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Smart People, Dumb People
This person is smart. She owns a mobile phone and she's using public infrastructure to make a phone call. But why? A mobile phone lets her communicate when she likes, with whom she likes, from where she likes, pretty much how she likes (ok, as long as its voice call or text message).
Whilst the mobile phone offers the key benefits of personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication people often opt to use and will go out of their way to use public infrastructure because its simply cheaper. Some of you are reading this and thinking 'so what?' But if you work in the telecoms industry (which a number readers of this site do) you are likely to be out of touch with most people's reality. When is the last time you looked at your phone bill? Most people consider the cost of a call, of sending a message weighing up the pros and cons of the available alternatives. Economists call this utility maximisation. Utility maximisation is most obvious in highly price sensitive markets such as India, China and Mongolia (photo below shows privately operated public phone kiosk in Ulaan Bataar) but in the study of communication habits, you can find it in any part of the globe.
We found a subtler form of this behaviour in a study of public call offices (PCOs) and STD booths in India. A STD shop (photo below) is often made up of a couple of phones on the counter, with additional phone booths somewhere inside the establishment. The phone booths offer a higher degree of privacy and some form of seating yet in many cases customers opt to use the phones on the counter. Why? They are opting for convenience over privacy. Their conversations can be overheard, the noise from the street will flow into the conversation but it simply doesn't matter compared to the money that can be saved.
Lessons? Owning a device is not the same as use; carrying a device is not the same as understanding what it does; carrying a device will not necessarily lead to use; and when use occurs it will not necessarily be what you expect it to be. When a mobile phone is primarily used as a phone book to facilitate kiosk phone calls, how does this change the way the product should be designed?
And who are the dumb people in this equation? We are if we assume that people will not try to make the most of what they've got.
Writing from Tokyo | January 15, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
I remember seeing that situation in Madrid - Spain, was very strange seeing people using pay phones. It was very strange to see people using public phones in the time of private cellphones.
If people are going to use phones as a phonebook then they should come with DTMF dialing option. Make it easier for them to just push a button instead of multiple buttons to dial a number.
Posted by: nibaq at January 16, 2006 4:40 AM
As a middle-class baby-boomer, I know many like myself who are so annoyed by molbile phones we rarely use them. They represent some values that go against the grain/ break social rules, like talking on trains or interupting a conversation with a person in front of you to answer a phone call etc. `Not to mention the impression that Vodafone or whoever is charging you the earth ( there is a scam element to the costs ). I cannot understand the way my generation has been overlooked vis a vis mobile techonology ( which I'd love to use at the right price and in a social way...)
Posted by: Nancy Fulton at January 18, 2006 12:30 AM
Nancy,
Can you go into more detail about the 'scam element to the costs'. I don't disagree, but I'm intrigued whether we think its for the same reasons.
VOIP is going to be a major price disuption. I assume that in the near future if you are willing to give up some of the convenience of calling from anywhere you may be able to communicate at a fraction of current costs (assuming a W-LAN device with VOIP software).
Lastly but certainly not least, what would your mobile device/service be offering you if your generation had not been overlooked?
Posted by: Jan at January 18, 2006 7:49 AM
Gotta love the knockoff Lambretta. ; . )
Posted by: AG at January 18, 2006 3:58 PM