People are in the midst of making a Mobile Mind Shift, which can be defined as “the expectation that any desired information or service is available, on any appropriate device, in context, at your moment of need.”

Attitudes and behaviors are shifting around the world, and the shift is rapidly accelerating.

However there are significant regional variations are fascinating.

According to Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research, Europeans are in general behind Americans on the Mobile Mind Shift:

“Europeans differ from Americans on all three components of the Mobile Mind Shift: the number of connected devices, the frequency of access, and the diversity of locations in which connections occur. While Europeans actually have more connected devices, they connect significantly less frequently and in fewer locations. This appears to be a result of the data plans on European mobile devices, plans that interfere with users’ natural desire to access mobile everywhere as a matter of habit.”

Although interesting, the post is very incomplete: it doesn’t include (a link to) the data by country. Moreover, Bernoff doesn’t explain why he thinks this is only based on data plans (what about cultural and contextual differences?), and why he claims that data plans will change so fast that “within six months, we expect European attitudes to catch up to where Americans are right now.”.

So are Europeans behind or are they just, eh, different?

(As if it hasn’t already).

In developing countries, where smartphones and dependable cellular networks are still scarce, it’s been difficult to gauge the real impact of the mobile education movement. But with the combination of different factors — the advent of new technology, decreased pricing for data, a worldwide lust for mobile education, and a persisting patience for smaller screens and lower connection speeds in nations with little alternative — the landscape in developing countries may be at a tipping point.

By the way, make sure not to miss the mobile education image (here reproduced in small)!

Drew Bamford, Director of User Experience at HTC, explains Sense 5.0 and why the company’s Android UX needed redefining.

“HTC radically overhauled the look and feel of Sense UI aboard the HTC One. It removed the standard homescreen of app icons and a weather widget and replaced it with something HTC says is far more useful.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, says Drew Bamford, Director of User Experience at HTC. Sense 5 is more than just a UX – it’s a redefined experience born from extensive research.

‘After releasing Sense 4 last year, I challenged the team to step back and take a fresh look at the overall customer experience,’ said Bamford, writing on the HTC Blog. ‘We interviewed customers for their personal feedback and we became students of human behaviour, taking more time than ever to observe how people use their phones today.’” [...]

The company’s research turned up three rather interesting points about the way in which its users interacted with Sense UXs of old. Most people, apparently, don’t differentiate between apps and widgets.

Widgets aren’t widely used – weather, clock and music are the most used and after that, fewer than 10 percent of customers use any other widgets.

Most of us don’t modify our home screens much. In fact, after the first month of use, approximately 80 percent of us don’t change our home screens any further.

BBC News has published a 5 minute video feature on Cambridge University’s Design Centre where they test how elderly people use technology.

Must-have modern gadgets are designed by young people with young people in mind – that is the view of Ian Hosking, who works at Cambridge University’s Design Centre.

This can mean that elderly people, who have much to gain from modern technology, feel excluded.

Mr Hosking’s mission is to improve the accessibility of modern, mass-produced devices like smartphones and tablets. To this end, he conducts experiments with volunteers.

The Design Lab conducts tests on individual products, but the general findings that Mr Hosking discusses here apply to digital communication devices across the market.

BBC News also posted a longer article on the same topic.

Recent reports from McKinsey’s iConsumer Global Research Initiative:

Moving from “mobile first” to “touch first”
December 2012 (published on the EconomistGroup site)
Already, more than a third of the time people spend web browsing, using social networking sites, and using e-mail/messaging software is on mobile devices. In a couple of years, we expect it to be more than half. This is creating a ‘touch first’ computing paradigm, which means overhauling how information is delivered to and accessed by the consumer.

The rise of the African consumer
October 2012
The single-largest business opportunity in Africa will be its rising consumer market. A McKinsey report, one of the first of its kind, offers a detailed profile of African consumers, including their demographics, behavior, and needs.

The complex path to purchase taken by Europe’s iConsumers
June 2012
What are Europe’s iConsumers thinking? To find out, McKinsey & Company studied the digitally-based purchasing behavior of 40,000 Europeans in eight countries for the second year in a row. This study sheds light on future threats and opportunities by comparing European consumers and examining the resulting business implications.

