Design is Beautiful

I joined the Microsoft Surface Team about 2 months ago. Yesterday was the first release of Surface for the public to use. If you live near one of the AT&T stores, check it out!

• Gizmodo Reports
• YouTube video from an AT&T Store

Next week I’ll be speaking at two conferences, which I’ll try and record to post here.

• Tuesday at Adaptive Path’s Managing Experience through Creative Leadership Conference.
• Wednesday at Intuit’s Create the Offering Forum.

I’ll be leaving my job as User Experience Manager at Intuit this Friday. This was my closing email summing up all of my work at Intuit. On February 18th I’ll be starting work on helping to lead interaction design on Microsoft Surface.

I wanted to leave everyone with my last thoughts as I prepare my move from Intuit. This is more XD focused, but can be extrapolated for almost any profession at Intuit. I will reiterate, the decision was not easy in any way. There are many great opportunities at Intuit to produce experiences beyond what people have seen in the small business world. As I’ve noted, my decision was driven by personal choice to hone new interaction skills (natural language, no desktop, gesture) and work in a new spaces as a designer and leader. I believe in what the XD Community here has done thus far and is trying to do. I believe in producing emotion in products (although I may not use those exact words) and see the future in emotionally engaging connections and user communities, among other things. I see the entire XD community ready to make a move; to change the culture. I look forward to visiting and hearing about the great Design and Experience Led Culture that has happened since I left. I will be in touch with many people here, and most certainly see many of you again.

With that, here is my version of An Incomplete Intuit Design Manifesto (a la Bruce Mau), Intuit’s 95 Thesis if you will. These are my final thoughts from my time here. I hope this leaves everyone with ideas to think about and debate over… which is the very thing I always wanted to inspire everyone with.

