Does everyone want mobile web?

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

Entry Filed under: Counterculture In technology, Marketing, Understanding users