This week at SXSW (pronounced South by Southwest) Jared Benson, Executive Creative Director at Punchcut, will lead a conversation titled “Mobile Manners: Mobile Presence and the Undefined Etiquette.”
Left to our own devices, what happens to our manners? Jared will lead a discussion among user experience design practitioners in discussing the profound effects the always-on mobile lifestyle is having on the way we interact with people and the world. In the same old contexts, we have a whole new set of choices: Do I really have to take this? Should I just put my headphones in and pretend I can’t hear them? Instead of calling mom back, can I text her? The cues and standards for how we communicate on our devices in the presence of others are just beginning to be defined. For the most part, individuals - not social norms - are deciding what is appropriate.
This conversation will cover what the UE design community can do to empower the user and alleviate the fear that we are becoming isolated by our technologies. Punchcut will facilitate a discussion on contextual considerations, the formality of various mediums, and the demands of emerging ideas like mobile presence.
Join the conversation at SXSW on Sunday March 9th at 5pm in Ballroom E.
We only notice tectonic plates when enough tension gets released as an earthquake. (Yes, I’m in California, and yes we had a 5.3 the other day.) The trend toward openness and toward user choice is slow going, but we don’t feel it until someone makes a big announcement like Google’s this week.
The shift is happening. Apple’s iPhone launch was a big deal, proving that a device manufacturer can play first fiddle in the US mobile industry (and AT&T isn’t complaining that 40% of iPhone buyers are new subscribers) and more importantly, proving that a device’s user experience can lead every part of the conversation; within the industry and with consumers.
Google’s announcement feels like a corollary to Apple’s. It adds evidence that a non-carrier can wrangle support from across the mobile industry (handset and chip OEMs, carriers, platform developers) to create an open platform.
Google’s announcement has interesting possibilities. What will device manufacturers come up with if they don’t have to pay Microsoft (or anybody else) for their OS? What will the carriers create if they didn’t have to pick from the pros and cons of the various OSs, but if they had the ability to write their own branded UI for a line of devices? What will the third party application developers be able to do with a more open, internet-powered approach (as is starting to happen on the Apple front, but that’s another debate.) What will content providers create for users if Google can prove an ad-subsidized mobile model will work?
Someday we’ll all look back and remember how cute Google was when it was just a little rainbow logo search field staring at you from a blank page.
Email sent from a desk does not equal email sent from a mobile device.
When you send an SMS text or chat message people understand the casual, quick nature of the medium, and therefore expect a level of casualness when it comes to spelling full words (u versus you, ppl versus people) and forming complete thoughts and sentences. Just as spoken language is conversational, chat and SMS afford a certain level of laxness.
Email has evolved. There was a time when typing in all lowercase (hopefully you never typed in all caps) was normal enough for email. But since it has become the mainstay of corporate communication, it has dressed up accordingly. Although emoticons occasionally find their way into corporate emails, cute misspellings and abbreviations don’t.
New etiquette is needfully emerging. How do recipients know you’re sending an email from a device versus your desktop? When I’m writing a note via email from a mobile device, to a work colleague, must I type in complete thoughts and sentences? Must I capitalize and punctuate?
When I first saw Apple’s “Sent from my iPhone” default signature I thought it just let me show off my cool quotient with an iPhone reference. What they really did was create a disclaimer: forgive the typos and the informality.
(I thought about actually posting this from my phone, but blogging requires a certain level of formality that I wasn’t prepared to take on with a mobile device. That would be more appropriate for my microblog.)
We like when the mainstream press highlights the right things. It’s a signal that the non-insiders might get a sense of the pains and frustrations felt in the mobile industry. Who else but Walt Mossberg could deliver it to the bad guys with WSJ credibility. Mossberg’s axis of evil includes Steve Jobs’ inked deal with “the devil,” (read the piece to see who that is), it includes 1970s-era AT&T, and the top US carriers whom he calls collectively the Soviet ministries.
My only suggestion for Mr. Mossberg is that he up the production value of his video studio. He speaks with the eloquence of someone who has a speech writer (presumably himself) but his close-up cam, with low quality video comes off a bit like a YouTube “video response.” But, hey, maybe that’s the best way to get heard these days.
Read or watch Mossberg’s Free My Phone rant at All Things D.