1. Don’t make excuses for poor design. We all have the power to stop bad design from happening. Whether that be “laying down on the tracks” or continuous self improvement, it is our job as designers to ship the best experiences possible for our customers. It is a very serious job and one to be handled with the utmost respect. If we don’t treat it this way, no one else will.
2. Have courage and conviction around your ideas. Stand up for what you believe is right, but keep your ears open. Too often I’ve seen designers pushed down with poor arguments by people in higher positions, or who could speak louder. However as you make a stand, always listen. Just as I’ve seen people pushed down, I’ve also seen people argue blindly because “they’re the designer, and they know”. This is another sure fire way to damage the craft and understanding of our world.
3. Don’t form personal attachments. This is one of the most painful things that can happen. It should always be what’s best for the customer and the problem, not what you love. To help counteract getting attached, review your work early and often (every few days). Engage is great critiques. The more you make it objective, the stronger that product will form.
4. Have a respect for your business. Whether it’s design or research, have respect for what you do. This goes beyond “saying” it. Live what you do. Always be a student, always continue to learn, study, and find new ways to present ideas and be innovative. Never talk down about design, research, writing, etc. Always listen to people who are speaking. Look outside the field for inspiration and understanding. Again, if you don’t respect your discipline, why should anyone else.
5. Have great self awareness. It’s one of the top things I’ve seen lead to arguments, circular debates, bad design, and the degradation of our craft. Know how good you are and how good you aren’t. As a side note, if you think you’re that good, reevaluate yourself.
6. Seniority is shown through work, not years. Being a senior designer has nothing to do with the years you have in the business. It’s all about the work you produced and what you’ve done for the business[es]. Years don’t entitle you, your work does.
7. Prioritize and drive. If you think this is PM work, think again. We should not simply sit and wait to see requirements, product vision, priorities… we should create them. We should drive them. Near every team I’ve seen at Intuit could benefit from a strong driver. Learn to drive, learn to lead. It’s a new day in business, and it’s a day for XD to rise and lead teams to better work than ever thought possible!
8. Focus. You can’t do everything. Focus on the core aspects of the design or business and execute with excellence. Focus drives great business. Otherwise you’ll execute a variety of mundane mediocrity. This also applies to personal skills as well. Chances are you’re not great at everything, so focus where you want to excel.
9. Don’t be the victim. Don’t wait for others. Don’t succumb to helplessness. Everyone in XD has the power to get a seat at the table and influence executive and business leaders. It’s just a matter of the right articulation, presentation, description, and argument. Intuit can be design led, it’s just a matter to step up. It’s also up to you to handle your career. Don’t put it on others and blame them. This includes things like whitespace, brown bags, presentations… make time for it if you want, don’t make an excuse.
10. Don’t complain, work harder. (Credit to Randy Pausch)
11. Have Fun. Having fun and being excited leads to great work. If you’re not having fun, think if you are in the right spot. There shouldn’t be another way to live!
12. Pointing fingers is a waste of time. It just is.
13. Presenting the idea is just as important as the idea. Great ideas are all around. Learning to present them effectively can make the difference.
14. Products need a director and a vision. I’ve seen recklessly little true vision shared out, and perhaps even less of people being directors (setting direction, not title). Each product should have a leader setting direction, telling the story. Just as a movie has a director, products need them as well. Would a movie director start rolling before they had an idea? No. So why would we? Software has been mostly engineering led, which is backwards. Like other fields (film, writing, fashion, furniture), it should be experience and design led.
15. Love what you do and spend every second trying to get better. If you don’t love design, leave it. Find what you love. Not only are you doing a disservice to the business [of design], but you’re doing a disservice to yourself. If you do love it, spend every second getting better. Take every piece of feedback seriously, no matter who it is from. You can discount it later. Seek out feedback, share you work, look for people to tell you what you can improve. The key is to learn [new thinking] and stop thinking we know it all.
16. Define your brand. Decide who you are and what you stand for. Control your image. Be great at [one] something because that will make you valuable! Don’t sit on the fence, have a side, have a stance, and have a reason. Have a brand!
17. Don’t erode [y]our brand. All of us have a brand and we can work to control it; we can drive it. In the same way we think about controlling Intuit’s brand, be conscious of how people perceive you. Remember perception is reality, it’s not just “what they think”. In the same way, control Intuit’s brand. How you act is a light on Intuit and what we stand for. I’ve seen people speak poor of Intuit while working here in public [at a conference for example]. Not only does it make Intuit look bad, it makes you look bad (yes!). What does it say about you to work for a company who you openly despise…?
18. Intuit should own an experience. Design as a strategic asset is a bullshit buzz phrase, so I’ll add meaning to it. XD should develop a strategy to own an experience across all products. When you pick up a new product, it should say Intuit through the experience, and that should say something to our users. It should speak with confidence, security, and beauty. To own an experience; to have a strategy; that’s great design.
19. Don’t fail fast, fail smart. Failing fast is an excuse to create poor work. “Well you see, I was failing fast”. Fail smart [and fast], be educated in your failures. Then learn from them!
20. Users aren’t always right. Listening to users all the time is a lot like current organizational management practices. It’s meant to replicate success. But true success and innovation comes from looking, listening, brainstorms, creativity, inspiration, culture, and many other things. In order to evolve users and the technology, sometimes you have to make it uncomfortable; you will not always win with status quo. Sometimes it’s ok to tell users to shove it.

    This example taken from a Simpsons show is a great illustrations of the woes of listening to users:

    FOCUS GROUP LEADER
    Okay, how many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real-life problems, like the ones you face every day? (the kids all cheer and agree) And who would like to see them do just the opposite - getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers? (more cheering) So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show… that’s completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots? (The kids agree)

    MILHOUSE
    And also, you should win things by watching!

    The focus group leader sighs. The light is turned on in the observation booth, and Meyers (the show’s creator) appears at the mirror.

    MEYERS
    You kids don’t know what you want! That’s why you’re still kids: ’cause you’re stupid! Just tell me what’s wrong with the freakin’ show!

    He turns the lights out. Ralph starts crying and turns his knob to the left showing his disfavor.

