Posts filed under 'Counterculture In technology'
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
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
This week the Washington Post celebrated the watershed of 3.3 billion mobile phones active on a planet of 6.6 billion people. In retrospect it seems unremarkable (a no-brainer, as Mo Ibrahim puts it) that mobile phones have penetrated the developing world as rapidly as they have, possibly outstripping the impact of computers (mobile networks are now being used to support computer-based internet access in areas where there is no conventional computer link to the net).
Over the past four or five years Nokia has been carrying out research to understand consumers’ needs in these important emerging markets. Some of this research (carried out in shanty towns in Mumbai, Rio and Accra) was reported by Younghee Jung at the 2008 Lift conference. Recognising the limits of observational research in communities with which the researchers lack familiarity and where language is a barrier, Nokia augmented standard observational techniques with competitions for local people to express what they wanted their phones to do for them. It’s good to see innovative research approaches and this particular idea seems to have generated a rich response from community members.
Most of the research participants’ ideas had a strong practical orientation. The request for genuinely rugged phones that survive local conditions over a number of years struck a chord with me: I have heard similar from people working in manual trades in the UK (they also want a volume level that makes callers’ voices audible against the background noise of a building site).
Another idea that came out of the competition was a single phone that could hold up to four SIM cards, allowing the user to get the best out of a range of tariffs without swapping SIMs manually or carrying multiple phones. How sensible is that. It would be welcomed in the UK, too, particularly by 16-24s, many of whom juggle SIMs and handsets in order to get the most out of their mobile phone spend. A Google search reveals there is at least one phone (apparently aimed at business users) that can accept two SIMS, plus an N95 clone that can take three SIMs, and some third party hacks to bring two SIMs into one phone.
Handset manufacturers and operators haven’t exactly jumped at this opportunity so far. Operators are hardly likely to want to share customers with their competitors. They gain from people’s inefficient use of their tariffs (not using their full allowance or running over allowances and paying for additional use at a premium). This inefficiency might be reduced by easy swapping between SIMs and tariffs. And multi-SIM handsets would disrupt the prevailing model in the mobile industry: give the phone, sell the tariff (in his Wired article, ‘Freeconomics’, Chris Anderson has tracked this type of cross-subsidy back to Gillette’s tactic of giving away free razors to create a market for disposable blades).
I wonder whether Nokia are responding to the multiple SIM idea. No doubt they are constantly reviewing the relationship between phone handset and operator, and how their technology might develop to meet changes ahead. Disruptive companies like Blyk, where any unlocked, MMS-capable handset can be used to receive the service, are already signalling the possibility of change in the traditional relationship (advertising sponsors phone use, rather than phone use sponsoring the cost of the handset).
I’ve focused on this particular research snippet because it shows how users can come up with design ideas that have the potential for disruption. It’s common for people to claim that user research never generates any ideas that haven’t been thought of by industry already. In this case, the research hasn’t come up with anything that’s brand, spanking new, but it has shown an idea in a context where it has real meaning and where there is, surely, potential for development. The milestone of 3.3 billion phones has been achieved with restrictive handset/operator conventions (played out to an extreme in the launch of iPhone with just a single operator in each country). It will be interesting to see whether the traditional relationships will continue to hold into the future.
February 29th, 2008
I meet Arin and Susan last Friday at the British Film Institute in the Southbank. We are in a seminar organised by the BFI called “Power to the Pixel”. If you are not a young twenty-something from the US, or do not watch indie films, this combination of names will mean zilch to you. If, on the other hand, you are an Internet savvy Britonnian (I think I just invented that word) into shortfilms, you’ll have heard about their opera prima “Four Eyed Monsters” and the storm it created across the pond. Both filmmakers, tired of being refused a distribution deal even when their film was getting press and audience recognition at festivals, decided to “throw the toys out of the pram”. Arin & Susan took it to the web and called their audiences to arms by orchestrating theatrical releases across the nation, thus by-passing distributors. This is the one where two young things take over one of the most Jurassic industries these days - film distribution, and beat it ruthlessly over the head with the weapons of choice: the Internet, mobile texting, a social network of worldwide fans (and their emails and postcodes!)
“Four Eyed Monsters” is the typical film school final year project, beautifully shot at times and with a sweet script showing good quality story telling…. but expect no Oscar or BAFTAS nominations here. What grabs you about the filmmakers and their product is the way they marketed it through an array of channels: the web, mobile and guerrilla stunts on the streets. At the BFI seminar, I could feel the fear predating the soul of every distributor present in the room… The puzzled look of disbelief in every filmmaker witnessing their multi-media presentation, as Arin & Susan’s wizardly knowledge of technology+cum+marketing proved to be more and more awesome. Filmmakers, the ones who brought you James Bond and his futuristic gadgets, tend to produce mobile phones out of their pockets that look like they’ve been through the 90 degree washing cycle. To them, words like podcasts, myspace, and flickr are as removed from their world as designer clothes, hair grooming and healthy food on set…
In “Four Eyed Monsters” Arin and Susan recreate their love story through videotaping themselves, together or individually. The takes, scripted or unscripted, become their life, their struggles to release their film theatrically, the quest to achieve… All this on the web became their communication channel with their audience, a whole nation of youngsters who resonated not just with the film itself, but with the marketing medium used to promote it. Fans of the film spread the word throughout their networks and some even helped the filmmakers achieve theatrical releases even in the smallest, honky-tonk towns.
If you want to know how frustrating the film industry is, seventy per cent of cinema seats in the UK go unsold on a weekly basis. Shocking, you may say. The average number of viewers to a given theatrical session is seven. In Arin and Susan’s case, up to seventy people watched their film online concurrently. Not only the audience tuned to the web to watch the three chapters of the film, but it co-created …. (ah, the magical behaviour that every brand aspires their customers to do).
Audiences posted back videotapes of themselves talking to camera, pouring their souls, venting their frustrations, finding the Arin & Susan story the proof that they, sitting in their bedrooms, were not the only ones wanting to connect to another human being, not just wanting to live an extraordinary life through technology, drawings, quirky notes on post-its… but also knowing how to react to such channel of communication. This is where the purchase price of myspace begins to make a whole-lotta sense and when de-centralised networks of motivated individuals can take over the Pilsbury Man (Ben & Jerry’s leap to corporate fame) or make a young doctor from Izmir the guest speaker at Oracle’s Christmas party in 1999…
Blyk is a mobile product coming to an audience that thrives the visual medium. And Blyk is betting on the power of attraction of visual images as a communication element. In today’s society, younger and younger people are shooting footage on videocam to later on load it up onto myspace & co., podcasting from their bedrooms or getting their songs on iTunes. Does this sound like your idea of social chaos? Or more to the point, are you aware of how strong technology is empowering young people to control marketing itself these days….?(!)
They may seem like monsters to you, if your business is challenged, I would agree. But I must warn you this is going to get bigger, and will do my best Poltergeist little voice to announce to you: “They’re heeeeeeere….”
November 8th, 2007
