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What’s important in a phone design?
J.D. Power & Associates just released their 2005 U.S. Wireless Mobile Phone Evaluation Study(SM), which measures customer satisfaction among those who have owned their mobile phones for less than two years.
I've not been tracking this information for the past few years, and the last time I checked, battery life was still king. Now, however, there is an array of things that drive satisfaction in a phone. Top drivers are:- physical design (24%)
- operation (22%)
- features (20%)
- handset durability (19%)
- battery function (15%)
They report a major shift in importance of operation of the phone (up from 15% in 2003) and physical design of the handset (up from 19% in 2003).
Each of these features is a key driver to overall user experience, of course. The marketers more or less have control over the features of a phone; durability is driven by a combination of design, cost vs. features, and manufacturing; battery is driven by cost and engineering. The cost factors are interesting since the study reports that people are paying, on average, $10 less per phone since last year.
Physical design (particularly clamshell rather than candy bar, but including other factors) is driven by a combination of industrial and mechanical design along with marketing.
"Operation" is essentially the user interface (both design and implementation) of the phone - how users can get to the various features. This doesn't have any per-unit cost. Development investment in "operation" can be spread across multiple devices.
In effect, usability (ease of use) is driving 22% of customer satisfaction with phones. Let's not forget that satisfaction with a phone will increase the likelihood that the user stays with the same brand when making the next purchase, 18 months later.
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