The next stage: Six ways the digital consumer is changing
April 2012
The Internet, not yet 20 years on from its emergence into the consumer mainstream, is evolving as fast as ever.

Motorola Mobility, which Google acquired in May, recently released new smartphones and reintroduced itself as the “New Motorola.” But what does that even mean? One thing is for sure: Motorola is not the same company that it was when it was riding the huge success of the first Razr in 2004.

In an interview, Jim Wicks, senior vice president for consumer experience design at Motorola Mobility, who has been with the company for 11 years, talked about the company’s design strategy and how it will change going forward.

“We established [our] design organization about 11 years ago. The whole point was to build one centralized design organization in the business, one that was very holistic in nature, that covered both the physical and digital disciplines of design of product.

For the physical design, we have within our groups industrial designers, surface engineers, advanced mechanical engineers, material scientists and trends forecasters. On the digital side we have user experience designers. Additionally we would have design researchers, and there are people who are engaged in ethnographic studies on automobiles and homes. They track how people use technology and identify some of the needs that are unmet at this stage.

That’s what our design group is, and we’re located in Chicago, California and Korea.”

In order to understand mobile phone usage at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) in Kenya, iHub Research and Research Solutions Africa conducted a 6-month study, funded by infoDev (World Bank).

A total of 796 face-to-face interviews were conducted along with 178 diaries, 9 interviews with Kenyan developers, 12 focus group discussions (FGDs), and 10 interviews with key stakeholders in the industry. The full report will be released to the public in November 2012.

The following were key findings from the study:
- 16% of Kenyans at the BoP use Internet on their mobile phone
- Low awareness of other existing mobile applications
- Health and education Information most desired
- 1 in 5 forgo an expenditure to buy credit
- Calling, SMS, Mobile Money Transfer are the major uses
- No difference in mobile phone usage between men and women other than mobile Internet usage, which is dominated by educated male youth
- Higher likelihood of technology usage by those educated past primary level

Some highlights:

myServiceFellow
Mobile ethnography for (tourism-specific) service design via customer structured research based on perceived service sequence and service components importance through journey mapping and touchpoints sequences
(More info also here)

Ethos – Ethnographic observation system
Both a mobile device application for conducting fieldwork and a link to a web-based project management system

Revelation
Mobile device app seamlessly integrates with Revelation Project, making it simple to add mobile projects into larger studies

Ethnocorder
Multimedia enabled field research with over 20 types of multimedia elements that can be used in either questions or responses

myResearch
Field market research application for capturing live point-in-time feedback from respondents using video, audio, image recording and quantitative data

Over The Shoulder
Allows users to answer questions and provide opinions for research purposes with in-the-moment ideas, photos, videos and innovation inspiration

MyInsights
Conduct qualitative research connected to a closed web environment, where projects can be created, participants and observers can be invited and where you can view and download the results

Rajeev Suri posted a short interview with Gustav Praekelt of Praekelt Consulting and the Praekelt Foundation, who focuses on creating behaviour change in people – particularly in emerging markets – using mobile technology.

In the interview he explains the notions of Computational Social Science, Influence and Susceptibility of an individual in a network, building on the work of behavioral scientist Sinan Aral at MIT. He also talks about the social community they built called YoungAfricaLive.

In this BBC article, David Edelstein, a leader in the mobile for development space, argues that human networks are the essential ingredient for mobile phones to improve the lives of the poorest.

“Focusing on the technology betrays a truth that must be understood if we are to get beyond this hype and harness the true potential of mobile. To truly make a difference to the lives of the world’s poor, I believe that we must complement the existing mobile networks with well structured human networks.

What do I mean by a human network? To understand what they are and the impact they can have, our network of more than 850 Community Knowledge Workers (CKWs) in Uganda offers a good example.”

Read article

What is the emotional relationship people truly have with the mobile space and how they make meaning there? To answer this, Google conducted an anthropological study to gain a better understanding of how people feel about, relate to and find meaning in the mobile space, and how brands can engage their consumers in more emotionally resonant and impactful ways.

