Jan Chipchase

Contextual and cultural challenges for user mobility research

Personal, mobile synchronous and asynchronous communication has proven to be very desirable for all types of users, with estimates of more than a half-billion mobile phones sold each year [2]. Nokia Research Centers User Experience Group, working with other user practitioners in Nokia, seeks to understand why people do the things they do with their mobile communication devices and proposes solutions that best address their wants and needs. In accordance with the principles of user-centric product concept design [4], the solutions are designed to inform and inspire the product creation process within Nokia. Given that the group works three to eight years ahead of what appears on the market, confidentiality concerns restrict disclosure of many of these concepts and the findings on which these concepts are based. Instead, in this article we share some of the essential lessons learned from our projects centering on the early stages of product concept development. Two areas have proved to be particularly challenging in this respect: coping with multiple contexts and multiple cultures in the study of mobility.

Personal TV: a qualitative study of mobile TV users

This paper describes a qualitative user study of mobile phone TV usage undertaken during September 2005 and centered on the real world Mobile TV usage of paying subscribers of live Mobile TV service in Seoul, South Korea. The study identified four primary use cases: at home; during the evening commute (both likely to be significantly culturally dependent); macro-breaks; and secret use. Barriers to use include: battery life; screen size; lack of compelling content; poor coverage and design implications are discussed. The study suggests that if the current barriers to use can be overcome Mobile TV is a viable competitor to existing forms of entertainment and media consumption. Actual usage suggests that Personal TV is a more accurate description for this kind of service than Mobile TV.

A cross culture study on phone carrying and physical personalization

The mobile phone has become one of the essential objects that people carry when they leave home. By conducting a series of street interviews in 11 cities on 4 continents, we attempted to identify the main carrying options in different cultures and how these options affected user experience in interacting with the phone. We also identified several cultural differences ranging from the prevalence of cases, straps, and other physical phone modification to other ways to personalize and protect the appearance of the phone. Phone straps and decorative stickers were more prevalent in cities such as Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing but seldom witnessed in other cultures. Based on findings from this research, we identified a number of factors that affected carrying position and style, which can be summarized as ease of access vs. the need to maintain security. Non-instrumental attributes include: identity, sociability, and aesthetics. Some practical implications on interaction and industrial design are also discussed.

How do you manage your contacts if you can't read or write?

chronous and asynchronous communication—in essence allowing its users’ communication to transcend time and space, at a time and in a context of his or her choosing. It is therefore unsurprising that with these almost superhuman characteristics, many people consider their mobile phone to be one of the essential objects to carry when leaving home. These benefits (and associated costs) apply equally to an urban city dweller in London and a rural farmer in Bangladesh. As traditional markets for mobile phones such as Sweden, UK, and Singapore reach the saturation point, network operators and handset manufacturers actively seek growth in “emerging markets” such as India, China, Vietnam, Brazil, and Indonesia, markets that include some of the world’s most populous countries. Targeting products and services at new markets creates many new challenges, not least of which is understanding new customers and meeting their needs. A number of these markets have limited formal education and, consequently, lower levels of literacy and numeracy. The United Nations estimates the total number of illiterate adults to be 799 million worldwide, 270 million of whom are located in India alone [1]. The key question for companies that wish to address the communication needs of this potential customer base is: How does the inability to read and write affect the ability of mobile phone users to make effective use of mobile phones? How can we design communication tools that draw on the knowledge and experiences that these users do have? To explore these issues, researchers from Nokia’s