When I first saw that ESPN Mobile commercial during the Super Bowl, I thought it was just some mobile web page you got on your regular phone. The commercial was cool — a guy sits with a phone as all kinds of sports go on around him (with mostly famous athletes), but I really wasn’t all that intrigued.

Interestingly, I was totally wrong about the service. It is actually a phone and whole new phone service specifically called ESPN Mobile. There are several exclusive applications that allow the user to keep up to date with all the lastest sports scores and news.

I learned this by watching the new, far more annoying commercials that ESPN has just brought out. The Super Bowl one was “cool” and fun to watch, but it didn’t tell me the data I needed to understand the service. The new commercial annoys me, but tells me the info I need. And, it makes me actually consider the service. (I’m not getting it, but I at least thought about it.)

I suppose my point here is that sometimes “ugly” is more effective, if it gets the message across. Maybe ugly is the new black.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 5:56 pm and is filed under product usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.