Treo, Tungsten, Zire 

More than 30 million Palm-powered handheld devices have been sold since the introduction of the Palm Pilot in 1996.

With $US900 million in annual sales, Palm controls 60 percent of the worldwide market for handheld computingndevices.

The strategy behind Palm's Tungsten, Zire and Treo product lines is to maintain Palm's leadership position by delivering innovative, differentiated products which enhance the user experience and incorporate new applications.

Zanzara has worked with Palm to ensure its products are usable and to identify customer needs for new products.

As PalmOne has added new features to the product line, Palm needed help integrating them into their interfaces.

Projects have included: Bluetooth, WiFi, Digital still and video cameras, MP3, PIMs (Personal Information Management applications such as Calendar, Contact, and Memos), SMS and MMS, screen orientation, Setup, Tour and Graffiti2.

Palm also wanted help exploring what new products to introduce.

Finally, Palm wanted to reduce returned products and customer frustration resulting from first-time use.

Zanzara developed a program of work to address these issues.

A series of usability studies and design reviews on a range of suggested new features ensured the usability of these features.

Zanzara conducted in-home customer visit programmes to identify the unmet needs of PDA users in an effort tonuncover product opportunities.

Finally, Zanzara designed an out-of-box experience which followed the user from opening the package to getting their Palm working in order to understand how the experience can be made better.

The recommendations Zanzara made have fine tuned Palm's designs and ensured users can take advantage of new product features.

Zanzara's customer visits program uncovered many opportunities for Palm's future products that enabled Palm to focus new product development efforts on featuresncustomers actually value.

Finally, our out-of-box usability study significantly improved user's first-time experience of their Palm product, thereby reducing returns and calls to the Help Line.

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