Notes in [square brackets] added subsequently.

Intro

Wireless and mobile technologies, such as WiFi, are important as they bring together the network and the real world. They help situates the network in the world, as an enhancement to it. They even bring geography into the network. These concepts were fatally missed during the first Internet boom, where we focused on the Web browser, on the PC, on the fixed, desktop computer.

We didn’t understand context of use, or the affordances of having dedicated devices.

Image: T-Mobile HotSpot [HotSpot.jpg]

Image: Treo [PalmTreoHeldInHand.jpg]

We now understand this better, at least through seeing the utility of mobile and anyplace (they are different, one is about being able to do things and be reachable as you move, the other about getting online from anyplace you are) voice, and SMS. For instance, wireless ISP Wayport has a deal with McDonald’s to allow Nintendo DS devices to ‘just work’ in its restaurants.

But things ain’t moving fast. It only seems that way as building on top of existing platforms. That we talk about ‘quantum leaps’ in technology says a lot: a quantum leap is one of the smallest changes we can imagine.

Patterns of adoption

[One of the challenges is around adoption.] There are perhaps five current models of technology-related adoption.

1.Cumulative innovations

Building incrementally on an existing model. Often involves listening to the consumer.

But users don’t know what they need, and organisations need to give them something better than what they want [to paraphrase Lord Reith, who when asked whether he was going to give the people what they wanted, replied: “No. Something better than that”[i].]. (We would have ended up with faster buggies if in the 1890s Karl Daimler had asked people what they wanted in the arena of transport.)

Image: Sepia tint image of horse and buggy [HorseBuggy.jpg]

Many companies don’t appreciate that this is how they work. In fact, this is how the mobile phone industry is currently proceeding.

[See my Guardian Technology article on this theme[ii].]

2.The hockey stick model

The financial director, accounts department and business planning model: we will lose money as we invest in product development and marketing and, having gone ‘under the line’ will turn a profit. It is not exactly imaginative! And it assumes success.

Image: the world’s second largest hockey stick, Christian, USA [HockeyStick.jpg]

3.Crossing the Chasm

An analysis most associated with Geoffrey A. Moore [Wikipedia entry] ‘Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers’ [information on Amazon.co.uk]. Based on work by Everett Rogers.

Image: book cover [CrossingTheChasmBookCover.jpg] [CrossingTheChasm.jpg]

But it assumes a certain inevitability. And tends to patronise ‘late adopters’, referred to as ‘laggards’ and ‘skeptics’.

See also work by Clayton Christensen and his concept of the ‘innovator’s dilemma’[iii].

4.The Hype Cycle

Developed by Gartner.

Technologies move through: Technology trigger > Peak of inflated expectations > Trough of disillusionment > Slope of enlightenment > Plateau of productivity

This theory is descriptive : it is not a guide to action. It also leads to confused consumers (see the current confusion over High Definition TV).

Image: Hype Cycle [TheHypeCycle.jpg]

5.User-driven innovation and adaptation

The current vogue view. Sees new products and services growing out of an immediate user need and drive. Emphasises the adaptability of tools to new uses.

Driven by social dynamics. User-focused models, eg: media sharing, tagging (folksonomies [Wikipedia entry]), reputation, rating. Also dynamic interfaces and online applications. Pro-am (not a form of golf! See article by Demos associate Charles Leadbeater[iv], who is planning a book entitled ‘The New Rules of Innovation’). Web 2.0, a catch-all term these and other developments (see article by IT evangelist Tim O'Reilly[v]).

These ideas point to the importance of designing products and services in an open-ended fashion.

Examples: bookmark sharing tools del.icio.us and photo sharing site Flickr, which uses folksonomies and ratings. See also the news rating site digg.com.

Image: del.icio.us inbox [deliciousInbox.jpg]

Image: Flickr home [FlickrHome.jpg]

What is happening

I noted that things ain’t moving fast. It is useful to look at this in a little more detail, in the context of the government, business to business (B2B), and consumer sectors.

Government

Mobile technologies are really only used successfully for tax collection (see London’s Congestion Charge).

Image: [CongestionChargeVan.jpg] [CongestionChargeSign.jpg]

And to some extent travel information (see Transport for London Travel Alerts) and reminders (see the National Blood Service).

Compare this to what is happening in China, where the Beijing Olympic Action Plan includes a Comprehensive Public Information Service for the 2008 Games that is multi-lingual and wireless. The ‘Tell Taxi’ service uses Voice-to-Text and Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology via a mobile phone to translate non-Chinese speech into Chinese.[vi]

At local government level, Westminster City Council is using wireless technology ambitiously [for services such as licensing, noise monitoring and inspections; traffic congestion monitoring; cashless parking payments; improving public security; library services, education and home learning; ‘in the community’ care for the elderly] where as the City of London Corporation is working with The Cloud to roll out WiFi across the Square Mile but focusing only on giving access to business people rather than Corporation employees or City residents.

