One of the big issues facing technologists is that most people don’t use most of the inbuilt features, most of the time. As an example, the vast majority of mobile owners, tend to restrict their network use to simple voice and sms (and a few non-network apps like the clock and calculator). Similarly, 70% of MS Excel users don’t know that the application can add up columns and rows automatically – they just use it to line the figures up prettily and still use a calculator.
However, getting people to use all or most of the tools at their disposal is actually a vital issue;
- How can you persuade people that they need to upgrade, when they’re not getting much more than 10% of the potential usage out of their current purchase?
- How can you expect any degree of loyalty towards your brand, when people don’t know how to use it properly?
- One of the ways technology gets adopted is peer recommendation. If your early adopters can’t “sell” your product properly to the next level of potential customers, you’ll find it really tough to get traction.
- In a mobile context, there’s another big issue. If people don’t know about a feature or how to use it, they’re not going to create lots of profitable network traffic for the operators. MMS is a great example.
Despite its importance though, this area is often ignored by technologists, other than to subscribe to the theory (rarely mentioned aloud) that most of their customers must be pretty dim if they can’t work it out for themselves or read the bloody product manual that’s so thoughtfully included.
Whereas the real problem is that there’s no such thing as a stupid customer, just bad design and bad product manuals. I won’t start on manuals today, apart from to say isn’t it sad that a whole multi-million dollar industry exists to publish better product instructions than the product makers themselves can be bothered to write and print? Can you imagine buying a new car and having to buy a book called Saab 2005 For Dummies? Err, actually, I might have hit on something there!
So, it was nice to read about Samsung’s new Scandinavian campaign, reported by Martina at Adverblog. Purchasers of the D600 handset are invited to participate into, what looks like, quite a compelling interactive game and successfully complete 5 tasks. Each task in cunningly designed to also demonstrate how to use different features of the phones.
And of course, the game is also something cool that owners can use to show off their new toy to their mates in the pub with. This isn’t a flippant comment at all. More mobile phones are “sold” in the pub and other social situations, than in all the mobile phone showrooms combined.
So well done to this week’s Clever Clogs, Samsung for taking user-centric design to the next level. We’re going to see a lot more of this sort of thing as technologists realise that they’re damaging their businesses badly by ignoring post-purchase product feature sampling. Maybe we’ll start seeing a radical rethink on manuals too – about time, if you ask me.
Nicolas at Pasta & Vinegar has a great posting, about a paper written by Wendy March (Intel Research) and Constance Fleuriot (Bristol University). Their research has been looking at privacy issues raised by new technologies and the reaction of some of the kids who might be on the “receiving end”.
They explored the concept by inviting the girls in the study to imagineer their nightmare technologies, although I think boys would share the conclusions. Their horrors included:
Family Video: A small video camera attached to a flotation device acts as a personal CCTV which sends back a constant video stream to home.
Constant Connection provides a continuous open communication channel for parents and children ( the home audio device, which is ideally suited for a kitchen counter.)
Ticker Text converts all communication from designated cell phones into an easy to read text format. Each text message that is sent or received on the phone is printed out on a paper roll.
Teen Monitor provides a simultaneous broadcast of all your teenager’s conversations through an audio speaker in your home.
Of course, spying on your kids isn’t necessarily entirely new. Indeed, some poor lady has left a comment on Nicolas’ post saying that when she was 17, she found her Dad had been bugging some of the conversations she’d been having, assuming (naturally enough) that they were private.
While these kinds of imagined devices will probably never happen - well, I hope they won’t! - we are beginning to see variants of them already in some of the Kid Tracking software on mobiles, key stroke recorders on PCs, so parents can monitor surfing and IM sessions, and ideas like getting other drivers to monitor and report bad road behaviour by kids.
It’s clear from this research that such parental spying, is deeply resented (the commenter on the post called it “betrayal”), no matter how noble the parental motives might be. And if it’s hated this much, teens will find a way to subvert it because that’s how things happen. Just as there’s no such thing as uncrackable DRM, there’s no such thing as an unbeatable tracking system and someone, somewhere will find a way to hack any device and quickly spread the word.
