Understanding Consequences, Affecting Actions II
Related to this.
Writing from Venice | September 24, 2006 | Permalink
Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases
The slides for yesterday's presentation on An Anatomy of Mobile TV Use Cases at the Annenberg Center for Communication can now be downloaded from here [7MB].
The presentation draws on a 2005 qualitative study into commercial S-DMB Mobile TV in Seoul, South Korea by Younghee Jung, Cui Yanqing and myself. These slides concentrate on only one aspect of the study - the three main use cases that were documented and explored - evening commuting, macro breaks and home use. Actually we uncovered a compelling fourth use case, but we'll wait until a full research paper is published before revealing what it is.
A summary? Researchers and designers often talk about use cases but to what extent do the details of the experience need to be communicated to the project team (and in what formats) in order for these scenarios to be useful? What are the elements of the experience that can make or break whether new services move beyond early adopters? The devil is in the details.
Thanks to Mizuto Ito for hosting and to HyeRyoung Ok for carrying the discussion.
Writing from Los Angeles | September 22, 2006 | Comments (1) | Permalink
Delivery Mechanisms
Water containers for stall holders in a market in Old Delhi - continuing this week's theme of photos from India.
Writing this from a hotel bed - outside Los Angeles is beginning to wake up. Body clock is a little skewed - waking up and raring to go at 10pm. In practical terms timezone ping pong means chirpily attend a teleconference that started at 4am (an abnormal hour by any stretch of the imagination) and then dealing with the body's fallout during presentations later in the day.
Writing from Los Angeles | September 21, 2006 | Permalink
Literacy, Communication, Design II
The Motofone is being marketed as a device that amongst other things aspires to "help bridge literacy gaps" including voice prompts to "guide the user quickly and easily through menu navigation, messaging and other functions". It's good to see illiteracy raised to the point where it becomes a marketing feature but I'm also highly aware of the non-trivial challenges that need to be overcome if they are to genuinely meet their stated aims. I've only seen the marketing blurb so I'll make an educated guess to how the feature will be implemented.
If someone can't read or write they'll understand audio prompts right? Well, not quite. Using audio prompts to read out what appears on the screen is unlikely to be the solution because it assumes a general level of technical competency - that what is read out can be comprehended by the listener. To someone without prior experience of using a mobile phone or computer what is a 'folder'? Or 'inbox'? Or 'operator settings'?
Audio prompts also assume that the phone supports the user's native language. India, for example has over 14 different official languages, and over 100's of local dialects. (It's also home to 270 million of the world's 799 million illiterate peoples so its a good case study). How many languages are supported and how do these reflect the illiterate population?
As I argued at last week's UIAH presentation, probably the biggest factor counting against the widespread adoption of this feature is one of proximate literacy - quite simply that its often easier ask someone for assistance than learn oneself. In our research we concluded that most (illiterate) mobile phone users can turn on a phone, answer an incoming call and make local calls (pre-fixes for non-local calls start to present a problem and the complexity of tasks extrapolates from there). For many people the primary motivation for owning a phone is personal and convenient communication - their motivation to spend time to work their way through and learn the meaning behind the voice prompts is likely to be fairly low if these motivations are already met. If you're a frequent visitor to Future Perfect you probably get a kick from exploring what phones are capable of, but the rest of the planet is more interested in trivial stuff like relationships and survival. The ability to answer an incoming phone call is pretty powerful in itself and we've interviewed (generally older) users whose primary goals were met by mastering this feature.
Ever tried to make your way through voice prompts when you were in a hurry? It's fun right? Now apply the same level of enthusiasm to a hurried illiterate phone user from Kolkatta, Kohima or Kharagpur. But what if you're not in a hurry? When your options are to attempt to navigate and learn the meaning of audio prompts or wait until a literate, device competent and/or friendly person is nearby then rote learn a solution which will you choose?
Closer to launch time it will be interesting to see to what extent and how these aspirant-literacy-gap-bridging features are publicized and to whom. Will the Motofone succeed as a product? Probably. Will it meet its aim to bridge literacy gaps? What do you think?
Writing from Tokyo | | Permalink
Swimming Not Drowning
Playing timezone yo-yo and heading stateside today.
For those of you that prefer a tangible presence - I'll be presenting some research we did last year on Mobile TV Usage in South Korea. Design teams often uitlize use cases as a way to focus the direction of a design - this presentation will focus on the details of three use cases from the Mobile TV field study considering the elements that can make or break technology adoption in the real world.
Where? A double bill with HyeRyoung Ok on the 21st September 2006 at the Annenberg Center for Communication hosted by Mizuto Ito and on the 26th September Hillsboro, Oregon hosted by Wendy March of Intel's People & Practices Group.
And on the 25th September the Waving Not Drowning workshop at the EPIC conference will cover processes to make effective use of lots of photo data in field work. Sounds exciting doesn't it? It's basically about following a few simple rules so that you can concentrate on more interesting things - such as the content of the photos. The workshop will not be buzzword complient so feel free not to drop by if thats your thing.
Writing from Tokyo | September 20, 2006 | Permalink
Motivations
Two very different motivations for tagging, marking?
Writing from Downtown LA | October 10, 2005 | Comments (2) | Permalink
Attention to Detail
The little details that enhance the purchasing experience.
Writing from Los Angeles | | Permalink
Assumptions About Connectivity
An assumption people often make when thinking about the future is that the wireless technology, whatever it is will have 100% coverage and will have 100% uptime - the seamless 24/7* connected user experience. The current experience is a good lesson in how things will play out. Today in the US one of the major purchasing decisions is the quality of the local cellular coverage - and whether carrier X has good coverage in your home, your route to work, the places you hang out. Signal strength meter watching and negotiating a space to find the best signal is for many part of the cell phone user experience. it's not just the US - the photo below is taken from an involuntary half day spent in the departure lounge of Kathmandu airport . Flights were grounded because the cloud cover at the destinations were too dense to land - a lot of time for people watching. Every time a further flight delay was announced a number of Nepali business men would take out their mobile phones and attempt to make calls. It would surprise me if they calling to inform someone of a new arrival time - given the relatively flexible approach to time keeping, but at the very least they were using the time waiting to get in touch. GSM coverage in Nepal is limited a minimalist version of the Cingular GSM coverage in the US for example.
The cellular coverage in the airport was good but the base-stations were overloaded with people trying to make calls - a common situation in Nepal. Your experience of making a call is probably something like:
1. Select contact
2. Press send call
3. Hold phone to ear and
4. When the person at the other end picks up, talk.
The experience for a Nepali mobile phone user is more like:
1. Check coverage
2. Select contact
3. Press send call
4. Keep looking at screen to check call status message to see if call is connected
5. When disconnected repeat steps 2 to 4. Eventually see that the call has been put through and
6. Put phone to ear, talk.
It's far from seamless but it works.
Sooner or later someone will provide cheaper, faster, richer, more convenient ways to connect so even if this issue is largely solved for cellular it will apply to whatever next the user decides to use. How to accurately inform users what services currently available on their device without them having to take out their phone and look at the signal strength icon(s)? What functionality is available when the device doesn't have connectivity? How to design the user experience to account for involuntary dis-connectivity and downtime?
* In the spirit of utopian connectivity perhaps 24/7 should be extended to 60/60/24/7/356 etc
Writing from Los Angeles | | Comments (1) | Permalink
Branded, Unbranded Experience
Writing from Downtown LA | October 9, 2005 | Permalink
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