“We hired an anthropologist to interview dozens of ordinary mobile device owners and observe them as they interacted with their smartphones. The first thing we found is that the phone’s pocket size is anything but a flaw — in fact, it’s the key to understanding what it really means.

Anthropology teaches us that in every culture, miniatures possess the power to unlock imaginations. Whether it’s a dollhouse, toy truck, or some other tiny talisman, miniatures look and feel real, but their size gives us the permission to suspend disbelief, daydream, and play. Remember The Nutcracker? In between pirouettes, a toy nutcracker comes to life, defeats an evil mouse, and whisks the heroine away to a magical kingdom. That, in a nutshell, is the story we implicitly tell ourselves about our miniature computers — one of youth, freedom, and possessing the key to a much larger world.

“Because it’s in my pocket I somehow squeeze this time in for various things — and only because I think it just sits in my pocket,” one of our subjects told us.

The screens may be small, but they serve as gateways to the gigantic. We see this power manifest in insights gleaned from the anthropologist’s observations. Our mobile devices help us fully actualize our best self, or what we call the Quicksilver Self; they engage us to create a shared culture, the New Tribalism; and they help us to make sense of the physical world around us, an act we describe as Placemaking. Understanding the deeper levels at which individuals, customers, are finding meaning in mobile will enable marketers to put this powerful medium to its best use.”

Report by Think With Google

CNN reports on mobile phone culture and how use differs starkly across cultures.

Whereas the article is rather superficial, the “open mic” videos from New York and Nairobi and the photo gallery are recommended.

Mobile devices come with a whole host of new constraints (and opportunities) for our designs.

In this – the first part of her series on mobile design – Elaine McVicar explores a handfull of the most popular architectures for mobile websites and applications.

SDT2012 was the first international conference on service design thinking in the travel and tourism industry. For the first time, the conference brought together a community interested in the practical application of service design thinking within the travel and tourism industry.

The conference was the closing event of the project “Service Design in Tourism” funded by the European Union under the CIP Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme, and hosted by MCI – Management Center Innsbruck, Department of Tourism.

A free 142 page e-book with Case studies of applied research projects on mobile ethnography for tourism destinations.

Abstract

Tourism becomes more and more transparent through social media and tourism review websites. Nowadays, it’s the individual guest’s experience that makes or breaks the success of a tourism product. Thus, the focus in tourism shifts from mere marketing communications to meaningful experiences. Service design thinking can provide an in-depth and holistic understanding of customers required to cocreate meaningful experiences with guests.

The book provides an introduction into service design and tourism and presents seven case studies of European tourism destinations, which used the app myServiceFellow as a mobile ethnography research tool to gain genuine customer insights. The book reports lessons learned of these case studies, gives managerial implications and an outlook on future research fields for service design in tourism.

“Service Design and Tourism” is the written outcome of the research project “Service design as an approach to foster competitiveness and sustainability of European tourism” funded by the European Union under the CIP Competitiveness and Innovation Program.

Marko Athisaari, Nokia’s head of design, is pushing a general overall vision where advanced function is blended into unforgettable form¿post-industrial form. The dream, if not the exact language, is very familiar. Nokia is marketing its phone directly into the teeth of Apple’s strength: Design.

He talks a great game, and fondles an impressive product. But certainly Ahtisaari knows that by focusing on design, he is taking on the lofty emperors of design at Apple. And it can’t be lost on him that just as Apple is the world’s wealthiest company, Nokia is struggling for its life. But if Ahtisaari is intimidated, he’s not showing it. Asked about Apple, he says, “The best way you can show respect for competition is to do something meaningfully better.” And if all else fails, there’s always that hole in the ice.

Feature on Wired

According to a recent multi-country study commissioned by Intel Corporation and conducted by Ipsos Observer on “Mobile Etiquette,” the majority of adults and teens around the world are sharing information about themselves online and feel better connected to family and friends because of it. However, the survey also revealed a perception of “oversharing,” with at least six out of 10 adults and teens saying they believe other people divulge too much information about themselves online, with Japan being the only exception.

Intel’s 2012 “Mobile Etiquette” survey examined the current state of mobile etiquette and evaluated how adults and teens in eight countries share and consume information online, as well as how digital sharing impacts culture and relationships. The research was conducted in the United States in March and a follow-up study was conducted in Australia, Brazil, China (adults only), France, India, Indonesia and Japan from June to August.

