to existing designs can make that huge difference on the market. Alongside this it also holds some very distinctive features that are iconic and make the product recognisable. The chin and HTC Sense were probably the most noticeable selling points of the product, especially the latter. HTC designers really proved themselves when they needed to design a phone to launch the most important software the company released last year to go hand in hand with Android. . . BRAVO to them.
The design of the phone has helped the company win several awards including, the stuff awards winner, mobile choice consumer awards ‘phone of the year’, T3 gadget awards ‘phone of the year’ and T3 gadget awards ‘gadget of the year’ for the HTC Hero.

‘A hunch is Creativity trying to tell you something’ – Frank Capra

The HTC Hero.



So there you go, my first detailed design post. What do you guys think of the HTC Hero? Would love to hear from you so comment below. Next week I will do a completely different product with more design related features to write about as I felt this phone had distinctive design features but phones nowadays focus more on the software design so it was quite hard to keep focused on the design of the product… see you soon.
X

2 comments:

  1. What are your thoughts on Blackberry vs. Droid?

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  2. I love android phones, I think they beat Iphone now due to their growth and open source so they can be developed by anyone. Blackberry I have never used, heard they are very good though. So I cant really say a fair opinion on Blackberry vs Droid but i would go for a biased and have to go for droid at the moment... What about you?

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