April 15, 2006
Nokia reorients target demographic, designs "Buttons for Humans"
Russel Beattie has picked up on a new Nokia campaign for it's Nokia 6101 model on a new mini site where the big selling point is "Buttons for Humans." Fun reading on a lazy Easter weekend.
"The site animation shows how big and friendly the buttons on the phone are, how it flips ever so easily closed when you're done with it, politely and conveniently, almost smiling at you with unbounded user friendliness. Following which Beattie leashes out: "The most heinous crimes ever commited against the physical human interface we call a mobile phone keypad were perpetrated by none other than Nokia itself!"
The fact that they've turned around and gone 180 degrees in the other direction is wonderful, but to then market this stuff as if they weren't the main ones responsible for small, oddly shaped, insanely unusable keypads in the first place takes some real nerve, don't you think? MAN!
On his end, Paul Miller over at Engadget Mobile ponders: We'd just like to know who the buttons were for in those pre-6101 days of pain. Cthulhu? Dolphins? Your mom? We know Nokia has a wide customer base to please, but we'd really like to know which alien race they got to do usability testing for some of these handsets.
[via Engadget Mobile ]
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