Moto RAZR Successor Has Better UI
Motorola has leaked photos of the upcoming RAZR "successor" via Engadget. The important thing to notice on this phone (shown above) is the lack of a menu button. The menu button is a real source of usability challenge for people, and Motorola must have figured that out along the way.
No one is truly impressed with the industry's snail's pace of innovation in user experience, but eliminating the menu button is a step in the right direction. You can see the menu button in the existing RAZR model's photo at the right, above the five-way directional control. If you're wondering why the menu button has no label, you're not the only one.
In Usable Products' Keypad Trouble video retrospective, the problems with the menu key are made truly apparent through the use of video clips with participants complaining how they don't understand what "that middle button" is for. Participants also complain about the proximity of the center OK button to the four directionals and how all the button surfaces are flat, thereby making it difficult to press a direction without pressing the center OK button. Heck, Moto can't fix everything in one release, now can they?
Comments
The Verizon RAZR already has no third softkey, a fact that I recently found when a client specified that they were targeting the RAZR. I went out the day that the Cingular RAZRs were pulled from the shelf, so I bought Verizon.
The UI was completely abysmal. The only way to get to the browser was the up arrow. There were features which I knew must be present that were completely undiscoverable to me, a wireless veteran.
If the new RAZR doesn't change the UI, then things just got worse, not better.
Posted by: Barbara Ballard | April 27, 2006 12:46 PM