Social Strategy & Design by @KarlLong

I sadly lost my trusty bluetooth headset yesterday, and I am absolutely baffled as to where I lost it, but it’s gone. I couldn’t even find it via it’s weak bluetooth distress signal (my computer should pick it up within 30′).

Anyway, I “need” a bluetooth headset in the biggest way for two reasons:

1. It connects to my laptop, making skype a much more familiar, phone like experience
2. More mundanely it connects to my cell phone when I’m driving

Now i’ve had a trusty Jabra headset that was an adequate performer for about a year, and bluetooth headsets are such a crapshoot it was quite likely i was just going to find another Jabra headset of the same form-factor (it’s the behind the ear style like they use on Alias, see cnets article Phones for spies: gadgets as seen on TV’s Alias).

That was until I found a “feature” that made me jump ship to a different brand, and nothing else mattered, not even Sydney. What was that “feature”, well they called it “multipoint technology”, and the upshot is that the headset can be paired with “two” different devices at the same time and switch between them seamlessly. The idea for me being, that the headset will be ready to talk on whether my cell phone rings or if my skype phone rings.

Plantronics 510

Anyone who has gone through the crazy voodoo processes to “pair” a headset with a device knows the pain trying to “unpair” and connect to another device, and try doing that when a phone starts ringing. It’s difficult enough to get the headset in your ear, let alone switch devices.

What is interesting about this is that so few companies have caught on to the fact that a bluetooth headset should be more of a polygamist and should be married to several devices at the same time. My office phone, my cell phone, my laptop should all be ready to ring through to my headset.

This is a prime example of how some of the techniques in the realm of “experience design” or User Experience could have helped design a better product that more fully met the needs of the customers.

What can companies that design products and services learn from this:

“don’t listen to your customers”

Customers adapt to product shortcomings and will rarely verbalize problems that they don’t see solutions to:

Case in point - i didn’t know bluetooth could pair with multiple devices, so I would have talked about voice quality and a earpiece that doesn’t fall out of my ear while i’m driving.

Now watching what customers do is certainly part of the “user experience” design toolbox, but in this specific example an ethnographer would also have to be a detective, why, because I had already adapted to the product shortcoming. I had essentially given up using my headset with my cellphone because the “pairing” process was cumbersome and unreliable, so the observed behavior would have been me “only” using my bluetooth headset with my laptop. It would take a curious ethnographer to ask the question; “why don’t you use the headset with your phone?”

Shameless plug - multipoint technology but you won’t look like Sydney on Alias

Or Jabra’s latest innovation - colors:

(hey no hard feelings Jabra, I really did love the 250