Malformed factor: Phone vs. Skype in Skype phones
Too busy getting ready for Telco 2.0 event to write anything too substantive, so here's a quick thought.
I've tried a whole lot of Skype phones. I've seen a whole load more. I've not liked a single one. As I don't like to slag off products from small companies, I simply write nothing.
I don't use any of them. Why is this?
They put the traditional keypad at the front of the experience. But I don't use Skype to make PSTN calls much. I use it for what it does best: contacting a small circle of friends and colleagues. That means putting the buddy list up front, a multi-modal UI for navigating voicemail, and enabling features llike easy set-up of conference calls by showing multiple buddies. Make PSTN calling the exception, not the rule.
Naturally, a big screen is a given; some way of navigating my long buddy list quickly (hint: not clickety-click up/down buttons); and the display of presence and mood message of each person. Probably also the ability to list just a few entries from a single group as the default too. Wireless, too. After all, we're trying to get away from the grounding of a PC headset and expand into the wider domestic/office context.
My kids need a device that has two buttons: London grandparents; Vilnius grandparents. They don't use telephony the same way, so need their own device built around their needs.
The only exceptions to the "they're all crap" statement are the conference call phones which are really just microphone/speaker extensions: do one thing well, and the user is happy. But bad imitations of PSTN phones aren't it.
Push Martin's buttons at Telepocalypse.net.
Comments
I actually think there is a purpose to these "Skype phones". Initiating communication via SkypeIN/OUT is easy and transparent. The called person just "picks up the phone". Getting my Skype friends to put on their headsets is not easy and it wouldn't work at all if not for the ability to initiate a call as chat. Once the conversation is started, Skype is of course a far richer environment because voice, video, chat, and file exchange are all the same communications channel.
I certainly agree with you that imitating PSTN is a stupid objective but (SkypeIN/OUT) is a reasonable transitional technology. The current generation of "Skype phones" will evolve in the direction of more capable devices.... and today's fully capable devices (computers) will evolve in the direction of compactness, mobility, and portability. Broadband wireless networks are largely responsible for leading us in this direction.
I personally am not going to buy a "Skype phone", but I'm glad that others are. While their transition path will be to get more and more capable handheld devices, my transition path will be to get more and more compact computers with wireless capability.
Posted by: aaytch | October 3, 2006 05:11 AM