User Centered

BlackBerry Pearl/8100- Thoughts from a first time user

My initial requirements were never to have access to my work, or to be connected all the time. It was a simple set of requirements....I wanted a cell phone that would be about as thin as my RAZR (since it spends most of its life in my front pocket) and had the following capabilities:

• Ability to run Opera Mini ("The only extension this browser needs...is an arm")
  
• QWERTY layout for keyboard- a full keyboard would be nice, but unless it's the size of a sidekick, my meathooks/spoon thumbs might have a difficult time getting in there. I wanted a text/SMS/MMS machine! I actually liked my Motorola predictive text software on my RAZR and felt like Sure-Type would give me bigger targets to hit, QWERTY layout, and (what I assumed was) better prediction software. This balance seemed perfect for me.
  
• An OS that was designed with some kind of mobile lifestyle in mind. I wanted a Palm OS at first- I would have loved a Treo, but they are just too big. Size was the ONLY reason I got the RAZR. Turns out that is the only thing I liked about it, but I still had that requirement.
  
• Ability to take note of an upcoming school appointment or task for my son, as I seemed to be forgetting to send his library books off to school with him. Some way to jot a note on the go and be reminded of it later. I had been using my RAZR to SMS to my email inbox with any reminders, but by the time I got home the message was pointless "Get box back?" What box? Who's is it?... I wanted to be able to capture thoughts or tasks or appointments immediately.
  
  

...
in other words, some basic things for helping me in my daily activities. The BlackBerry was more than I needed, I realized that, but I figured it wouldn't hurt, and the size was right. Besides, having my calendar sync in real time (Over the air-OTA) was just too cool to pass up.

So I picked it up through Cingular for a song and found out my office was keen on letting personal BB's hook up to the BES server (BES is the enterprise BB solution that sends you all your work email and calendar appointments etc.. it hooks you up to your office). This required that I accept the corporate IT policy that goes along with it. I understand this, but the jury is still out if I want to keep doing this (OTA calendar sync is a bigger draw to me than work email). Here are my thoughts in the loose order that I collected them on the memopad of my my blackberry-

Aesthetics
The pearl is a good looking gadget. I'm quite fond of the look and feel, but the battery cover on the back is pretty flimsy. It really put some tarnish on the 'ol fit & finish when on the second day the battery case popped off the back. It's not crazy though and now I that I know about it, I haven't had the problem (subconsciously more careful?)

Activity Centered Design
Well, for the most part...it's certainly better than my RAZR's UI. I like how most everything I do in UI is "non destructive" - with some exceptions we'll note later it keeps my data sacred. I can browse in mini, and hit the "end" call red button which we normally associate with clear/delete/kill/end/destroy. This takes me immediately back to the home screen where I can jot a note, make a calendar appoint etc. When I load Mini again, it takes me right back to where I was before. The downside with this is that sometimes *want* the data to go away. If I do, I have to use the BlackBerry escape key. I just have to get used to using the right one, which I assume will come with time.

Another good example is that if you've moved the trackball cursor over a phone number within the edit field it will pick that to dial by default (or map if it's address, or email... etc). this also applies when composing an email- when replying to an email, if your cursor is in the part of the email were you're writing, it's setup for text entry. But if you cursor down to the original text, your keyboard is in "navigation" mode (you have page down shortcuts, etc)


Fitt to be Square- I've arranged my BlackBerry trackball to take advantage of Fitt's law. I've arranged my favorite apps in such a manner that I can throw the trackball in a corner to easily get to an item without looking. I've found that while looking at the menu, the inverted 'L' I have here is easiest to get at. Other key features come through shortcut keys or (in the case of the call log) the hard keys.

Shortcut keys-
I'm a shortcut key guy. I know it's not exactly the best UI approach to adopt, but I say if you can through these in without effecting the overall design of the UI, then good on you. BlackBerry is no different. I have a lot to learn, but they are pretty robust in shortcut support. I wish there would be more- like in the calendar, there should be a shortcut to easiliy switch from Day/Week/Month/Agenda views. I wouldn't even mind the same button cycling through those.