Actually, this is already happening with spare decoy phones, dummy email and IM accounts and tinkering with the family computer to get round tracking software - well, at least if our household is anything to go by 
Seriously though, wanting to keep an eye on your kids and protect them is deeply ingrained parental behaviour. But spying like this actually can cause more damage, by breaking down trust between the parent and child. The hardest thing about being a parent is letting go at the right time and trusting the child to manage that stage of their life in a responsible way. As spying becomes easier, many parents might be tempted, but just think how much you’d have hated your parents if they’d made a decision not to trust you.
Sometimes you come across a gadget that you just have to blog about - while acknowledging it’s got nothing to do with mobile whatsoever!
But how cool is this? You attach it to the cork in a bottle of champagne, (or sparkling wine, if you’re a cheapskate) pop the cork and watch it float down with its own neato parachute.
Sheer genius.
Available from Hawkins Bazaar.
This week’s Carnival is at Smart Mobs. Make sure you check it out.
Some fine, fine posts as usual. Shame about the editor.
Have a good weekend y’all.
Russell
Justin Pearce* writes in New Media Age about the UK’s Mobile Marketing Association finally coming out against Bluespamming - 6 months after we wrote that it was illegal. I wonder what took them so long to decide that sending unsolicited messages was in clear breach of European privacy directives and meant to be against everything they stand for?
Filter, the main company behind these BlueSpam campaigns, have always argued that they are in compliance with the Directive, despite the fact that sending someone a message saying “Oi, can we send you a message please?” is just as much spam as as offering Viagra or Penis Enlargement advertisements. The fact that I may choose to have my Bluetooth settings on my phone as Discoverable is not consent to getting spam, anymore than owning a computer is indicating that I am happy to be sent unsolicited emails.
Better late than never, I guess - which might be a very nice motto for the MMA to adopt actually.
Meanwhile, in a similar vein, German Trend-following site, Trnd.com has been following our coverage of this and polled its readers.
Of the 708 people who responded 62% have a mobile with Bluetooth, 19% have it switched on, as a rule and visible whilst 54% have it switched off. Most interesting of all, 81% consider this form of advertising as “Bluespamming” which loosely coincides with the Coldplay numbers, we wrote about, where 85% of recipients rejected the “come on” message. Only 9% thought advertising this was was “gut” (not a typo - German for good!).
So if you are still tempted to use Bluespamming, either in flagrant breach of the law, or because it’s legal in your country, my advice is don’t. Pissing off 85% of recipients just doesn’t make any sense.
* See Justin? I do link if there’s something to link to
Happy Thanksgiving to all our American readers!
This week’s Thanksgiving Carnival of the Mobilists will take place at the legendary Smart Mobs - don’t forget to check it out for the best writing about mobile around.
If you’re a blogger, you still have time to enter. Send your entry to mobilists@gmail.com.
We’ve been saying for some time at MobHappy that the future of mobile is as a thin client, with much of the processing, storage and grunt work being undertaken by the network’s servers. This is to do with speed and power use mainly, as storage gets ever smaller and cheaper.
So when this line of thinking is confirmed by Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia’s Research Centre in an interview with VNU, it confirms that we’re on the right lines.
At the same time, they promise more open platforms that we can configure to how we want, with the handset becoming more of a gateway to third party services.
Naturally, the operators might have a different vision about this direction. Much as the handset makers and mobile users want “open”, operators tend to want “closed”, despite the historical evidence that closed systems tend to crumble and die.
Jan Chipchase works on User Research for Nokia and also writes a pithy blog - Future Perfect - posts normally just consist of a photo and a line or two that make you think.
Yesterday, he wrote a typical post about Wayfinding, which is finding out from a location feed on your mobile where you are and getting a map showing where you want to go.
As he says: “It’s easier to just ask someone”.
Asking someone the way has been termed as Social Navigation and is yet another barrier to the implementation of mobile local search, I posted about yesterday. For all the high tech available, it is indeed simply easier to ask a colleague, friend or stranger how to get somewhere or where the nearest x is.
Actually, it’s easier to phone someone on your mobile for this info, thatn use the phone itself to get it.
This will change as phones get better, but right now Social Navigation is the best form of local search there is, in terms of accuracy, speed and usability. This needs to be taken account of when we’re thinking what successful mobile search will look like.
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