21. Debate. It’s ok, go for it. Debate encourages understanding and forces you to reevaluate your ideas against others. It helps develop the best ideas. Don’t be defensive about it. Defensiveness is a sign of immaturity, poor work, and weak thinking. Explain your rational. Any designer who thinks they don’t need to explain themselves probably doesn’t have good explanations.
22. Work like hell. Don’t tell us how you do it, do it and we’ll see it.
23. Allow yourself to be inspired. Some of the greatest work that inspires me is not “design”. Don’t look where others look to be inspired, look where you want to.
24. Visit another country. It helps open your eyes to new things. It inspires in new ways and shows you things you would have never thought of before. Being a designer isn’t just for the United States.
25. Learn to understand business. One of top reasons XD has issues impacting corporate cultures is their inability to speak business. Learn to understand the business and what design can do for it. People don’t care about iterations, they care about bottom line and results.
26. Look across segments. This sounds painfully obvious, but it’s also obvious it rarely happens. This is critical for user experience and helps to own a UI.
27. Think deeper about design. It’s not just some work flows that delight users. There is much more to a design process. How do objects relate to people, people to objects, and two objects relate to each other in the same space… whether virtual or physical. How do objects [or offerings] relate to society and cultural aspects. This will be increasingly important as we reach out to new countries and a global environment.
28. Stay up to date. This can be hard with so many new things coming out all over the world. Use RSS and discussion boards as a short cut. Stay current with trends and technology and watch for what will come next.
29. Be prepared for change to hurt. Cultural change is never easy, and often painful. People don’t like change by nature. Routine is comfortable. However change is necessary to advance; to grow. Traditional management is based on recreating success. Design led management can be focused on continually creating new success, but requires change.
30. Focus on design and the experience, not on being cool. Cool, hip, and trendy are all marginal and short lived. Focusing on the real experience will make something cool. Focusing on what’s cool gets you what’s been done. Be true to the work and focus on what’s right.
31. You will fail. Deal with it. The general thought is the better you get, the less you fail. I’ve found the reverse to often be true and I fail all the time, but it’s how you use those failure to catapult success that’s key. Innovation can never be achieved without failure. Along with that, don’t let someone tell you something can’t be done. I’ve proved many people wrong in my short career. The people who tell you it can’t be done are the ones who could never do it themselves.

I’ve had a great time being here. I’ve both learned and grown. Thank you to everyone who helped push, challenge, inspire, criticize, debate, and take the time to talk with me. I appreciate every bit of it. I will be in touch and look forward to hearing from you all.

Thank you and Goodbye!

Joe Fletcher
Experience Design Manager
blog http://designisbeautiful.com/

The following is a conversation between myself and one of the ethnographers on our team. I thought it was an interesting debate and she agreed I could post it. It focuses around the design and branding of PinkBerry, a frozen yogurt snack restaurant.

I have included the original email that spurred the conversation, but removed any confidential material. Hopefully it doesn’t affect the flow too much…

From: Joe Fletcher
Team,

Last Friday I went out and picked up Fast Company because of a single article, Easy Money. The article is about Mint, a new personal finance application, and how it stacks up against an “antiquated” Quicken. If you don’t know about Mint, find out. As Fast Company puts it, Mint is the Axe BodySpray to Quickens Old Spice. In two weeks from launch they signed up 40,000 users and won several awards. The CEO [Aaron Patzer] is 26 and looking to latch onto the huge generation of young adults. They mention the medium age of 15 million Quicken users is 47, and that they don’t believe Quicken will “appeal to a generation raised on Halo and diagnosed with ADD”.

In the same issue they also have a great story on PinkBerry discussing influences from Apple to Hermes to In-and-Out. Take a look at the well designed interior including Philippe Starck chairs and Alessi gadgets and simple menu of plain or green tea frozen yogurt. Check out the article and see why they are taking to frozen yogurt as Starbucks did to coffee. Does design make a difference for them? Damn right!

* * *

From: Keren S.
Joe, l read the Fast Company article and looked at the PinkBerry site.

Clearly design is very important to this company. (“Soft swirls of chilly bliss with a distinct pouty peak”…?) But I didn’t like how when I went to the site, a music track automatically started playing while I was sitting at my desk. It might have been a cute song, but I wouldn’t know because I quickly shut it off. The Wallpaper feature in the Groupie section was, what, a game where I could click to end up with the same answer no matter what I chose…?

My biggest disappointment was the store locator. I put in my zip code and nothing came up within a 5 mile radius. Nothing came up within a 100 mile radius (the max possible). In both cases, the message I got was “sorry, no results.” I put in some other random zip codes (my old zip code in the city, my friend in Chicago …) and every time I got the same answer – “sorry, no results.” So then I tried the Store Listing feature. From what I can tell, there are currently a bunch of stores in the Los Angeles area (32) and in the New York City (7 in Manhattan + 1 in Queens). Why have a store search feature when the vast majority of searches will return no results? That doesn’t feel delightful.

My point is this… unless your entire brand is built around trendiness, cool design can be a complement to but can rarely be a replacement for necessary functionality. I wish PinkBerry had spent less time on their cool Alessi gadgets and more time figuring out the basic customer need on their website.

