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Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

Great idea, Qole! I hope others join in and give you some good questions... I will try to think of some myself. :)

Tim

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

What happened since "It is not a cell phone -- and it is good" to change his mind? Are those reasons not valid any more, or are there more compelling reasons (and if so, what) pushing in the opposite direction? The compromises/sacrifices necessary to turn a tablet into a phone (finger UI, screen size and so on) have been very controversial here, does Nokia plan to still address the market segment that prefers a tablet to a phone?

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

a) what role does the community play in the whole maemo-thing? what are nokias expectations? does the maemo community live up to these expectations or are there still things that must be done internally (or don't happen at all) because the community fails to deliver?

b) how much community input could nokia handle concerning hardware? could they envision that some day a future product is designed via a bugzilla-system, with people voting for enhancement requests about hardware (spell: d-pad)? could there be something like a community edition of existing mass market products that has basically the same hardware internally, but differs in things like screen size or keyboard layout etc. according to the wishes of a reasonably large part of the community?

c) on the business side: is handling community input (or better: dealing with the community in general) more expensive/difficult than handling uncoordinated customer feedback?

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

Quote:

Originally Posted by lma (Post 302479)

That would be awesome. :)

Tim

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

Quote:

Originally Posted by lma (Post 302479)

This is presuming that they are, in fact, making solely phones from now on... Many things would point to that, including the "reasonable"-sounding leak, however, Nokia has been very, very careful to tell us what we need to get coding, while leaving out certain critical details regarding both hardware and software, so I don't think we should go at that angle (or similar) too much until we see an actual press release.

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

Did he ever use any of the internet tablets?
If yes which ones?

His thoughts about the future of TABLETS as large screen devices!

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

Quote:

Originally Posted by sachin007 (Post 302499)

Did he ever use any of the internet tablets?
If yes which ones?

This is a bit of a silly question, and (not to pick on you) the problem with such threads of questions (although I expect qole to filter/polish): it's well known what tablets he's used, there are blog posts about using the 770 with his daughters etc.

Perhaps it'd be better as "what do you use your Maemo devices for on a regular basis? Do you augment it with a Symbian smartphone for 'real' work?"

Quote:

His thoughts about the future of TABLETS as large screen devices!

This should be addressed in the various keynotes and Q&As. Let's keep this focused on the Nokia/community relationship.

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

I'm going to try to distill some of this conversation between ragnar and Jaffa into a question for Dr. Jaaksi.

The discussion seems to focus on the tension between corporate concepts of "competitiveness," "testing methodology, target user gathering" and "consistent reporting metrics" and the open source, community concepts of openness, freedom, and "an empassioned expert community."

Essentially, I'd like to know what Nokia's big picture view of this is, as seen from the VP's desk. Will corporate interests or "openness" win out? Can the two concepts climb into bed together?

The conversation starts when ragnar ponders the question, "Will we get a glimpse of [the Harmattan UI or app suite] before it is released? Will there be any community input regarding the new UI?"

ragnar asks:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 303186)

Could you - or anybody - can come up with a good (as in realistic and pragmatic instead of idealistic) proposal on how to 'do' community input regarding the new UI?

...[I]f we would show the whole plans, and then get n comments on it, ... Would following the democratic majority of the developer community lead to an optimal solution in terms of an UI solution? Wouldn't that be the worst kind of "design by committee" that one could imagine? Do a poll for "Feature X, do solution A or solution B" and vote which solution gets more votes? No?

Jaffa replies (in part):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaffa (Post 303200)

[W]e've already seen what happens with Hildon when well intentioned developers go away for 18 months and then come back with a beta which has a practically fixed API, which lots of developers immediately start finding inconsistencies, edge cases, over-zealous specialisms vs. over generalisations.
...
The only valid answer I can see is the one we've heard before: "exposing this information for external comment from the community will reveal too much of our future plans".

This is a fine answer. But, of course, there's then no hint of roadmaps, design principles (not in the UX sense) or architecture plans on which the community can contribute. So, no contributions means the cycle continues and products which could've had free consultancy services from an empassioned expert community are shipped in a sub-optimal state...

ragnar responds:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 303205)

...[G]enerally UI's are not revealed in advance because of competitive reasons. If we would have shown the Maemo 5 UI plans at the time they were ready for the first time, any smart competitor would have not commented anything on them, picked up on the good ideas, disregarded others and probably even come out with their own device before Nokia. Then end consumers - who don't know and care about the process of how things get done - would be just left confused. Showing our own cards is a very basic problem, and I hope everybody realizes that. We will be the first company out with the device with the Maemo 5 UI. If you wouldn't believe your UI is an competitive advantage and therefore don't care about that fact, then we can all go home already.

So, either you hold your cards really close to your chest, or you then do the complete opposite, and do like Mozilla, and open up everything all the time, right from the start. If Nokia = Maemo and nothing more, and if Nokia could crank devices out faster than any competitor, then perhaps there would be more options. But since Nokia > just Maemo, even Maemo does not work in a bubble. Revealing some parts of Maemo UI would reveal ... elements of "Nokia UI" - see that however you want.

And regarding Jaffa's "free consultancy services from an empassioned expert community" comment, ragnar comments:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ragnar (Post 303212)

Well, yes, external consultancy costs money. But it can also offer consistency, with testing methodology, target user gathering, non-biased testers, consistent reporting metrics etc. etc. So they're not really comparative. You wouldn't replace one with the other.

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaffa (Post 302554)

Obviously i meant on a regular day to day business. Well we have come a far way from the 770 and the n800 and n810 are quite different from those days. My idea was that only a day to day user can really understand the pros and cons of the tablets and it is hard for me to see a businessman in such big a position carrying a tablet on a day to day basis.

I understand that you dont like those questions, but those are my questions and i would like qole to ask them, just like you have other questions to ask.

Re: Summit 09: Call for Input for Ari Jaaksi dialog

Yes, thanks qole. Having slept over the question, you could probably even continue, or split it into pre-release and post-release parts. Once something is published, then there is of course not the same problems in relation to secrecy. How could we improve the methods of community members - or "anyone with a good idea" - to give it to us and possibly influence future releases. Bugzilla is for bugs. The Brainstorm perhaps tries to fulfill this: is it doing its job properly, should there be something else, something more? Focus groups, concepting sessions, per-feature discussion pages etc.? Basically the same kind of iterative questions as for missing API's.