MobileMe Sync “Conflict Review” is easy to use, but possibly useless
One of the purposes of a Conflict Review process between two pieces of code or data is to highlight the actual differences between those two pieces of code or data. It used to mainly be a feature in the coding domain but has since become quite popular in the consumer and business world for resolving differences when people are merging contact information between two lists, or simply syncing the data between, say, a workstation and an iPhone.
Apple’s MobileMe service is a syncing service which is easy to use and gets the job done for the most part. I use it to sync my iPhone with my various contacts on different devices. At least, that’s the intent. However, there seem to be a particular problem when it comes to the Conflict Review process: It prompts me to choose between two different entries in two different locations, for the same contact, however it doesn’t show me the differences between the two choices.
Now, one might think that maybe there are no differences and it’s just asking which one I want to choose, but that’s actually not the case. If I check the individual contacts, I will see that one listing has one set of information while the other listing is slightly different.
Why doesn’t Apple’s MobileMe Conflict Review show me the differences? This service is seems to me to be useless, and I feel like I’m risking choosing the wrong listing for my iPhone’s needs.
Based on usability best practices, we know that whenever users can’t trust an interface or process to do the right thing, then there is obvious need to fill in the gaps that are evident and causing the lack of faith in the first place. In this case, Apple’s MobileMe Conflict Review needs to show all of the data for each conflicting contact. It’s that simple.
