Likes : Music Gigs, Cats, Sneakers

Dislikes : Celery, Trance Music, Paperwork

This is the first of a series of interviews to give you an insight into the people and working practices behind INQ. It’s nearly a year since Sheen joined us back in January 2009.

Explain a little about the purpose of your role as Head of UI. What is it all about?

My role is to deliver the best possible experience for INQ handset users. The UI team at INQ make sure people are able to use our devices intuitively and effortlessly. We want you to get to where you want on your phone without thinking, without too many steps, without pausing.

So how do you go about making the best possible user experience?

First we need to see what is technically feasible and how phones work from a human psychological point of view. Then we focus on our creative pursuits such as interaction design and bringing our visions to life through colours, fonts, look and feel. Also, an important principle in making a great user experience is simplicity.

Describe your experience at INQ in the last year.

At INQ, we believe people should be able to choose how they communicate with everyone around them. The pertinent features of social networking, instant messaging and email are very important and must be recast for mobile. For example, user content should be uploaded easily to allow you to communicate quickly. One of the challenges we face at INQ is improving and innovating our future handsets without compromising existing simplicity and elegance.

So how do you think social networking can evolve regarding the user experience?

Success comes from services that take the ‘mobile’ element into the highest possible consideration. So to make the experience successful, social networking services will have to support the user when they are out and about. They will have to allow for immediacy, spontaneity and the fact that the user is immersed in the real world. This is very different from being connected through a PC.

This interest in mobile internet, when did it begin?

I have always been interested in adapting new technologies to make them easier for people to use. So five years ago I entered the field of telecommunications. The mobile internet was gaining traction and its potential to change peoples lives appealed to me.

So, how did you end up at INQ?

I’ll let you try and make sense of this. I used to be a DJ for about fifteen years in Sydney. Through music I got into using computers, so I studied computing and that’s when the internet started to happen. I then got myself a job working at a newspaper designing their online presence. For example, I worked on their classified section. I thought it was revolutionary how searching for a job was changing from checking newspapers to searching online websites. Then I moved into interactive TV and developed applications before moving onto mobile phones and improving the user experiences.

What is the best thing about working at INQ?

INQ is a great company with great ambitions and is very creative. For me, creativity equals ideas and executing these ideas is certainly one of the best things. Also, seeing people use their INQ mobile phones for the first time brings great satisfaction. The other day I heard an INQ ringtone on a bus. I felt happy to hear that, knowing I was part of it.