Morten Hjerde is User Experience Manager at Vodafone Group. He talks of a paradigm shift in how users are changing how they think about their phone. How people generally think about their devices?
Shows a picture of a bed. It looks like a bed. How is it we can all recognize this as a bed. We understand this as an object a set of rules that we have set in our mind. (I want to hear his mobile example). So.. we want to fit it into a set of objects we know about to give it some meaning re what we see. Some examples of chip as a brain, computer as an agent – talking about a computer. Computer as an Avatar it talks to you and demands your attention. Computers are good at simple tasks but not very effective at this. Now a Newton! the dream was to create a knowledge navigator.
Currently the agents have taken a different approach. Yelp. The agent is now the crowd… crowd-sourcing information. Viruses as living organisms. Robots are here so we are thinking about computers as life. Computing devices as an extension of ourselves. So we think cyborgs and where devices are part of ourselves. EG GPS embedded in brain. (I usually know where I am!).
Tools are where usability comes from. Eg computer as a tool introduces the desktop metaphor. On the mobile phone the word processor or spreadsheet is not really ever on a mobile phone. Why is it not there. Why don’t people think of mobiles as tools? When the handset gets bigger and more powerful people will start using them as computing tools! The device won’t get much bigger. Still we don’t put word and spreadsheets on them. (This is a very important statement!)
The medium. The river or stream. The information stream, new stuff on top. Facebook, Friendfeed etc. Specifically to phone. People say… A phone is still a phone! When they pick up a phone they don’t see the phone.. it is a semi-transparent device they see their grandma there and then type in their number. So the paradigm shift is to get people to recognize that they are interacting with the device itself and not someone somewhere else. Now it is becoming a container for you live so it is now also a broadcast device. How do we design it so we have the affordability and so it communicates that purpose well. One way is to take what you see on the PC and bring it over to the phone. Eg Facebook to phone. All of this shows the changing communication that is shared. Blogging to twittering. Conditioned by people using SMS. For people to use smartphones 80% of time not picking it up to make a call. The mental model must be changed. How do you change it and how should it be done? Putting fancy new services on simple phones won’t work – they still think of it as a phone and so they won’t interact with your device.
AWESOME PRESENTATION and great points.
Live blogging from EcommEurope09
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