Archive for April, 2008
Mobile web, the hard way
Image from Keith Waters (via Paul Walsh)
A talk by Bill Moggridge at last year’s Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign conference included some telling video footage, of a researcher in Tokyo setting up and using an account on her phone to buy a soft drink from a vending machine. Thirty five minutes and many instructions later, the drink is in her hand. Bill used this example to illustrate the challenge of designing web-based services for small, multi-purpose devices, such as the mobile phone. He suggested that exemplary design solutions, such as the iPod, evolve over several years: iTunes software for downloading music to computers was proved before the iPod device itself was launched, and it was a couple of years more before iTunes store was added, first on the Mac and then later extended to Windows.
Bill Moggridge’s talk pre-dated iPhone’s launch. But there was a similar theme in Bill Buxton’s keynote speech to CHI (the annual human-computer interaction bash) this year (the speech is summarised by Nate Bolt here). He described innovation as having a long nose: products and services that succeed usually have antecedents going back several years (in Buxton’s view, at least 20). As an example he linked the iPhone to Apple’s Newton hand-held computer, released 15 years ago; and to an IBM/Bell South smart phone collaboration, also in 1993.
Comparing the iPhone and the Newton, from Bill Buxton’s CHI 2008 speech
The iPhone’s success has sparked predictions that this is the way mobile interactivity will now go. Certainly other manufacturers will release similar devices soon (Nokia, according to rumour, in the first quarter of 2009). It should never be so difficult again to buy a fizzy drink via your phone.
But is full-blown smart telephony appropriate for everyone? Alex’s post last week on Generation Tags brought a response from Dave Ambrose that while many 16-24s are fully engaged in the internet, there are many others who find the internet boring and of no value. I’ve picked this up in research, too. And it’s also reported in research on mobile browsing carried out by Acacia Avenue for Buongiorno which finds two distinct groups of 18-32 year-olds: ‘Embracers’ and ‘Pragmatists.’ Leaving aside any reticence one might have about dividing the world neatly into two, there seems to be something here that mobile phone companies, caught up in the heat of the mobile internet, ought to be listening to.
Conventional high-end phones (such as Motorola’s Razr family) have fared poorly in the climate created by the iPhone. But there is a whole class of users in the 18-24 age group (and beyond) for whom neither is particularly relevant. And it’s not just a question of cost. There’s an opportunity for design and marketing that is not about flaunting technology; an opportunity for products and services that don’t scream ‘everything a user could do’ but say ‘just the things the user wants to do.’ The same technology may lie behind these phones as behind the latest, most glamorous, web-enabled device. But the user simply shouldn’t have to care.
Thanks to Putting People First for the link to Buongiorno’s research
April 30th, 2008
Doing a little research on social isolation (Hikikomori being one of the obvious ones) I stumbled into this perplexing and somewhat interesting term: Twixters.
Twixters are typically young adults (ages 18-29) who live with their parents or are otherwise not independent by other means, primarily financial. If they are employed, it is often unsteady and low-paying. They may have just recently exited college or high school, or recently entered their first career. This is a cultural shift in Western households. Historically, whenever a member of the nuclear family becomes an adult, they are expected to become independent.
I wondered whether current 16-24s would eventually get a generation tag of their own? If I was writing such a description, I would perhaps include the following terms:
- hyper-connected
- no social borders
- internet natives
- multi-taskers
- demand the best from services, products and media
- image conscious
- know when they are being targeted
Anything else that I’ve forgotten? Comment below!
April 23rd, 2008
There is something not quite groovy when two large corporations launch something that has to do more with emotions and art than with bars of soap at 3 cents, or a 15% discount on design jeans…. Madonna left Warner earlier this year to continue her money-making career - and dancefloor filler tunes, with an outdoors events company whose name says very little to the little people - me, who go to concerts and gigs. Reason? Money in Music at the Moment is Made on Merchandise …. mmmmmm . . . And less on the Music tracks…. I’m on Vodafone, so lucky me, I’m one of the punters that this week can download a new track from her album every day. Yeepee-Hey. “Candy Shop” is the first available jewel, and it’s not bad, so I set it as my ringtone of choice. Tomorrow, we’ll see what we get. Am I not going to buy the album? Oh no. The album will be bought, and downloaded to my iTunes, and then onto my iPod. So why did I pay £1.5 for the priviledge? Because Mobile Music is Marketing Magic Moves these days. I basically paid to sample the music. Of course, I could do that on the Radio, but it’s not the same. I got the track First. I got the ringtone First. It’s all about the NOW. Times are a-changing, said Bob Dylan. I feel like I’ve just been to a sample sale, which is what haute-couture designers do for good clients - or “victims” like me, whose delight for shoes, bags and frocks has got me onto the VIP list of many of them. You go to the showroom, sample the new stuff, order the ones who will be ready for you in months, and than take a freebies-keepsies home. Madonna’s tracks this week are my little snippets of music. My sound aperitif, a round of tapas this week for us all. Is this freak or unique? I rather say it is clever. Small and well packaged, it managed to create buzz and a bit of revenues for an industry that is dying. How will the live gigs connect to our mobile world then? I know that all those texting and see your message on the ticker line above the stage is funny, but is boring as the day goes by and alcohol and heat make people text rather stupid stuff not funny anymore…. I want to do more with my phone and my music, but for now, I’m happy to see how this week of musical canapes goes. …. where’s my champagne, by the way?
