Branding Crimes: 2. Stealing Interfaces
A wonderful example of what not to do. Let us say it again: Brand = Interface. Copying interfaces defines you as a lamo second choice company. Their excuse is a milestone of ignorance in contemporary branding. Nokia’s Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia:
“If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride.”
Nokia’s Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia is a funny guy.
We don’t expect him to be a philosopher, but next time he should—at least—have a quick look at Wikipedia, before stating such nonsense:
Pride is the name of an emotion which refers to a strong sense of self-respect, a refusal to be humiliated as well as joy in the accomplishments of oneself or a person, group, nation or object that one identifies with.
How can you associate pride with blunt copying?—Yes, we all agree that copying is the first step of creation. But please, as a world class interactive brand you ought to be more creative than that with its interface…
When I read about Nokia’s copy of the iPhone, I did not really know how to feel about that. On the one hand, it was as you say, a lame copy of a highly attractive interface, on the other hand I thought: what else would be an interface that could beat Apple’s?
If you insist on the brand being the interface, the whole thing would be just a lame copy, but if you think about the computer mouse or the joystick, the Brand = Interface-dogma suddenly looks a bit different: If a company creates a highly successful “kind of way to operate something”, why not use it in your own products? There are many companies who build mice and I am sure there is the same amount of companies that build joysticks. Did you ever connect the mouse or the joystick to a specific company? In this case, from my point of view, the Brand = Interface thing does not really apply. I’d be interested in your opinion on this!
Whatever in the end is the case: Nokia definitely rebranded themselves as a company that does not only innovate, but also immitate.
Who copies who is a hard one to determine. Many of the gestures in the iphone and ideas have been around for many years. Same with some of the metaphors around the desktop. The true innovation points around these products and integrated services will be interesting to watch. How can I access or connect to services like http://www.flickr.com without having to open a browser window etc.
As a Nokia customer I couldn’t care less whether the UI was copied from somebody else (who likely copied it from some research lab themselves). As a Nokia customer I care whether the UI works for me, and if it does, my attraction to the Nokia brand will increase.
Case in point: Microsoft’s copying of Apple’s copying of PARC’s graphical user interface didn’t deter people from embracing Windows.
I think that in this case your interpretation of the insightful Brand = Interface is too literal. What customers care about is F(Interface), where F stands for fun, functionality, ergonomics, or any other benefit derived from the interface, not about the uniqueness/provenance of the interface.
As a designer, I would definitely be okay with someone else using my solutions in their own products. After all it is a form of flattery—and it is essentially the birth of a new design pattern. And that is something designers should strive for.
Paul Sherman wrote an interesting piece on this at UXmatters as it pertains to “Patents” - http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000210.php
Let me guess, another bunch of Apple lovers. How come everyone always forgets that Jobs stole the interface for their OS from Xerox, ha?
By your logic, all toilet paper manufactures should be in endless “brand” wars.. cause you know.. interface to wiping is quite the same.
Really amusing to see how desperately people try to defend superlame Nokia just to score a point.
The Xerox-Apple-Windows story is very well known, especially by people like us, wo build shires for Jef Raskin. (The Xerox story has nothing to do with toilet paper, btw).
The point made is: Nokia is supposed to develop good interfaces for their customers and not JUST copying the iPhone 1:1. I even said that all creativity starts with imitation. But the important, really significant step is the following. You need to substantially improve what you copy and make it your own. If you don’t manage to do so, you bury your brand, which is—first of all—a matter of ways and ease of use, and—second—a question of skinning. Until recently brand creating was a mere skinning discipline, but as people become more demanding with user experience, branding has to be understood differently. User experience precedes and defines brand experience. The very uniqueness of user experience is a significant capital of a product. See wii, google, iPod. Time have changed. Ripping off doesn’t pay off anymore.
The really sickening part is that Finland has an army of talented young designers, but instead of moving forward and energizing itself and its employees with in house innovation, Nokia is blowing away millions on a rip-off.