“In today’s society, our mobile technology is making digital sharing ubiquitous with our everyday activities, as evidenced by the findings from Intel’s latest ‘Mobile Etiquette’ survey,” said Dr. Genevieve Bell, Intel Fellow and director of user interaction and experience at Intel Labs. “What is most interesting is not necessarily how widespread our use of mobile technology has become, but how similar our reasons are for sharing, regardless of region or culture. The ability to use mobile devices to easily share information about our lives is creating a sense of connection across borders that we’re continuing to see flourish.”

- Press release
- Article by The Register
- Interactive data visualization

A study by the Pew Research Center, released Wednesday, found that among Americans adults who use smartphone apps, half had decided not to install applications on their mobile phones because they demanded too much personal information. Nearly a third uninstalled an application after learning that it was collecting personal information “they didn’t wish to share.” And one in five turned off location tracking “because they were concerned that other individuals or companies could access that information.” A customer’s whereabouts can be extremely valuable to marketers trying to sell their wares, or government authorities trying to keep tabs on citizens’ movements.

The study seems to suggest a deepening awareness of digital privacy. And it contradicts a common perception that the generation of young Americans who have grown up in the Internet age blithely share their personal details.

Read article

Ericsson is publishing interesting research these days (and therefore gets featured on this blog).

Its latest TV and video ConsumerLab report found that mobile devices are an important part of the TV experience, with 67 percent using tablets, smartphones or laptops for their everyday TV viewing.

New technology and services have also empowered us to interact socially with our friends as we watch our favorite content. Today, live sports commentary among mates is huge. The same ConsumerLab report found that 62 percent of consumers use social media while watching TV. This is up 18 percent from last year.

In a new report from its ConsumerLab, Ericsson maps out the potential of transformation within m-commerce across the region of sub-Saharan Africa.

Based on in-depth, extensive interviews with mobile phone users in Ghana, South Africa, and Tanzania, the report has four key findings: that consumers are constantly looking for new ways to improve their personal budgets; the speed and convenience of m-commerce points to great potential in the market; current behaviors and social structures indicate that the use of mobile payment services will expand; and that consumers need more information about the functionality and security of m-commerce transactions.

Consumers tell Ericsson researchers that they use mobile payment services for person-to-person transfers and purchasing airtime on their mobile subscriptions, and that they like the convenience of accessing money everywhere and at anytime, regardless of service hours. In Tanzania, for example, 38% of subscribers send money person-to-person over the mobile phone.

Another conclusion of the report is that people who use m-commerce keep little separation between private and business accounts.

Experience leads to greater trust, and the report finds that 44% of non-users of m-commerce are very worried about the integrity of their account information in case of theft or loss of their phones.

- Press release
- Media kit

Too Much Hype in the Mobile Health App World?
By journalist Barbara Ficarra
Aside from safety concerns, there are “two problems with health apps,” said Joseph C. Kvedar, M.D., founder and director at the Center for Connected Health in a recent interview. First, after downloading the app, it may be used once or twice and then it’s forgotten, he said. “There’s no engagement.” Secondly, health apps can be prone to error because the data that is self-entered by consumers may not be true. It’s a “social diversity bias problem,” he said, because the data entered isn’t honest and there is no meaningful engagement to help change consumers behavior. After downloading health apps with enthusiasm, the “shiny new toy isn’t so shiny anymore,” because there’s “lack of interest and lack of engagement,” said Kvedar.

Peter Maass and Megha Rajagopalan argue in the New York Times Sunday Review that the device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone, is in fact a tracking device that happens to make calls.

“We have all heard about the wonders of frictionless sharing, whereby social networks automatically let our friends know what we are reading or listening to, but what we hear less about is frictionless surveillance. Though we invite some tracking — think of our mapping requests as we try to find a restaurant in a strange part of town — much of it is done without our awareness.” [...]

“People could call them trackers. It’s a neutral term, because it covers positive activities — monitoring appointments, bank balances, friends — and problematic ones, like the government and advertisers watching us.