Today at the EuroIA Summit, Barcelona, we will discuss insights from the Punchcut-funded mobile social networking study.
The poster lists the chief insights and provides a visualization of the users ages and their behaviors (text messaging, IM, email, photo sharing, blogging, commenting both using desktop apps and mobile devices). Continue Reading »
This iPhone tip goes out to those of you following the growing “Life Hacks” movement - gaining back precious minutes of your life through efficiency practices.
We’ve all been stuck in meetings that we wish we could get out of. Well, fortunately His Steveness has designed something handy into the iPhone which will help us reclaim our lives so we can get back to doing what we _really_ want to be doing. If you have the foresight, try this before attending your next meeting:From the main menu, select Clock then Timer. Use the wheel interface to set your interval (How much of this meeting are you willing to endure?), set your ringtone and hit “Start.”
Attend your meeting. Go ahead and shut your phone down (read as: Hit the hardware button on top right) and set it on the table next to your notebook, printouts, etc. and act as interested as you can in the meeting. Resist the urge to check the timer - don’t worry, it won’t let you down. When the timer reaches zero, it will wake up your iPhone and play the ringtone. To anyone glancing over at your iPhone, the combination of idle screen wallpaper and ringtone will look convincing, even to a fellow iPhone user.
Grab it shortly into the first ring, give it a quick glance, and apologize to those left in the room.. “Sorry, I gotta take this…”
A couple of insightful posts have surfaced about Nokia’s worldwide research. The first on BBC News is an interview with Jan Chipchase, Nokia Design’s principal researcher. I first heard Chipchase talk about his work at the DUX 2005 conference in San Francisco. I came away knowing he has, hands down, the coolest job around.
MEX CONFERENCE, LONDON — Paul Nerger, Vice President of Worldwide Sales & Marketing at Argogroup, spoke in response to the following manifesto point:
“User experience performance must be measured if it is to be improved. It must be constantly tracked through quantitative and qualitative methods. We think organizations throughout the value chain are failing to recognize the importance of understanding customers because quantifying the return on investment is too difficult”.
Paul started his talk by illustrating Argogroup’s services through case studies. One highlighted a “false event”, a momentary spike in service that results in temporary failures. Typical SMS-based false events include New Year Eve and the Super Bowl. So many people send New Year’s greetings to their family and friends at the stroke of midnight or to trash talk during the last few minutes of the Super Bowl that service spikes, resulting in high levels of data usage. When these patterns are not anticipated by carrier’s operations centers performance of the SMS service is drastically impacted, with message delivery unreasonably delayed. In some instances messages are not delivered at all.
MEX CONFERENCE, LONDON — Well the day has wound to a close here in London, and my mind is a-swirl with new ideas for the mobile experience. The format of this conference is rather refreshing, with a mixture of speakers, panel discussions, and group breakout sessions, which has been conducive for both keeping things interesting and providing opportunities for much-needed elbow-rubbing with other like minds shaping the mobile space.
The day kicked off this morning with Cliff Crosbie, Global Director of Retail Marketing for Nokia. Cliff has spent many years working in the retail space, and asked us the question, “When does exceptional service happen?” He pointed out that the big idea, the big brand, rests in the hands of the young person who is working in the mobile retail environment. It’s on them to deliver on the brand promise, which may be difficult if they are distracted, disenfranchised, or simply not knowledgable about the product.
Cliff quoted a recent article from The Sun, which said that “owning a mobile phone can improve living standards more than being given the right to vote.”
Getting Walt Mossberg to positively review your tech gadget is possibly the most coveted media coverage a tech company could hope for. Mossberg is known for his no-nonsense approach and strong advocacy for users — which is why I like his Wall Street Journal column.
Mossberg has teamed up with Co-Executive Editor Kara Swisher and put both their columns and blogs into one site, AllThingsD.com.
Mossberg said of himself:I aim my columns at mainstream users doing typical tasks who have little or no technical knowledge, no help from experts, and no appetite for becoming techies. These folks want the computer to do things for them. They don’t want to have to do much, if any, configuring of, or maintaining of, their computers. They have no patience for geeky procedures.
Getting Walt Mossberg to positively review your tech gadget is possibly the most coveted media coverage a tech company could hope for. Mossberg is known for his no-nonsense approach and strong advocacy for users — which is why I like his