Compare this to the Parisian RATP [which is deploying context-aware mobile services, a PDA-based ‘Travel planner’ that features display of traffic and travel disruptions in real time, and has added communication modules to its bus fleet. In future it plans to build emergency applications, and offer travellers information and ticketing applications through smartphones using Near-Field Communications (NFC).][vii]

Image: RATP mobile device and screen

B2B

Extensively used in logistics, though UPS drivers don’t have phones to allow them to call recipients about locations they can find, and Tesco delivery people find their H-P iPaq devices keep breaking down.

At Yorkshire Water, over 600 field technicians are now equipped with ruggedised laptops communicating to the centre via GPRS to receive real time orders, deliver real time updates on work progress and to access customer and asset records including GIS to assist in diagnosis of faults and work planning.[viii]

There has been innovation by Google in the mobile area (searches done via SMS, etc) but their core product is stuck. See the recent Wall Street Journal article by Jeremy Wagstaff[ix]:

“We have all this fascinating data at our fingertips and yet we have decided the most effective way of viewing it is in...a table. Or a chart. Or a list of search results...”

Consumer

There has been successes with voice, SMS (a celebrated example of iser adaptation) and ringtones.

The only successful mobile music model, the iTunes Music Store/iTunes/iPod combination, has been a success partly because is supports users contexts of use (at their computer, walking, in the car, playing music through their Hi-Fi, giving songs to friends), facilitates these transitions, and is easy to use. (However, there are usability challenges of moving listening of, for instance, podcasts between computer and iPod while retaining position in the narrative.)

Image: [iTunesMusicStore.jpg]

Practical challenges

Design doesn’t play much of a role early on, in the development of a product, as people are interested primarily in the fact that it works at all.

However, in developing products and services design becomes more important as they mature.

Evaluating products

When evaluating the products and services we should ask: was the users’ experience successful and satisfying? This is characterised as the ‘quality of experience’.

There are a number of design considerations we need to focus on in the mobile arena.

Divergence

Users want divergence (Anytime Anyplace Anywhere). Convergence is for the engineers and producers. The semantics of the design of a product, which tell you what it is and how to use it, get lost when all content and services are collapsed into one device. [x]

Understanding your users

Understanding your users is critical: personas and scenarios are very useful in this respect. They also help with identifying features, and considering the design challenges beyond the obvious.[xi]

Coherent feature sets

Creating coherent feature sets, so your product makes sense, is key. Mobile Office apps are not what is needed. This was one flaw with Apple’s Newton MessagePad, which is repeated by Windows Mobile devices to this day. Are people really going to edit a spreadsheet while they wait for a bus, as the advertisements for Windows Mobile suggest?

Image: Apple Newton [AppleNewton.gif]

Moving between devices

Ease of moving between and sharing information between devices is critical. (See my point about the iPod.) This doesn’t just mean being able to read a publication, in this case Usability News, on a PC-Web browser, on Web browser on a mobile device, and on an RSS (‘news’) reader, but actually synching between them so I know which stories I been read. Not because I can’t remember, but because I don’t want to have to.

Image: NetNewsWire [NetNewsWireReader.jpg]

Image: [UN_AllTheLatest.jpg] [UN_AllTheLatestRSSPalm.jpg] [UN_AllTheLatestPalm.jpg

Bridging worlds

Connecting the network and the real world (Semacodes, Near Field Communication, etc) is important. As I noted at the start of my talk, the network is an enhancement to the real world. Semacodes are barcodes ‘on steroids’ that can be read using an application on a Symbian cameraphone, for instance to give you more information about a sculpture in a museum. [Near Field Communication models are being developed by companies such as Nokia to allow for easy transfer of information between devices.]

Image: Semacode [SemacodeCameraphone.jpg] [SemacodeInMuseum.jpg]

Interaction design

Product and interface, and information design are also critical, as is considering the usability of a design, and testing its usability. In the area of information design we need to go beyond the current Gemstar-owned electronic programming guide (EPG) model, as we move to hundreds of channels and smaller screens.

Branding

Creating a consistent user experience is important, from signup to signoff, from interactive voice response (IVR) systems to printed bills via service/content delivery and service customisation. [This should also consider how to record interactions with customers across all touch points, from written communications to email, phone to Web.] [Because most companies work as ‘silos’ this is hard to achieve.]

