I feel a fisk coming on…

I saw this post on Dell’s new blog, and my brain immediately jumped into must-respond mode.

Most people understand that the direct model helps us deliver better value by eliminating the middle man and establishing a personal relationship with our customers. What’s not as obvious is how much that relationship with tens of thousands of customers can influence the thinking of the Industrial Design and Usability of our products.

One of the best demonstrations of the advantage we have can be seen by comparing the user interface on our consumer multi-function printer line with those of our competitors.

Oh this oughta be good.

Our consumer multifunction printer line (Models 944, 964) utilizes a clean and intuitive user interface (UI) designed to simplify the user experience by eliminating clutter and focusing the user to a simple, 5-way, navigation control and a 2.5” color display. This allows the user to easily select the function of choice—be it print, scan, copy or fax and with minimal input.

By listening to the customer, developing prototypes, and testing them with real end-users, our design team found that this intuitive and simple solution was greatly preferred to the cluttered user interfaces of our competitor’s multifunction printing products.

I don’t know what monkeys in what sealed lab they tested, but I can’t see how one single solitary person would rather see a LCD screen with a menu option than a simple button.

In fact, I’ve played with lots of Dell (read: rebranded Lexmark) printers over the years, and they all have one thing in common. You can’t do a damned thing with ‘em. You need to dig deep into menus to find the simplest of options and often when you get to it, you slip and hit the wrong button only having to retrace your steps to figure out how you arrived at the menu option you just hit. Sorry. A button marked “FAX” is quite sufficient for me.

So why don’t our competitors implement a similar design to ours? Why do they add unnecessary or redundant buttons that are confusing the user and a barrier to a positive user experience? It’s because they are designing for the shelves of the electronic superstores and not for you.

Apparently our competition has found that the more buttons on the control panel, the more functionality that buyer will assume the product has. Thus, they put a group of buttons to ensure the customer knows it prints, another group so they know it will fax, more to scan, even more to copy, and so on. This apparently helps them sell their product instead of the product sitting next to them on the shelf. However, it also results in a poor customer experience once the product gets home. The vast array of buttons is confusing or even intimidating. It is not uncommon to hear end users in our labs, when asked to perform simple tasks on our competitor’s products, make a comment like, “I know it can fax, I just don’t know how to make it fax.”

I call bravo sierra, big time, and hardcore. There’s no way in hell someone can walk over to any competitor product, look at the huge FAX button and go, “How does it fax?” If, however, you were to look at a Dell 944, you wouldn’t be able to figure out without a manual. Why? Well, for one thing it’s a PC-based fax, meaning the 944 doesn’t actually fax. It scans and sends to a PC. The other interesting factoid is that it doesn’t have a numeric keypad. If ever there were a feature for a machine that claims to be able to “fax,” a keypad seems like a relatively important feature. Wanna perplex a user? Set ‘em in front of that bad boy and ask ‘em to send a fax. The 964 is actually better, and it’s definitely a more powerful printer, but let’s not kid ourselves. It’s also twice the size and $50 more.

You could credit Dell for having their highest-end all-in-one under $150, but you’d be missing the fact that their ink is only available from Dell.com and almost prohibitive as far as cost goes. The point is, their printers are not as usable as these vague lab results say, and dollar for dollar they’re not that much of a bargain. Why buy one? Got me.

Having direct access to our customers, designing with the sole purpose of meeting their needs, and being able to deliver a product that is uncompromised and uncluttered because we don’t have to compete in the “pick me, I have more buttons” competition is a true advantage.

Do you really expect us to believe that the 944 doesn’t have a keypad because that makes it easier to use?

Jeez. Dell will literally tell themselves anything. Uncluttered, in this case, equals almost unfunctional.

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