We can love or hate these devices — or love and hate them — but it would make sense to call them what they are so we can fully understand what they do.”

Read article

In arguing that digital technologies enable embodied experiences that reshape the very ways in which we conceptualize our everyday life, Nishant Shah, founder and Director of Research for the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, tells us a story from the village of Banni in the desert region of Kutch, located at the North-Western borders of India and Pakistan.

“In this small village that is about 80 kilometers from the biggest town with amenities like hospitals and schools, almost every household has a smart phone with access to the internet. In the absence of more popular forms like radio, which are disallowed because of the proximity to the turbulent India-Pakistan borders, the Chinese-made smart phones become the de facto interface of communication and cultural production. The phones become not only the life-line in times of crises, but also everyday objects through which the villages stay connected with the world of cultural production and entertainment. The internet services on the phones allow them to access Bollywood songs and movies, images and games, popular television programming and other popular cultural products in the country. In many ways, Banni is probably more digitally connected than many parts of the larger cities in the country.”

Read article

The Mobile Frontier – A Guide for Designing Mobile Experiences
By Rachel Hinman
Rosenfeld Media
June 2012
Publisher’s page | Amazon page

Mobile user experience is a new frontier. Untethered from a keyboard and mouse, this rich design space is lush with opportunity to invent new and more human ways for people to interact with information. Invention requires casting off many anchors and conventions inherited from the last 50 years of computer science and traditional design and jumping head first into a new and unfamiliar design space.

The Mobile Frontier will assist in navigating the unfamiliar and fast-changing mobile landscape with grace and solid thinking while inspiring you to explore the possibilities mobile technology presents.

> Excerpt from the book on UX Magazine

Not so long ago, cell phones were only used just to make phone calls. Today hundreds of thousands of applications and services are available for smartphones. With them, people can communicate, play games, find places, and organize their day. However, the vast amount of possibilities can confuse users when choosing the best option. In addition, the global mobile content market makes it hard for users to find local solutions. This thesis in collaboration with Nokia proposes services that aim at:

1. helping customers to meet closer their needs by customizing the mobile phone content at the time of purchasing; and
2. generating means of collaboration among content developers, retailers and customers for producing mobile content targeted to local needs

A Participatory Design approach was applied for developing the customization services. Observation, contextual inquiry and cultural probes methods were implemented to learn from diverse users. A co-design session was conducted to explore new opportunities with Nokia stakeholders. The results are several scenarios envisioned for Mass Customization services of mobile phone content at the point of delivery. The thesis offers:

1. a framework of collaborative creation models for Mass Customization; and
2. insights on customers’ engagement in the activity of customization.

Download pdf

(via International Service Design Network)

In Perspectives on Psychological Science (May 2012 vol. 7), Geoffrey Miller publishes a “Smartphone Psychology Manifesto” with methodological suggestions for the use of smartphones in psychological research that could indeed have a huge impact on the study of cognition and culture.

By 2025, when most of today’s psychology undergraduates will be in their mid-30s, more than 5 billion people on our planet will be using ultra-broadband, sensor-rich smartphones far beyond the abilities of today’s iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries. Although smartphones were not designed for psychological research, they can collect vast amounts of ecologically valid data, easily and quickly, from large global samples. If participants download the right “psych apps,” smartphones can record where they are, what they are doing, and what they can see and hear and can run interactive surveys, tests, and experiments through touch screens and wireless connections to nearby screens, headsets, biosensors, and other peripherals. This article reviews previous behavioral research using mobile electronic devices, outlines what smartphones can do now and will be able to do in the near future, explains how a smartphone study could work practically given current technology (e.g., in studying ovulatory cycle effects on women’s sexuality), discusses some limitations and challenges of smartphone research, and compares smartphones to other research methods. Smartphone research will require new skills in app development and data analysis and will raise tough new ethical issues, but smartphones could transform psychology even more profoundly than PCs and brain imaging did.

Download manifesto

(via cognition and culture)

Gartner research suggests that there is an inverse correlation between portable devices and PC usage, reports the Financial Times.

“Is the PC era really over? The success portable computing devices including smartphones and PC tablets has some speculating that the dominance of the desktop PC, and even the laptop, may be coming to an end.

