Consider the following (imaginary) gadget:

eFoto is a digital photo frame system. It allows people to send digital photos to one another very easily. The idea is that one person would buy a photo frame for another as a gift and then be able to send digital photos straight to the frame. For example, assume that someone has just had a baby, they can buy eFoto frames for all their friends and then send new photos of the growing baby straight to the frames.

The person who has the frame plugs it into a phone-line or similar iInternet connection and switches it on. The frame then downloads a picture and displays it. The owner does not need to know any of the technicalities of how eFoto does this. (The format of the photo, JPEG, TIFF, etc, its size in bytes and the speed of the Internet connection are all irrelevant to the user).

The photographer has a gadget that connects to their digital camera and to the iInternet. This gadget allows pictures to be downloaded from the camera and passed on to the eFoto frame.

In reality there is a central server that stores all the pictures, accepts them from cameras and sends them to frames, but the users: both the photographers and the frame owners, do not need to know anything about the server or how it works.

The company that sells the system does not make much money selling the hardware (the frame, and connectors) but makes their profit selling services. i.e. a small charge is made every time the photographer uploads new photos from their camera to the eFoto frames. These charges for uploading are how the company makes their profit.

Complete the following essay by selecting the most appropriate missing word from the list:

The eFoto system a good example of . This is because the system meets all three of Norman’s criteria: good technology, good marketing and good usability.

Firstly the system . The system is about sending and displaying photos and the gadgets are designed to allow the user to do that task and . From the user’s point of view the frame’s only job is to display up-to-date photos and that is all it does. Similarly the gadget that connects the camera to the central server only does that one job. This means that the two gadgets can be designed to perform these two tasks , rather than just well. If we compare the user wants to do with the eFoto frame with the user has to do it, it is clear that how the task is done (plug in the frame, look at the picture) is only slightly more than what the user wants to do (look at the picture). It is therefore clear that this system is extremely easy to use because it is single purpose.

Secondly the technology . There is some extremely complicated technology behind the system: (the digital images may be stored and sent in some compressed form, down an iInternet connection with a certain baud rate, at some number of bits per second, the frame may have to decompress the images when received, using some form of decompression algorithm, store them in some kind of non-volatile memory, and display them on a screen using RGB separation or something similar) but the users need to know anything about any of this. From the user’s perspective a picture is sent and that picture can be seen in a frame. How this is done is entirely .

Thirdly the system . This means that the users may send photos from their digital camera, but actually they do not need to They should be able to send images from any gadget that produces visual images. This allows the users : although the system was designed to allow the easy interchange of photos it may finish up being used for completely different purposes. It may be used to quickly send notes between a group of co-workers: everyone in the group has an eFoto frame on their desk and can download handwritten notes to the frames from their PDAs. This then becomes a simple and efficient system.

Furthermore the way that the company makes their money from this product is based on the market model, rather than on the way that PC companies make their money. The user expected to repeatedly buy new eFoto frames every time there is an improvement to the technology. They are expected to buy eFoto frames once, and those frames should last for years. The company does not need to resell ‘improved’ technology because the current technology is for high quality images to be sent and displayed; any further ‘improvements’ in the technology are irrelevant.