My 2cents.

* * *

From: Joe Fletcher
Interesting thoughts. I have a few points to debate with you

Everything you said related to *you, however from what I’ve seen, read, and understood, *you are not the target audience. Judging from my knowledge of Ice Berry and Red Mango (Korean stores which I believe Pink Berry was based off of even though they refute it) it’s more about a teenage to early twenties crowd. It’s a hang out spot with hip appeal. What does every Myspace page have these days(?)… music. Not to mention PinkBerry even has a MySpace site. So I’m not convinced that music isn’t a part of a good brand strategy, it just may not appeal to you, persona of a corporate working business woman.

The wallpaper background isn’t the same result. It takes the items you picked and puts them together. Granted it always equals the same thing (Swirly goodness), but it’s part of the brand for the target they are establishing. They are about simplicity and cleanliness. The wallpaper fits perfectly into their creative direction for that. Cross reference that with its “cute” appeal (again, Swirly goodness) and nice photography and you have a wallpaper for their target audience.

I do agree the store locator is terrible since they only exist in LA and NY. Not sure how they arrived at that was a good idea.

As for losing functionality, I’m not sure of why a few design points has lost functionality, or “cool” design. I would call it well designed and well thought out creative direction to help solidify a brand for a specific market. They are trendy because of their quick up-rise. It’s up to them to capitalize and stay with the trend.. that is the difficult part. If anything, the simple nature of the store, down to the menu has probably helped efficiency and business, not compromised it. It’s simple functionality for the sake of business, not for lack of effort or to be trendy (most businesses don’t want to be a trend)

In the end, PinkBerry makes much of their impression in the store itself. So you have to take into consideration ROI of the website. However this isn’t’ to say you should neglect any part of the experience(!), but of course there will be prioritization. I was say in this case PinkBerry has kept the website pretty much on brand with the rest of their experiences, from menu, to stores, to site.

Thoughts?

* * *

From: Keren S.
You’re right, I certainly don’t seem to be the target audience (since I’m neither Paris Hilton nor 20 years old ). Appealing to one audience by “alienating” another can certainly be a successful brand strategy, and that might be what Pinkberry is doing. I’m okay with that.

My comments were about the website, not about the company’s overall business strategy. The website is all I can comment on, since (a) there aren’t any stores I can visit locally to understand the in-person experience and (b) a website experience seems to be slightly more relevant for Intuit than a store experience (unless perhaps there are plans to open Intuit stores… we could put them next to the Apple store and the Pinkberry store… now that would be interesting!). What you see as “prioritization of store over website” I see as “choosing trendi-ness and cool over usable experience.” That might be their decision, and it might work very well for them, but I would hate if we at Intuit started using the banner of “delight” to start thinking that way.

What’s on my desk waiting to be finished:

1. Good to Great
2. Sketching User Experiences
3. Beautiful Evidence
4. Smart World
5. Primal Banding
6. Made to Stick
7. Stumbling on Happiness
8. … about 3 issues of the Harvard Business Review.

A short read from CNN on basic resume rules, which are sometimes missed.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/worklife/08/29/cb.resume.irks/index.html

In addition to those, I’m going to add a few of my own.

1. Single Page
In reviewing hundreds of resumes during my career, I can say anything over a single page will often elicit a quick close if the candidate doesn’t have an impressive design portfolio or come highly recommended. I don’t care if it’s a CV, life story, or what. When I have to review 20-30 resumes in an hour, I can’t handle 5 pages about every detail of your job history.

2. Bullets
The readability factor increases dramatically and it gives the ability for quick parsing. You’re not writing a book, so don’t use paragraphs.

3. Fewer Bullets
A mentor of mine convinced me to use just a few bullets for each of my jobs. After initial concern around “will the reviewer know what I did at my last job“, I realized I only read about 1-2 bullets per job for each resume I receive. Over 3 points is most likely too many unless you’ve been in the job for an excessive amount of time. In that case you may have moved roles and can break it down by role with a few points for each. I want to hear the top reasons you’ve been impressive, but don’t exaggerate.

by: Justin Maguire

I’m a fan of Microsoft… it’s not easy being a fan, but I stand by them - in fact, now more than ever I see them starting to do some really innovative work - things coming out of the research side especially. That said, one of the most difficult things about working for Microsoft as a designer is accepting that they are a risk averse company. As a general rule, they never lead… they let others go first, watch for the opportunity, and then follow.

