Random Thoughts: Good User Experiences

I have just witnessed the power of a good... no... amazing user experience.

So I finally caved and bought an iPhone. Now I was one of it's biggest haters... Mainly because of the price. But last week, Apple dropped the bomb and brought the price down of iPhones down $200. O... M... G... I caved. Hard.

Originally I thought it would just be a phone attached to an iPod video but leave it to Apple to come out with something totally unexpected. The result is a device that is a combination of daily features that are delivered to the user in a way that is intuitive, powerful and dare I say... fun!

So I had a number of co-workers with one and I was impressed. But owning and playing with one are two different things. I found myself yesterday driving to pick up my girlfriend's car and we totally overshot the exit and we had no clue if we did or not (We both have horrible case of wanderlust). Instead of pulling off the freeway, we just whipped out the phone and dug up the exit we just passed. It brought it up and we just missed it. I'll spare you all the other stories but you get the idea. The right thing at the right time.

Now I had a fairly featured phone to begin with however it was such a pain in the ass to do anything that I didn't even bother. Now everything is such a joy to do. It's the point that I'm working on my laptop and I found myself trying to use my finger to manipulate the data on my screen. Heh...

So for everyone out there, I was wrong (dead wrong) about the iPhone. It's everything and more. But it's one of those things that unless you own one, you'll never really know.