Ben Rudolph from Microsoft is running an interesting contest on the show floor of CES in Las Vegas this week. He belives that his Windows Phone can smoke anyone else’s smartphone in normal everyday tasks. This is much different than comparing processor speeds and hardware specs and benchmark scores. This is about comparing ease and speed of actually using the phone to do certain tasks. If you beat him in a race, you can win $100, but if you lose you have to admit to losing on camera where your embarassing picture will be posted all over the internet. To help ease the embarassment of your loss, Ben might also offer you to trade your current smartphone for a new Windows Phone. The challenge is designed to be very fair as well.
So how does the contest work? First off you need to be at CES in Las Vegas this week. Then you have to find Ben Rudolph and challenge him. He’ll probably be at the Microsoft booth, but follow him on twitter for specifics. Next both people will have to agree upon a specific task. I’m sure the task can be anything like taking a photo and posting it to twitter or creating a new contact. Also, both parties will connect to the same WiFi hotspot so that there won’t be any internet-connection handicaps. Ben will even allow a warm-up run for practice.
Ben’s usability speed contest reminds me of a series of videos we did here on Pocketnow almost 4 years ago which compared timings on how long it took a user to perform a series of tasks on a smartphone. Check out the original post here.
If you were going to take part in one of these usability speed tests, what type of task would you suggest for the race?
Source: Windows Phone Blog
Picture: WPcentral
Originally published on Pocketnow on January 10, 2012.