I’ve seen a prototype built by a deisgner in house 2 years before the first blackberrry came out that if you set it on the table with that device, would be inperceptibly different. I saw 5 releases worth of insanely creative ideas for the Pocket PC touch screen based devices that were focused more on the experiential, the consumer, the fun aspects of the device - all of which never saw the light of day. Instead, microsoft stuck to what it knew - business professionals and designed products and solutions built around that narrow corridor of personal experience.

the up-side of this is that if you can weather this as a designer, you are bullet proof. The down-side, is that it leaves designers frustrated and demoralized as they watch other smaller companies come out with all of the things they thought of but weren’t allowed to ship. Designers live for the bragging rights of having climbed the creative mountain first and the only really acceptable medal to pin on your chest in this game is seeing your product in someone else’s hands.

The thing Microsoft hasn’t figured out how to do - though it became the tag line internally for vista - is how to win hearts and minds. There is buisness value in creating products that develop an emotional brand connection with your customers even if this doesn’t directly translate into $$. Microsoft had usability data about how big buttons should be for optimum usability and the smallest dot pitch that should be used in order to have optimum usability… what features will sell to the IT guys or the vocal nerdy minority. The focus here is on edge cases, data points and statistical facts - in short: Objective measures. They don’t/can’t simply ask themselves and their customers “what is cool?” In the useful, useable and desireable matrix they miss out on the desireable and along with it, the good will this 3rd leg extends towards useable (people will often put up with things that are less useable if they are highly desireable).

Then comes Apple’s Iphone!
[clouds part… angels sing…] WHAT A REVELATION!!!!

not really - there are many many aspects of the Iphone experience that I saw sketched up and prototyped in my time at microsoft…. Their creative team wasn’t the first to the top of that creative mount… their company was the first to ship it however, and in doing so, to reap the accolades and loyalty from existing, and many new, customers.

So is it really that microsoft doesn’t have the design talent that Apple has? NO.

what is missing, is the key missing ingredient in most companies which is the right tops down corporate culture that takes creative risks and has the ability the leverage the in house talent to connect to the hearts and minds of the customer. The requires Leadership both within the discipline and outside of it. When has any microsoft executive ever connected with a consumer audience (from body language, to clothing choice, to spoken word)? Then look at Jobs - his whole person is cool. he has style in dress, body language, and what he says. Microsoft doesn’t need a steve jobs and i’m not advocating that they try to become apple, just that if they want to keep the design talent they have, if they want to connect to the hearts and minds of their customers, there are some lessons to be learned from that fruit in cuperino.

Microsoft has hints of this - witness xbox and mediacenter… but it never really has the follow through. If they aren’t careful they will start to lose the design talent (which is world class) it has to the more fertile grounds of companies that have the courage to execute on the vision.

Most of us should be familiar with the idea of a value proposition for a product. How does the product deliver value to the customer? What does the product do that no one else does? Why would someone buy this product over a competitor? …but how does design play in this area? Designers are discussed as the people who create experiences. The people who think end to end about a product… but how do you bring the value proposition and the design together in more than just an easy to use flow?

Alas your value proposition will be someone else’s value proposition in 6 months (or may already be). Ease of use can be overlooked, price value can be overlooked, first impressions fade with new ones… how do you keep customers invested in your value? You must create a bond with the user through the experience. You must create a connection in which the users sees a dialog with the product and connects with the experience. Software is just starting to grasp these concepts. Why does Coke control the market with so many competitors? Why does Starbucks reign supreme when you can buy something cheaper? These products have created a bond through the brand and [perceived] experiences the deliver. Designers now must think about how they do this. How do they build an experience into the product and brand that no one else can? How do you connect to a user in a way no one else can? How do you stand out? How do you turn an experience into a signature experience that people will remember? If we don’t connect with the user through our experiences, someone else will. Build the bond, build the relationship, grow the brand; This is what great design does.

by: Justin Maguire

A few times in my career I’ve had the opportunity to work on hardware/software experiences… and am in the middle of this again. I’m consistently surprised by how few people play in this space and how often we allow the titles of our discipline to structure how we go about developing these experiences… ie. “Visual Designer” goes off and dreams up look and feel, “UI Designer” goes off and dreams up software based experiences, and “Product Designers” go off and start dreaming up HW configurations… and the proucts often end up having no rhyme or reason to the decisions made at the intersection of these 3 different components of the customer experience.

we need to stop talking about these as Software vs. Hardware…and start thinking, acting, and talking about these as what they are… wholistic product experiences.