Gartner research analyst Nick Ingelbrecht and Mikako Kitagawa recently conducted a series of focus groups in the US, UK, China, Taiwan and Japan to explore consumers’ device usage and their research provides an insight into the growing importance of mobile devices and their impact on PC usage.”

Read article

With the introduction of mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and various other smart phones and tablets, the demand for websites to be ‘mobile friendly’ has never been greater.

The purpose of this article by Chris Kinsey, a digital designer for Sixth Story (a UK branding & communications agency), is to highlight the impact mobile devices have had on web design in recent years. The article looks at various aspects such as best practices, challenges and design trends as well as taking a look at what may lie ahead for the future of mobile web design.

Read article

The White House has unveiled plans to bring US governance into the mobile-centric twenty-first century. Dubbed the “Roadmap for a Digital Government,” the plan has two central principles.

First, it tasks federal agencies with giving citizens easier access to information and services on modern web and mobile apps. Second, it hopes to instil a culture of treating government as an open-source project by inviting external developers to create third-party apps using federal data and APIs.

At its core, the roadmap is an acknowledgment of the growing proliferation of mobile devices and demand for easier access to government information in the United States. A study conducted in March of this year found that almost half of all Americans own a smartphone, up from 35% last year.

- Article (The Information Daily)
- Official announcement by the Federal Chief Information Officer
- Digital Government Strategy (PDF / HTML5)

Cristian Norlin, master researcher at the Ericsson Research User Experience Lab, alerted me via Twitter to the Lab’s new blog.

The User Experience Lab at Ericsson Research studies people and make prototypes to better understand the experiential, affective and meaningful aspects of people’s interactions with technology and network infrastructures.

On the blog, which started in April 2012, “we will write about things that we think could inform, influence and inspire the development of future technology, products and services.”

Some of the recent posts:

• UX Lab & BERG explores the Internetworks of Things
• Sci-fi Meets Robots Meets Human Meets the Everyday… and the Anthropologist’s Point of View
• Ericsson and LEGO at MWC 2012
• A Social Web of Things

A conversation with senior Wells Fargo execs reveals a bank trying to use the Internet, social media and mobile technology to worm its way deeper and deeper into their customers’ lives.

“Brian Pearce, senior VP in charge of Wells Fargo’s retail mobile channel, said the bank sees mobile as “a way to be with our customers all day long.”

Wells Fargo’s aim to go wherever its customers go involves more than getting them to use mobile apps, mobile websites and text banking. Pearce wants to move beyond purely mobile interactions into so-called “simultaneous uses.” After all, Pearce pointed out, people always have their phones with them, so they can use them at the same time as they’re engaged with ATMs, tellers or wellsfargo.com.

Customers could use their phone instead of a card to log into the ATM or ID themselves to a teller, for example. Or the bank could use geofencing to identify and alert a customer’s personal banker every time they walk into a branch.”

Read article

Leading neurologist Susan Greenfield tells Nokia Conversations that we need a new framework to make sense of our ‘mobile world’

Her argument is that mobile technology, and what we do with it, is now at the center of our family and social life, like the piano was for the Victorians and the TV was for baby boomers. But it’s even bigger than that, because it’s mobile, of course; so we not only do it at home, we do it at work – we do it everywhere.

“I don’t want to turn the clock back,” says Greenfield, “My concern is not that we have too much technology – but that we are not making the most of it.”

With huge increases in life expectancy, and demands for a better quality of life, we should be acutely aware of how we are harnessing technology for our own development.

Read article

Sherry Turkle is a psychologist and professor at M.I.T., says we use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right: the Goldilocks effect.

“Over the past 15 years, I’ve studied technologies of mobile connection and talked to hundreds of people of all ages and circumstances about their plugged-in lives. I’ve learned that the little devices most of us carry around are so powerful that they change not only what we do, but also who we are.

We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.” Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party.”

Read article

Saar Gur, general partner at Charles River Ventures, discusses a new generation of smart mobile services, which provide user information in the background to make accurate predictions around real-time user intention and will offer suggestions, results and different user interfaces/interactions based on their prediction of state.

