Products & Services
Nokia Email: Visions of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and graceful swans
By Mike on 18 September 2008
GLOBAL – In early August we spoke to Boston-based Andrew Mahon, one of the key people responsible for Nokia Email beta, to get an inside perspective on it and where it’s headed. Since then we also caught up with Tommi Vilkamo, the driving force behind Beta Labs, to get an interesting lowdown on the future of Nokia’s open R&D feedback service. So it’s great to see the collaboration between the Nokia Email team and Beta Labs continues to flourish away from the pure feedback facility, with Davis Fields this week posting heaps of handy tips for the app on the Beta Labs blog for anyone to soak up.
What’s clear from the post is that Nokia Email has some hidden depths. Which also opens up a bunch of interesting questions…
Now, on reading David Fields’ wealth of tips for Nokia Email, I couldn’t help but experience a little Jekyll and Hyde moment – “Wow, that’s a lot of cool tips, I’ll try those” and “Oh no, I’m not sure if I can be bothered with learning all those shortcuts and remembering all that stuff”.
See, Nokia Email is just one example of how an application and service has a huge array of levels and breadth of features, depending on how far you want to delve in. But how deep should developers go when it comes to mobile apps? And how far do we want to delve as the people using them?
If we only dip into a fraction of the talents available from full-blown desktop apps, surely we never really get out of the shallow end when it comes to mobile software. So as we inevitably only digest mobile apps in quick bite-size chunks, should the creators focus wholeheartedly on keeping the features on the surface utterly intuitive and most prominent, sacrificing depth for simplicity? Is that a given, or should it be a balance between the two – that swan analogy comes to mind, where it gracefully glides across the water while the legs paddle furiously beneath.
What do you think?
Related posts:
- New era of Nokia Beta Labs begins
- Best of 2008 in Services – Mobile email and Mail on Ovi
- New Beta Labs live and buzzing with chatter
Tags | Andrew Mahon, Beta Labs, conversations, Nokia, Nokia Email, Tommi Vilkamo
September 18th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Having an application that has depth is not a bad thing. An application that has depth that does not make discoverability something easy (easier) to experience is though.
Features like click and hold and the number shortcuts should be explained during an installation wizard and then easily referenceable. When they aren’t discoverability takes a hit, and developers then wonder why people aren’t as excited about their apps as they are
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September 19th, 2008 at 1:42 am
I think this is one of the strengths that S60 has. Novice users can get into the platform with ease, but power users can still dig a bit deeper and really explore some cool capabilities.
It also lends itself to self-discovery. For instance, I gave my dad the E71 to use recently, after a small bit of setup. Since then, he’s been exploring bits and pieces, and is really loving some of the features I wouldn’t think he would handle really well.
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