Lock Screen apps... an odd obsession.
I'm not trying to take a stab at those who value their lock screen apps or their lock screen customizability. I am one of those people. But, I realized this just now as I anxiously await the new lock screen customizations becoming available on Windows Phone later this week, and it dawned on me that it didn't exactly make a ton of sense.
Here is a simple question. What percentage of the time is your lock screen visible? And how much interaction do you actually have with it? I think, for most people, that the answers would be very little to both questions. Lock screens on smart phones serve one primary purpose and several secondary purposes. The primary focus to stop pocket dialing. Secondary focuses could be anything from password protection, at a glance updates and customizability. But none of these things really *need* to be all that complex.
I remember several articles back in the early days bashing windows phone for not having biometric finger print readers, or not being able to unlock them with your face, or not having this widget or that capability. And I just don't get it. I have NEVER pocket dialed from my phone. The lock screen that is there on Windows Phone is fantastic at serving its primary purpose. It also gives me the date and time (which is great since I don't wear a watch), shows notification counts, the weather and a hand picked image.
The point is, I don't really spend all that much time looking at my lock screen. And most of the times I do it is redundant or simply to get the time. I don't show case it to friends. I don't spend hours on end gazing at it. It isn't actively functional. It isn't meant to be. If it were you would be able to accidentally do stuff while the phone is locked.
And as far as redundant goes, 99% of the time my phone is on me and the ringer is up. I have different sounds for different alerts. I know I have 1 text message waiting for me without needing to look at the lock screen. In the morning it saves me from checking my email if and only if I got nothing new over night. And that almost never happens. If there were email, even if it were junk mail I'd open up my mail app at least to clear the notification, but also to delete. So, even claiming that lock screens help with managing alerts is really just a fictional claim for most people.
But, if all of those things are somehow important to you. That is nothing which lock screens haven't already done for years. Everything we've added since is, to steal a phrase from my dev lifestyle, "syntactic sugar". Perhaps "aesthetic sugar" is more correct here. But the point is this; at this point we aren't adding any more substance than we had before. We're just adding distractions. I don't even look at the weather data I added to my start screen. Usually, if I care about the weather, I want more information than my lock screen displays anyway so I unlock the phone and open the app.
And yet... I still look forward to this app. And I'll wager every new lock screen tweak, enhancement or addition on every platform will still be widely heralded for some time. Even though they will continue to actually be one of the lesser used features of our phones. We really don't know what we want, do we?
Here is a simple question. What percentage of the time is your lock screen visible? And how much interaction do you actually have with it? I think, for most people, that the answers would be very little to both questions. Lock screens on smart phones serve one primary purpose and several secondary purposes. The primary focus to stop pocket dialing. Secondary focuses could be anything from password protection, at a glance updates and customizability. But none of these things really *need* to be all that complex.
I remember several articles back in the early days bashing windows phone for not having biometric finger print readers, or not being able to unlock them with your face, or not having this widget or that capability. And I just don't get it. I have NEVER pocket dialed from my phone. The lock screen that is there on Windows Phone is fantastic at serving its primary purpose. It also gives me the date and time (which is great since I don't wear a watch), shows notification counts, the weather and a hand picked image.
The point is, I don't really spend all that much time looking at my lock screen. And most of the times I do it is redundant or simply to get the time. I don't show case it to friends. I don't spend hours on end gazing at it. It isn't actively functional. It isn't meant to be. If it were you would be able to accidentally do stuff while the phone is locked.
And as far as redundant goes, 99% of the time my phone is on me and the ringer is up. I have different sounds for different alerts. I know I have 1 text message waiting for me without needing to look at the lock screen. In the morning it saves me from checking my email if and only if I got nothing new over night. And that almost never happens. If there were email, even if it were junk mail I'd open up my mail app at least to clear the notification, but also to delete. So, even claiming that lock screens help with managing alerts is really just a fictional claim for most people.
But, if all of those things are somehow important to you. That is nothing which lock screens haven't already done for years. Everything we've added since is, to steal a phrase from my dev lifestyle, "syntactic sugar". Perhaps "aesthetic sugar" is more correct here. But the point is this; at this point we aren't adding any more substance than we had before. We're just adding distractions. I don't even look at the weather data I added to my start screen. Usually, if I care about the weather, I want more information than my lock screen displays anyway so I unlock the phone and open the app.
And yet... I still look forward to this app. And I'll wager every new lock screen tweak, enhancement or addition on every platform will still be widely heralded for some time. Even though they will continue to actually be one of the lesser used features of our phones. We really don't know what we want, do we?
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