White Stripes
Not the band.... well, not *that* band. But bands of diagnal stripes that tell you when you're in the "work" inbox. It's a nice visual cue to let you know that you're about to send an email over your work exchange server. When you compose a new email, it starts on a default account (my personal email) and if I switch it to my work address, the background updates to remind. Nice touch (note- this is an option! I just like it. I did change it to yellow so the emails are a bit more readable)

Sure Type (predictive text)
I'm largely let down by this. I'm not sure why, maybe because I expected too much. I realized with the Pearl's two letter per key layout that I'd be taking a hit here, but I was used to the predictive text on my Motorola which seemed to work better at times than the Sure-Type. Maybe it needs to get more of my special words and habits into the dictionary, but the way you correct has some strange flaws. I'm thinking this might go away in time as I'm not looking at the keyboard at all as I type (so I can watch the suggestions) but I've noticed that even that is a bit confusing- well, at least it doesn't help to learn typing on the Sure-Type Keyboard because you start typing "a" and you see "s" appear and you're not sure right off if you hit the right key. Since Motorola's iTap method got a seperate post, I'll probably follow this up with more explanation of my thoughts here.

Bad Activity Centered Design
This might be the "I picked the wrong phone" or possibly "I haven't figured out how to do this yet." but I think the Pearl is a bit too assuming that I'm constantly in touch with everyone in my office or all my clients instead of my girlfriend or mom & dad.

The reality is that I text message (MMS/SMS/Call) the same handful of numbers about 95% of the time I'm typing something. (office email's are an exception) The Pearl will not easily let me SMS my regular contacts via shortcut keys or speed dialing numbers. If I'm not replying to an SMS already in my inbox, I have to dig the name out of my contact address book each time and select work or home or mobile.. etc. I can assign speed dial numbers for phone dialing, why not texting or email as well?


Some Odd destructive action
The address book (which is neatly integrated into my office address book) has "dual focus" on the screen. You can see there's a "find" line and a search results list that is updated as you type- both fields are focused.

The problem comes whey you mis-type a name in the find line.. you use the delete key to back up, but if you go too far (clear the whole field) and press the del key one more time, now you're prompted if you're sure you want to delete the first entry in your address book! You're prompted, so you can recover easily, but I still I thought this was strange and potentially frustrating UI flaw.

Trackball
Trackball (from which the pearl name is derived) is great. I can't wait until more phones start using this approach instead of the D-Pad. Until then, it might be a little ahead of it's time though. I think it could benefit from that "acceleration" option you find in Windows mouse options. With the Pearl, you can adjust the sensitivity of the horizontal and vertical independently- which comes in hand when you're scrolling long menus, but it's not nearly so handy when you're trying to move the cursor around a text file and you keep jumping around 3 lines higher than you want. I'd like to have a finer level of granularity if I'm moving the trackball slowly, like in Windows.

Also, Opera Mini has been ajusted to work with BlackBerrys, but not specifically the Pearl. The trackball makes it difficult to use the page up/down in Mini. Since we're rolling right/left instead of clicking, it's easy to over scroll by a page (or two!) and lose where you are in the page. Oh Opera, how I'd love for you to unleash the trackball! maybe if more phones start using it huh? I can hope.


BES/BIS/Data Plans
I'm *still* not sure exactly what is going on behind the scenes, what my corporate IT policy has control over, what they can monitor, what Cingular is providing me, what I could have done with just a straight data plan. Dealing with Cingular was by far the most frustrating user experience of this entire post. My IT dept will let me hook up to the work servers as long as I have "BB enterprise unlimited plan..." but when I call cingular, they didn't know the difference between unlimited, enterprise, individual.. they almost tried to get me to sign up from some online cingular webmail program. It was frustrating and I'm now just waiting for my bill to come as I'm sure I'm going to have to correct it. I'm still not sure if I have unlimted SMS message or not. ugh. For more evidence of the potential for confusion, just try to make sense of this thread on the BB forums.


Rubbery buttons
They give a kind of squishy feeling to them that sometimes gets in the way. Due to the way the buttons are angled/designed, this happens most when moving your thumb up the keyboard -a fingernail gets caught on the bottom of the key above your thumb. It's rare and minor and just a slight grab, but it catches my attention at time.



Finally- when the phone is in standby, you can't see the time. That drives me nuts. It's simple press to turn it back on, but then you have to put it in standby which takes a second... I can't propose a way to fix this though without leaving the screen on. Oh well, can't have it all.


So there's my first series of thoughts. I didn't touch on a lot of the features, maybe I can follow up a again after I've had time to review it a bit more in depth. Hopefully someone, someday can find this post and this might provide some value or at least some potential for discussion. I'm not sure what the spirit of this post will be, but I'd like to end on a positive note. I'm sure I made the best choice (for me) for my first smartphone. Also, the best "feature" is, like every great product, there's a thriving community of people willing to assist with questions. I've found a nice home at: http://www.blackberryforums.com Thanks for showing me the ropes.

BTW- I'm down to 5 clicks now. I'm sure I can shave another one off somewhere though.