CHI 2004: Mobile Comms: Looking for the Killer Use Case

How are user-centred methods going to play a role in developing the mobile communications products and services of the future? This panel debate, a special invitation to CHI 2004, brought together the most qualified people in the industry to show delegates what they have in store.

The panellists, all heads of UI or User Experience programmes at the major mobile device manufacturers (plus one operator, Vodafone) revealed a wide variety of philosophies and approaches. This was, not least, reflected in their diverse individual backgrounds – including technology, psychology and industrial design.

One common theme, that of personalisation and targeted devices was raised by Martin Böcker of Siemens and picked up by a number of the panel, most notably by Mikael Anneroth of Ericsson. Allaying set-piece fixations from audience members on the increase of miniaturisation and non-inclusive design, the panel observed that the future lies in a divergence of devices – where consumers are able to select from a range of systems at the point of sale. The notion of a universal one-size-fits-all device seems rightly ludicrous in the same way that a one-size-fits-all video screen size was never demanded by consumers as we moved into a world of both large screen analogue TVs happily co-existing alongside pocket sized DVD players and TV receivers.

Murmurs were also made regarding other ways to optimise the relationship between user and device at the point of sale. One option expressed by a number of panellists (though never committed to in any real way) was the notion of defaulting new systems to the minimal feature set and most straightforward UI, and allowing users to activate more advanced functionality as they wish.

A number of panellists focused on the relationship between manufacturers, operators and third party developers. Specifically, that more effective collaboration is paramount and must begin to become more institutionalised. As Michael von Roeder from Vodafone explained the importance of seamless integration of online and offline activity, Anneroth instanced the importance of collaboration by observing that tariffs can make or break a perfectly useful and usable service. Other panellists went on to stress the misnomer of "killer applications" where practitioners should instead be thinking in terms of "killer use cases" that span all levels of a device, network, and beyond.

In fact, this theme of seamless experience was prevalent throughout the session. In common with many sessions at CHI this year (and in recent years), the panellists noted that traditional definitions of usability are failing telecoms because aspects of user experience, other than efficiency, are emerging as more important. For many users, goals of communication are emotional and social rather than to do with productivity. Equally, as most succinctly explained by Anneroth, usefulness is quite distinct from usable-ness and often is the key reason that users enjoy and value their devices.

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO (also on the panel) made the first claim to a truer ethnographic approach to experience, noting that most devices still appear to be designed to be used sitting in front of office PCs, as opposed to running down a street or getting off a plane - which is where they are actually used.

The ethnographic approach was most explicitly picked up by Panu Korhonen from Nokia who, in an inspiring – and arguably cheaply populist – twist pushed the sphere of debate into what the panellists could be doing for real world problems such as illiteracy in the developing world.

Whilst ethnography emerged as the most important methodological consideration in the session, effective prototyping and demonstrations came a close second. In order to break the development deadlock between design partners (eg manufacturers and operators), effective prototyping was mooted and warmly embraced by most of the panel. If stakeholders sometimes talk in different languages to each other, they certainly talk in a different language to users – who live in happy ignorance of the framework of devices, services, applications and operating systems that the industry works within. By constantly creating, testing, and sharing compelling prototypes, the industry players can begin to genuinely focus on their users and not on themselves.

Gerred Blyth
amberlight partners

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