On May 5, 2009 my local NBC-TV affiliate ran a story on their website about 18-year-old Crystal Wiski in Northern California who recently sent and received 303,398 text messages in one month (see video below). Crystal’s astounding accomplishment made my family discussions about cell phone usage seem like small potatoes. However, what caught my attention about Crystal’s story was the fact that she achieved this milestone using an Apple iPhone. After having seen the damage wrecked by her fingernail typing on my daughter’s sturdy Motorola non-touchsreen phone, I am thoroughly impressed not only with Crystal’s typing speed, but with the durability of the iPhone touchscreen. When the iPhone launched, many said that the touchscreen virtual QWERTY keyboard of the iPhone would prove to be a major liability when compared to the hardware keyboard of the Blackberry and similar devices. As with so much conventional wisdom, Crystal has shown that users will adapt and achieve high levels of performance and satisfaction from user interface devices that are well designed and just work. Clearly Apple needs to consider hiring Crystal as a product tester to carry out accelerated life testing of their touchscreen products. I can even see Crystal appearing in television ads pitting her against a Blackberry user in a “Mac vs. PC guy”-style ad campaign.
As the battle for cell phone mind and market share continues, we will see more users like Crystal emerge to probe the limits of what’s possible and what’s popular in mobile devices.
