Another iPhone usability study – InUse says that iPhone is easy to use, most preferred
By Will Park on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 12:52 PM PST In Announcements, Apple, Research, iPhone, iPhone OS
To beat this particular cat to death, research firm InUse has just published another iPhone usability report. The iPhone’s user-interface (which defines the user experience) is the most unique and arguably the most attractive on the market, but just how does it fare against the top competitors? Quite well, quite well indeed.
InUse pitted the iPhone against the HTC TyTn (AT&T (NYSE: T) 8525), the Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) W910i, and the venerable Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N95. It seems that the study aimed to find out just how well individual operating systems fared against its rivals, with hardware usability taking a close back-seat to the software experience.
Five study participants with different usage patterns were allowed five minutes of pre-study playtime with each device, and were then tasked with:
- Making a manually-dialed voice call
- Placing a voice-call from the address book
- Changing call-volume
- Adding a new contact to address book
- Creating a new calendar event
- Setting an alarm
- Composing and sending a text message
- Switch the phone into “Silent” mode
- Taking a picture and sending it to a contact in the address book
After each person ran through the test with each phone, they were asked which phone they would most prefer if they had to choose today. Four out of five (4/5) of the study participants said that they’d take the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone, with the remaining participant preferring the Sony Ericsson W910i.
“In terms of subjective preference, this means that the iPhone won by wide margins. The Sony Ericsson came in second place and the Nokia third. Most of the subjects did not mention the HTC at all when speaking of which device they would prefer.”
It should be noted that the study participants were aware that the Nokia N95 was the “more completed [sic] and smartest” of the bunch, but the iPhone’s user experience had seduced them into choosing the iconic device as their favorite. Furthermore, the iPhone OS topped the study in terms of intuitiveness and usability.
So, does the iPhone live up to the hype?
“Crucial everyday actions are intuitive and effective to carry out, at least better implemented than with competing mobile device conventions. The iPhone also seduces with its glossy interface and bright screen.
So – yes. The iPhone does live up to the hype!”
Find the InUse usability study here. (PDF link)
[Via: MacDailyNews]
The last item seems odd, because you CAN’T “take a picture and send it to a contact in the address book” on an iPhone, can you?
email….
HAHA…look at your sources…hehe..it’s from a Mac site… and with 5 participants??? it’s a joke… I think the earlier one has 10 participants and that’s a joke, too… IMHO I think this research firm should do a proper research with a random sample from at least every major cities in the U.S. and with enough participants that would make the results representative of at least the U.S. population!!!
Well if we’re all doing bogus studies with limited amounts of people, the University of JonnyBruha (UJB) just did an unbiased usability study with a sample size of 1 person to see which phone is for newbs whose previous phone was a RAZR and which is for people who prefer real smartphones between the N95-3 and the iPhone.
The N95 won.
Will when will this pointless and baseless iphone bragging end??!