Or, simply put: What do you think is the Google phone going to be? Copy or innovation? And what will be it’s strength? The interface? I bet the Google phone interface is going to blow us away.It won’t look as nice as the iPhone, but design is how it works anyway…
“35. Imitate. Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.” - Bruce Mau’s incomplete manifesto
Imitation leads to self-discovery and evolution. In interface design it leads to best practice and standardisation. Certain functionality becomes expected, which improves user experience and sets new benchmarks of quality.
More and more people are coming across the same interface problems and in solving them, are finding similar solutions. If these solutions are the best fit with our current technology they should be used. Fear of “looking like the other guy” will hold you back. Nokia customers should be grateful that the breakthroughs made by Apple can carry on to them as an end user.
If your reason for avoiding best practices is a fear of damaging your ego, of becoming a “lamo second choice company” you might find your pride stopping you from evolving with the rest of us…
The “Brand = Interface” Thesis is quite interesting, althoug, I’m not yet completely conviced. Don’t you think that it crashes with another Thesis of yours, which say: “Newspaper need one identity”.
As naive as I am, I would say. A printed newspaper is different Interface than a Website. So you have two brands but online one “identity”. This seems diffcult to me, like the german proverb “wash my fur but don’t make me wet.” :]
Picasso: “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”
Joran,
Picasso is the man.
yea the browsing of photos ala the iPhone is quite attractive at first but i would hope phone companies would come up with deeper, more rich ways of helping people connect with their own and their friend’s content. For example, anyone can build an AWESOME web gallery with fades and pans and mouse/finger interactions but sites like flickr understood and maximized the importance of the hyperlink. Without those lateral connections between content (friends, photos, groups) via hyperlinks, ie the interface, flickr and any phone photo galleries apps will just be very polished turds. thanks
Ben,
To say that websites and newspapers cannot have one identity is like saying the signage of cars cannot be identical to the letterhead. You need to apply. That newspaper are a particularly difficult case is true though. You have two interfaces with one identity that shape and represent the same core information in different ways.
Just for universal balance, I must add to my previous feedback that this time I completely agree with you concerning the bluntness of Nokia’s latest design strategies. It seems they have completely missed what they had in the 90’s. I would really like to know what happened, just to learn from it. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to getting an iPhone. But as for Toyota, I still think you are wrong.
Eternal recursion.
Steve jobs speech is for me at the same level. The only thing is that they steal and make flufly things. I just hope Nokia can “imitate” at least in the same level of quality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0UjU0rtavE
Pauli,
Once everyone agrees on everything I say, I will stop writing. You should still reconsider the Toyota article. I added a couple of links that make it hard to disagree…
There is a fine line between adhering to conventions that benefit the user, and stealing interfaces. Personally I don’t think that Nokia is entirely in the wrong here.
What Apple did is create an amazingly intuitive interface - so intuitive that it was instantly adopted as a benchmark by which all mobile touch screen devices will be measured against. In other words, Apple have introduced a new standard. They are saying “this is how users should interact with devices”. And really, a lot of it is common sense - dragging images to scroll, this makes perfect sense metaphorically and I don’t blame Nokia for adopting this as a standard any more than I think one OS copies another for using drag and drop functionality in their IU.
We can dissect a website in a similar way. Your site has a header, footer and a sidebar because you want to keep different types of information in different areas - areas where the user is intuitively going to “know” what information to expect, because the association between location and type of information has become a “standard” in terms of how we interact with websites.
But I don’t call you a copycat for having a grey footer with links to past articles (as is seen on many, many websites), I recognise the utility the user gets from this familiar concept and the fact that it is a good solution to a common problem.
However yes, it is a fine line as I said in the first paragraph. And that line is often subjective
Might see you around Tokyo some time, but I have the feeling we are both so busy as to probably never bump into each other!
Jon