Some UX points on the Macbook Pro 2017 hardware
Or what about the UX of the 2001: A Space Odyssey Monolith
This article does not intent to accomplish a comprehensive analysis of the Macbook Pro hardware but just to point out some of the goals and pain points that I have experienced through its use.
Setting the mood
It is now two month since I bought a new brand Macbook Pro 2017. I have been a Windows user since I was 15 years old and this was along time ago. Moreover, my former computer was a HP from around 2007 with Windows Vista preinstalled and upgraded to Windows 7 around seven months before buying the Mac. This means that I was far from being technologically up to dated. It is also relevant to note that Spain (where I live) is a market overwhelmingly dominated by PCs. As a research scientist, I only remember one person using Mac at work. And, from what I remember, I have never used any Mac more than a couple of times for checking my email abroad and this was also along time ago. In brief, I was not exactly an Apple-believer.
First contact
Two days after receiving my package (and just after seeing the Objectified documental), my mind turned all the way around about the object that I was handling. This metallic finish board, with almost nothing disturbing the design, was an puzzling object. This “artifact” only displays a couple of features to interact with: three small ports close to the angles, one small notch for the finger to open the cover and, of course, the iconic apple logo in the center of the cover. Except for the latter, any of the remaining features are obvious from a top view (for example, when the laptop is laying over the table).
I felt as if this gadget were an extremely sophisticated and high-end product from a technologically more advanced culture.
Affordability of such an object is at least intriguing. If you get outside of a certain technological context, you may think of a number of things which this object could be use for. A computer would not be probably at the top of the list. I felt as if this gadget were an extremely sophisticated and high-end product from a technologically more advanced culture. That is, like the Australopithecus gazing at the Monolith in the Stanley Kubrick’s film.
Second contact
But I am not an Australopithecus at all (Hey, I have chin!). I was not going to get stunned by a piece of aluminum. This enchanting moment was interrupted when opening the cover. Then, it appears what most people in this planet can recognize as a regular laptop: one screen, a keyboard and a touchpad within a minimalism design. UX emerges once we “discover” the function of the object and we start using it.
This enchanting moment was interrupted when opening the cover.
First of all, my heavy old laptop is quite uncomfortable to open with a single hand. The resistance offers by the cover makes the laptop to lift and later to fall and hit the table. This is not nice. On the other hand, despite being quite lighter, my Mac is calibrate to allow to open the cover with a single hand without the entire laptop lifts. This is nice.
The ports are on the wrong side of the experience: sometimes is difficult to hit upon the tiny ports on the uniform flat sides of the Mac when plugging a device. I have had problems to plug my jack many times before having succeeded. Not something that you can do in automatic mode. This issue is related with the lack of directionality that comes from the symmetric and minimalism design of the laptop when it is closed. This design also makes that you can try to open the laptop from the wrong side. Besides, Apple has placed both USB-C ports very close to each other. Taking into account that not many devices have this new USB standard, many people, included me, needs adapters to use these ports. The problem comes when trying to plug both adapters because the USB-C ports are really close to each other. Therefore, the width of the adapters should be perfectly designed to allow them to be connected at the same time. Because of this, I had to buy and return two types of adaptors before getting the right ones. Even when one can blame both Apple and the adapter manufacturer for this inconveniences, this is not a very good user experience at all.
The ports are on the wrong side of the experience
The sounds emerging from the interaction with my Mac are one of the nicer, more subtle and catching features that it has. These sounds are also one of the features that make the best to keep me working. The Mac speak loud and clear: from the soft but robust sound of the keyboard to the simple and clean charging pitch, it always provides with the right acoustic feedback. In particular, the sound of the touchpad stands out about the rest for me. Surprisingly, the metal chasis of the Mac also forms the surface of the touchpad in a perfect aesthetic continuous. In a way that matches this visual consistency, the clicking of the touchpad has also been designed to sound like it looks; like a metal sheet sagging. Design at it’s best.
Regarding the keyboard, the short and heavy key travel is perfectly assessed to allow to type quickly while reducing typos. On the other hand, the keyboard has tiny “return” and “up/down arrow” keys. This has made me to fail typing lot of times and still does. Readers should know that my computer displays the Spanish keyboard that it has an special arrangement of some keys (including the return key). However, despite different shape, return key is similar in size to the English keyboard. Maybe the size of these keys is the byproduct of trying to fit the whole keyboard within a rectangle without leaving empty spaces. Here, the search for a geometrically perfect shape has led to a bad UX for me.
Regarding the metallic chasis, two likable features. Temperature is the first one: starting to work and touching a cold surface is weird but nice compare to my old nuclear power plant laptop. The other is that the aluminium is easy to clean and it rarely gets dirty.
The design of digital devices is a distinct challenge compare to that of traditional analog objects.
The (software) twist
Nowadays that computers do many more thing than just “to write on a digital paper”, affordability of the software is unknown from the hardware appearance. Even in such a carefully crafted object, software and hardware lives in different “realities”. This difference translates into a fracture in the design. At least, we must recognize that the design of digital devices is a distinct challenge compare to the design of traditional analog objects. In the latter case, every part may move to another in a continuous of form and function that it is visible and tangible. Maybe the software needs to take physical shape to transmit its function. And maybe, because we are primates, we feel that greater manipulation lead to a better UX. These two ideas have probably driven us repeatedly to take the software out from the screen in our sci-fi fantasies.
If you enjoyed this article, I will love to have a handful of applauses. This will encourage me to keep writing. Any comments will be also appreciated to improve.