The decisions made in the HW do a great deal to signal what the device is about…. and how you should interact with it even before you pick it up. The look and feel of the device (both physical and virtual) should be in concert (or deliberately and understandably not). I belive that doing this requires these three disciplines to work in a war room, collaborative studio style where ideas, concepts and creative directions can be shared realtime. For offices where these teams are remote, instant messaging, lightweight screen sharing tools, and daily check-ins are needed. If not, we’re doing as a discipline what we used to yell at others for doing to us - Over the wall design… and my message is a simple one. Don’t let anything - organization, technology, time, space… or yourself be the wall.

Cheers,
-Mag3

Recently an email came through asking if some Designers I work with could give a Design101 class to some of our Developers and a few other team members. I know this has probably happened to most people who work in large corporations. There aren’t enough Design and UX resources, so they are asked to teach others in an attempt to help other give lite design help on products.

Educating the company about Design and UX can be a good thing. Allowing other people to understand what the UX team does on a normal basis. How decisions and trade offs are made, how we understand our users, and our process work overall. Demystify Design. However this has to handled in such a way as it educational information and not actionable lessons. I like to understand what QA does, but I’m not going to try and write my own SOAP tests.

On the downside (which seems to happen more often), teaching non-designers can result in poor design run amuck and a little information being a dangerous thing. [Software] Design principles can seem basic at first review and when you combine that with the fact that anyone *can design, you give some people the ammunition to argue and create work when they don’t have the strong skills needed. When a company or person asks for this to happen, it [simply] being short sighted in how you build a successful product or team. You don’t create a product team without hiring a developer, so why do you skip over a designer? Maybe designers haven’t shown enough of how they can deliver business value… or maybe it’s a continued ignorance that because design can be done through programmatic tools, you don’t need a true designer. I don’t know, although I often look in the mirror in these situations and focus less on external blame and more on what I can do to help the situation. It’s easy to point a finger, it’s harder to figure how you can change perception.

It’s poor thinking to decide a few hours of Design101 can allow people to produce a skill that most have been taking years if not decades to refine. It’s insulting to the business [of design]. For everyone who wants to claim they know design, it seems most people (including designers) don’t even have a basic definition of the discipline.

There are 3 calls to actions here for all designers:
1. Understand the business value of design, as well as the business value of other disciplines. Never be short sighted on others if you don’t want the same in return.
2. Know what design is. Design is not cool, design is not pretty. Those are byproducts of great design.
3. Figure out what you can do to help the business and show the value of design, don’t tell others to help you. Point the finger at yourself.

Image from ravSX’s Flickr page

With all the news over the iPhone, I thought came at an appropriate time…

With my recent interest/obsession over a few luxury brands I had a chance to play with the Prada Phone by LG while in Korea at an SK Telecom store. I loved the simple style Prada and LG brought to both the industrial design and user interface to create a simple, but rich experience. The default UI itself is black, white, and gray, and the icons are flat line art. The user can go and change the font face and color which gives it a nice personalized touch without losing the overall beauty of the original design. Also the pre-loaded bright colors they have for the fonts look stylish and tasteful against the stark black background.

It was easy to navigate and the touch screen took all of 10 seconds to get used to. On the interaction design itself I was surprised on some of the overall ease. Most cell phones I’ve had are a pain from many angles on interaction design, but this came easy regardless of if I were checking email, playing with settings, or calling someone.

In some of the pre-reviews I’ve read [and not actual experience] about the iPhone I’m interested to see how they stack up. The iPhone looks to have flashier UI and transitions, however things like playing YouTube videos and internet capabilities have been a bit shot down saying it takes forever to load over EDGE. I’ve also read the screen takes a decent amount of pressure to use and takes some getting used to. I’m also always happy to point out that besides LG/Prada, HTC and a few other companies have touch screens… not just Apple.

If it weren’t for the hefty price tag (about 950USD after won to dollar conversation), I’d be tempted to get the Prada/LG phone, but I guess I can say the same thing about the iPhone price