KonzeptioNerd

Jitterbug - Groovy, yes, but usable?

In a recent Business Week article (A Cell Phone for Baby Boomers), Jesse James Garrett talks about the Jitterbug, a mobile phone geared at supposedly technophobic senior surfers. The Jitterbug is not merely your big-buttoned, simplified-interface mobile phone designed for those with reduced patience for challenging gadgetry. Jitterbug is a service as well: there’s an operator who’ll put your calls through (or answer questions), effectively reducing even the “Dial” version to a one-touch phone. Neat.

Lock-in versus loyalty

And it doesn’t even stop here. The operator (or the service behind it) will also remote-configure the phone for you on request and especially put in all your numbers for you. There’s no configuration interface in the phone itself. If you must fiddle with the knobs yourself, you can go to the website and configure things from there (including names and numbers).

Very neat. In Germany (and I assume in other countries that have only recently started to see competition in the telco market) we have lock-in anxiety when it comes to our phone contracts. Dump all my contacts into a provider’s database just to be able to sync ‘em? No thanks. But this take it or leave it support-offer might just make the difference between dreaded lock-in and growing loyalty.

But here’s trouble, still. I’m suprised that Garrett, of all people, managed to look around the utterly unusable website that sells the Jitterbug.

Friendly, but not accessible

The Jitterbug website looks like something from 1999 with a large background-image and huge lozenge-shaped buttons. I’m not sure if this is supposed to remind the baby-boomers of their early web-surfing days as the name is supposed to remind them of their swinging youth. That’s more or less a matter of taste. Usability and accessibility isn’t:

Increasing the font-size even one increment causes the main text-section to overflow into teaser boxes in the lower part. No alt-texts for images. Some features don’t work without JavaScript.

Navigational and functional buttons look the same. Some links look like links, some like buttons. Recursive links (active on the pages they link to). No active-states for navigation-items on subpages (even active state on the button for the corresponding main section disappears). No breadcrumbs for orientation, esp. on pages where the lefthand-side subnavigation disappears completely. No step-by-step preview on pages of the order-process. The link “User Guide” downloads a 1.1 MB PDF without prior warning.

I couldn’t log into the actual configuration interface (members only), but the open areas bode ill, indeed. To be fair, Jitterbug are not the only company with an innovative business idea who think they can save a few (thousand) dollars on the web interface. But it kind of takes the Wow out of it for me.

4 Responses to “Jitterbug - Groovy, yes, but usable?”

1. Mary Morrison Says:
   

   Hi,

   I’d have to disagree. I bought a cell phone for my mother and when I first researched the Jitterbug, I was pleased the site was so easy to navigate and I could find the info I was looking for, unlike with my cell phone company’s website. I think the basicness of the site is almost done on purpose to coincide with the company’s message of simplicity. The site is geared towards an older user, who like my mother may have difficulty using a website.

   June 1st, 2007 at 5:54 pm
2. Anja Rau Says:
   

   Hm, I see.
   The issues I pointed out reside on a rather high level: like a stuck car window - inconvenient, but you can still drive the car on the highway.
   Your comment seems to support an observation I make repeatedly: that people who come to a website with a clear purpose often fade out informational clutter on the site and succeed well in their task. Standard usability ckecklists only go so far in determining a site’s usefulness and feedback from a site’s “real” users is the most valuable data a webdesigner can get!

   June 2nd, 2007 at 12:29 pm
3. Mary Kostrzewa Says:
   

   the jitterbug sounds like the cell phone Iam looking for. SIMPLE large buttons etc. can you tell me how to see a picture of it or can Isee one at an AT&T store?

   March 16th, 2008 at 2:06 am
4. Anja Rau Says:
   

   I’m sorry, I haven’t seen the actual phone myself and and not familiar with the producers’ retail strategy. Best check out their website: http://www.jitterbug.com (which, btw, appears to have been updated).

   March 21st, 2008 at 7:52 pm

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