April 21st, 2008
Last fall, Hiyam Hijazi-Omari and Rivka Ribak presented a paper called “Playing With Fire: On the domestication of the mobile phone among Palestinian teenage girls in Israel” at AOIR. They studied teen girls who received their mobile phones from their boyfriends and hid them from everyone else. Through this lens, they examine how the mobile phone alters social dynamics, relationships, and the construction of gender in Palestine. In short, they document how culturally specific gendered practices (not technological features) frame the meaning and value of technology.
All too often, we think of technology as empowering or restricting. We focus on the technology and its features rather than the ways in which it gets embedded in the lives of people. The phone has always been a gendered technology. (If you have any doubts, read Claude Fischer’s “America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940.”) While the story of the mobile is quite different, even the tensions between its use as a business tool and its use as a tool for family communications have been narrated through the lens of gender.
Palestinian boys give their girlfriends phones for the express purpose of being able to communicate with them in a semi-private manner without the physical proximity that would be frowned on. At the same time, girls know that parents do not approve of them having access to such private encounters with boys - they go to great lengths to hide their mobiles and suffer consequences when they are found out. While the boys offered these phones as a tool of freedom, they often came with a price. Girls were expected to only communicate with the boy and never use the phone for any other purpose. In the article, Hijazi-Omari and Ribak quote one girl as expressing frustration over this and saying “I did not escape prison only to find myself another prison.” These girls develop fascinating practices around using the phone, hiding from people, and acquiring calling cards.
For teens, the mobile phone is a key device for negotiating intimate relations throughout the world. Studies done in the U.S., Jamaica, Japan, the U.K. and elsewhere all point to the ways in which teens negotiate private relationships using their mobiles. Mobiles are a critical tool for being in a relationship. Yet, most of our studies focus on the ways in which offline intimacies are extended across space and time through the mobile. What Hijazi-Omari and Ribak are finding with Palestinian girls is that the mobile is allowing them to have private encounters and relationships when these would be otherwise impossible.
This article helps elucidate the ways in which youth from different cultures are navigating social relations through the mobile. It is well-written and filled to the brim with fascinating data that tickles the brain. A must read for anyone interested in cultural difference involving the mobile!
[More comments on this topic at Apophenia]
April 14th, 2008
I am currently involved in fund raising for a new site that is to become the repository of raw footage generated by citizens. Some people refer to this as Citizen Journalism. Apparently, news broadcasters and publishers, alongside news wires, such as AP and others, have realised that offering this opportunity to normal people will help the present vacuum of foreign correspondents in some parts of the world. If you think about it, the most striking footage obtained from 9/11, the London July bombings and the Tsunami came from normal folks who happened to be there at that precise moment. Have you ever wondered if your mobile, in addition to being your communications tool, talk or text, should be put to better use? When I was short of money - couldn’t afford a proper camera - but not short of handsets - Nokia was always very good to me and let me test their newest phones in exchange of feedback, I used to shoot a lot of footage with my N-series. I loved it. I almost became addicted. I was expecting, assuming, almost demanding that all phones should have the same quality of megapixels. I shot everywhere: summer concerts, parties, my kids on their skateboards…. It was amazing. But those shots were fun, done without any pressure. Can I imagine myself putting on my journalist hat, and shooting in the midst of an accident, a public demonstration gone wrong - that’s when the police charges and you can’t breathe because there is gas, or some horrible stuff happens around me? How do I remind myself that I can be a witness to this? That my footage can break the news? That I, just by sheer serendipity, have become the one who was there, at the right time, and with the right technology…Are we carrying the future tool for journalism?
April 9th, 2008
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