Google’s bread and butter has always been it’s simplicity, speed, cohesion, and reliability. While this has worked wonders on their search engine and services, it has not always translated well to their Android phone operating system. This breakdown is never more apparent than in their recent release of the Nexus One Desktop Dock.

The key draw of the Nexus One Desktop Dock is it’s ability to receive stereo audio over Bluetooth. If you were to connect the dock to your stereo system, you could transmit and control music from your phone without wires. A very exciting prospect. Unfortunately, Google utterly fails with it’s execution.

Who Reads Manuals, Honestly?

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to setup the Nexus One Desktop Dock. I mean, there’s only one cord for power, and another cord that’s for audio. Those cords can only plug into the port with the respective shape. Also, the phone is only going to fit into the device one way, standing up and facing forward. So, who’s going to read a manual? Nobody.

If history has shown us anything, it’s that people do not read manuals. They blunder along as far as they can go, then consult the manual when they hit a bump. And, herein lies Google’s Usability FAIL. When you first dock your phone, you are presented with the following screen.

This is the setting box you need to check in order to send audio via Bluetooth to the dock. Yet, the language for this setting makes no mention of this. This selection also sounds scary, and that by checking it you’ll silence your phone. There’s one more key point, the “Remeber setting” checkbox is pre-checked! If you do any of the following, this settings box will go away, and never comes back:

• If you press, “OK.”
• If you hit the, “Back” button on your phone.
• If you remove the phone from the dock.

So, you’ve done one of the above and you played a bit with the Clock application. Now, you want to try the Bluetooth audio streaming. You can’t find the dock when scanning for it in your Bluetooth settings because it’s not currently turned on. Suddenly you realize what that pop-up setting box was for. How do you bring it back? There’s nothing in the Clock application, that which appeared when you docked your phone, that will display the setting. Removing the phone from the dock, and pouring through the phone settings will not reveal a way to make it reappear either. And, guess what? It’s not in the documentation or support forum for the dock either.

As far as the user is concerned, they blew their only opportunity to get their dock to work.

So What’s Missing?

It turns out that there actually is an option in your settings to re-enable the dock’s audio. In order to find it, you have to have your phone docked, then you navigate to Home > Settings > Sound & Display > Dock audio.

This is something the average person would have no way of stumbling upon. It’s also a key component, completely overlooked, in order to use the dock.

They could have fixed this by:

• Not having “Remember setting” automatically checked.
• Provided some feedback as to where the dock settings could be found after you choose your setting.
• Documented how to find the setting in the manual.
• Provided a shortcut to the setting in the Clock application’s menu.

Until this happens, it remains a shocking usability blunder made by Google.

Update: April 8, 2010

It looks like Google has addressed this issue in great detail.

They removed the dock settings from the “Sound & display settings” area all together.

They added a “Dock settings” button to the Clock application’s menu. This is the application that launches when you dock the phone.

Last, they removed the scary “silences phone” language from the setting.

Good job Google. High fives all around. I’m going to assume that you’ve also fixed the documentation that ships with the phone as well.