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Connecting the Unconnected

Earlier this week I attended the Nokia Technology Media Briefing in Helsinki. I recommend Bob Iannucci's talk entitled Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow [1MB] and the accompanying podcast - he's a eloquent speaker. The second slide of his presentation highlights how far the telephone industry has come shows how far we still have to go to offer a simple, enjoyable user experience.

My contribution to the event? A presentation entitled Connecting the Unconnected [2MB] that introduced some of the field research methods we've been using; points to why pretty much everyone on the planet can appreciate the benefits of having access to a mobile telephone (personal, convenient synchronous and asynchronous communication, um, naturally) and introduces findings from a recent field study in Uganda and Indonesia into Shared Phone use. I'll expand on couple of points of the presentation in the coming weeks - in particular the practice of pooling resources to buy air time; the on-foot delivery of messages sent to phone kiosks - something that we've termed step messaging; and my personal favourite sente - the informal practice of sending money as airtime that effectively enables the owner of a mobile phone to offer basic ATM services (slides 37 to 40). All examples of innovation through necessity.

I'll post an annotated version of the presentation here at some point.

Visits to the Espoo mothership are always a chance to reconnect the remotely connected - spend face time with internal research clients, in-depth discussions on the implications of field studies and an opportunity to working out where next to focus our efforts. It's fair to say 2007 is lining up to be an interesting year, not that we've been sitting on our hands in '06. The speed at which research turns to actions shouldn't surprise me but it does - all credit to the development teams that make it happen.

Tomorrow I'll be waking up to the sound of Cairo, the exploratory research team rolls on.

Writing from Helsinki | October 5, 2006 | Permalink