See the recent article on service and Dell by Michael Schrage (co-director of the MIT Media Lab’s E-Markets Initiative and a senior adviser to MIT’s Security Studies Program) in the Financial Times:

“As prices have relentlessly dropped, customers increasingly appear less interested in the most cost-effective buy than in ‘convenience’, ‘ease of use’ and ‘support’.”[xii]

Innovative content and services

Creating innovative content and services, not re-hashing those from previous platforms (TV, telephone) is key. This is counter to the current vogue for re-cycling the back catalogue, celebrated in Chris Anderson’s thesis of The Long Tail[xiii].

Image: Chris Anderson and book [ChrisAnderson.jpg] [TheLongTailBookCover.jpg]

Get the basics right

But... getting the basics right is important too, such a voice quality. Can we say for certain that this has improved since the phones used in the Victorian era?

Image: Victorian woman on the phone [PhoningVictorian.jpg]

Bigger issues

Hostility to mobility

Our New Labour government exhibits hostility to mobility. Speaking on BBC Breakfast yesterday, Secretary of State for Transport Douglas Alexander said of car travel:

“We can’t simply build our way out of this problem”[xiv]

Image: [DouglasAlexander.jpg] [Easyjet.jpg]

But their problem is that they can’t think laterally around this challenge. And they don’t want the oiks flying on Easyjet down to Tuscany, or wherever they holiday these days.

If the government is hostile to mobility, then we have a problem.

Fear of surveillance

Will people worry about mobility as they don’t like the idea of being surveilled, and don’t like or trust government? Even if the government isn’t really capable of achieving this kind of surveillance.

Image: new Home Secretary, John Reid [JohnReid.jpg]

Risk consciousness and IT

In his Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones report, 2000, Sir William Stewart effectively said of ‘Let precaution prevail!’. If we let anti-scientific approaches to technology prevail we will be taking a major step back.

Image: [MobilePhonesReportSite.jpg] [SirWilliamStewart.jpg]

In this and other areas, or government lacks leadership and ambition.

Instrumentalism

There is also a danger of New Labour using technology for instrumental purposes, that is to achieve its own political ends. See for instance the role marked out for the BBC in facilitating digital inclusion. The danger here is that these projects will (inevitably) fail, as, for instance, ‘social exclusion’ wasn’t created by lack of IT, and our industries will then be tarred by New Labour’s lack of credibility.

Conclusions

Although government has its limits, and New Labour its flaws, bottom up innovation won’t work at scale. We need to think in a top down way, and lead from the top.

Let’s be: ambitious, risk taking, human-centred, problem-solving, and imaginative

And let’s think about what might be the top five applications that mobile tools could support. We might consider transport logistics and navigation. Voice translation. New housing (see Thames Gateway). Healthcare. Education and schooling. Or entertainment and the networked home.

Thank you

This really wasn’t a party political broadcast!

Q&A and (subsequent) Panel discussion

Write-up and references to come. Please email me if you want to be notified accordingly.

[i] Cited in the Guardian, May 28, 2000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4023088,00.html

[ii] ‘Second sight’ Nico Macdonald, The Guardian newspaper, 23 October 2003. On the threat to innovation from subservience to users, and the dominance of usability.

[iii] The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business, Clayton Christensen (HarperCollins Publishers, 2003) [information on Amazon.co.uk]

[iv] ‘Design your own revolution’ Charles Leadbeater, The Observer, June 19, 2005. On designing with with not for people, focusing on the public sector and lauding the work of Hillary Cottam.

[v] ‘What Is Web 2.0’ Tim O'Reilly, 30/09/2005. Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software.

[vi] See a report on Westminster’s activity in my write-up of the Wireless Summit, autumn 2005 [Word document, 272 KB]

[vii] See write-up of the Wireless Summit, ibid.

[viii] See ‘Organisational Lives: Inventing the future with mobile technology’ An Orange Future Enterprise Coalition report prepared by Henley Centre Headlight Vision

[ix] ‘Click for 2,000 Results’ Jeremy Wagstaff, April 28, 2006

[x] See my talk at the AIGA Collision conference entitled ‘The Emperors New Trend’ [transcript] (New York City, April 12-14, 2000)

[xi] See the US-based consultancy Cooper’s writing on Powerful Personas

[xii] ‘More service and support please, Mr Dell’ Michael Schrage, May 9 2006. More serious for Dell, however, is that the perceived locus of value is evolving away from what the company does best. As prices have relentlessly dropped, customers increasingly appear less interested in the most cost-effective buy than in “convenience”, “ease of use” and “support”. Service matters more than ever. [Paid sub required.]

[xiii] See ‘The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More’ [information on Amazon.co.uk]

[xiv] BBC Breakfast, May 10, 2006 07:14