Robot Loves Kitten

IMDB is my kids favorite iPad app. He loves exploring movie trailers, and I love seeing how he learns to negotiate a tablet UI. It took him months to really get it down (I don’t let him play much), but this morning I watched him blast through a perfect sequence of button & menu clicks to get to the Cars 2 page. At this point though, he now gets irrevocably stuck. Why? Because a recent IMDB update completely broke the app.

The app is now riddled with featuritis. You can see evidence throughout, but go to a movie page, and find the “Watch Trailer” button. The one with the “play” icon. What might you expect that button to do?

It used to display a popup to select the quality of clip to play, which was confusing, but at least the options all led to the same place. You could click any of them, and you’d always end up watching the trailer.

Now? The popup includes an option for adding the trailer to a playlist, which adds the clip to a list (accessible at the bottom corner of the screen). Clicking effectively does nothing. As an adult, I’ve adapted to this garbage, but watching my kid continually get sucked into this trap is starting to piss me off.

A button that specifies quite clearly with icon and text that it will play a clip should not be adulterated to do anything else. Period. Any objection you have is misplaced. It either needs to be placed ahead of playing a clip, or moved to a parallel flow. Once you arrive at the context of playing a clip, you are done. Get out of the way, and play the damn clip.

Is this why “simple” is so hard to execute?

An interesting experiment would be to try user testing your app with all the menu and button text scrambled. Does the app still make intuitive sense to users? To you?

Yesterday I prepared my Nintendo Wii, which I never use anymore, for sale on Craigslist. I had to wipe it first, and for the first time, felt the sting of “digital rights management”. Obviously, I can’t give my Wii to someone else with my passwords and shopping account still on it, so I needed to remove those.

The only way Nintendo would let me do that was to completely nuke my account. Everything I’ve bought, my unused balance, my saved game files, everything … gone. My history and relationship with Nintendo as a Wii customer (and I’ve been a customer for many years and consoles) is completely erased.

I’m honestly shocked Nintendo would toss a customer relationship away so easily. Every console sold from now on will be connected to the Internet and will include an online shop. Customer accounts, history and purchases should always be retained unless the customer explicitly asks otherwise.

The RIAA is claiming that you don’t own your digital music, in order to squelch a new service designed to create a market for “used mp3s”. Since I always buy unencrypted mp3s, I never gave this much thought. But today, I was summarily stripped of my games, my gameplay and account history, and even my account balance, simply because I wanted to sell a collection of metal and plastic hardware.

I wasn’t breaking up with you, Nintendo. I just needed to take a break.

But now, I need you to know that we are done. I won’t be coming back. I can’t trust you to treat me like a person.