“As I think about what these new Smart Services will look like, here are some of the characteristics I have been noodling on:

• The most disruptive ones will change our physical interactions and be additive to our offline experiences.
• Services will process things in the background, predicting our state with a high degree of accuracy.
• Many will primarily interact with the user through interruptions — and they only interrupt when they have something of value to add. (e.g., for Uber: Your car is arriving now.) They won’t feel “heavy” and bombard us with information overload – they will earn the right to interrupt with value.
• The user interface will look very different from existing web interfaces for some of these apps — as they won’t have things to suggest/interrupt a lot of the time, but when they do they will be very helpful. Example: It is “ok” for the user interface to say: ”Close the app, we don’t have anything for you now.”
• Understanding context will follow simple heuristics for some services and big data processing for others. As an example, many home automation applications may only need to know that I am in my house to automate music, thermostats, etc. But more sophisticated data analysis and processing will be required for more complicated interactions/recommendations/transactions (ala Square payments).

Read article

Even within the technology community, 33% agreed with the below statement:

“People will not trust the use of near-field communications devices and there will not be major conversion of money to an all-digital, all-the-time format. By 2020, payments through the use of mobile devices will not have gained a lot of traction as a method for transactions. The security implications raise too many concerns among consumers about the safety of their money. And people are resistant to letting technology companies learn even more about their personal purchasing habits. Cash and credit cards will still be the dominant method of carrying out transactions in advanced countries.”

Read article

Many of the people surveyed by Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project said that the security, convenience and other benefits of “mobile wallet” systems will lead to widespread adoption of these technologies for everyday purchases by 2020.

Others—including some who are generally positive about the future of mobile payments—expect this process to unfold relatively slowly due to a combination of privacy fears, a desire for anonymous payments, demographic inertia, a lack of infrastructure to support widespread adoption, and resistance from those with a financial stake in the existing payment structure.

The survey results are based on a non-random, opt-in, online sample of 1,021 Internet experts and other Internet users, recruited via email invitation, Twitter or Facebook from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University. Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample.

Download report

The “mBCC Field Guide: A Resource for Developing Mobile Behavior Change Communication Programs,” is a new tool that helps users guide the design of mobile applications for health and provides insights about what works in mobile behavior change communication is now available. Compiled by Abt Associates, examines what is known about the power of mobile communication tools to influence health behaviors for consumers and health care providers. The guide was developed under the auspices of the mHealth Working Group, a global health forum established in 2009 for members to provide and share guidance on mHealth implementation. It is supported by the United States Agency for International Development’s Knowledge for Health project.

Mobile behavior change communication (mBCC) is defined here as the use of mobile phones to promote behavior change. This definition encompasses health and clinical behaviors for clients and health providers (e.g., reminders to take a pill or quizzes to improve health workers’ counseling skills) rather than operational behaviors (e.g., shifting from a paper-based survey to a mobile survey).

The primary audience for the mBCC Field Guide is practitioners experienced in developing BCC strategies who are considering employing mobile solutions but need guidance on key issues and on questions to consider in the design process. Evidence-based examples and tools are highlighted wherever possible, although we recognize that few programs have published impact or outcome data.

The authors hope that this Field Guide will be a “living document.” We welcome your feedback and suggestions for improving the guide’s usefulness. We plan to issue updated versions as mobile platforms and the evidence base evolves. Contacts and references to relevant organizations and resources are noted wherever possible to facilitate communication and collaboration. Please use the evaluation form at the end of the guide to provide specific comments and recommendations.

BOOMERANG, death by gadget : the mobile phone », a new kind of documentary presented by Diego Buñuel, March 21th , 8:55pm on CANAL+

BOOMERANG is a 90-minute French documentary that decodes a globalized world, a world in which our actions as consumers can have unsuspected consequences. This unique program combines in-depth reportage, investigation and human adventure.

By going back to the object’s origin, BOOMERANG takes us on a fascinating journey to the four corners of the planet (DRC, CHINA & INDIA), where specialized journalists are dispatched to shed light on the incredible itinerary of the most sold gadget in the world: mobile phones, as we take a close look at its life cycle, from creation to destruction.

Without detracting from the seriousness of the subject matter, Diego Buñuel and his team present the investigation in a fast-paced and offbeat style, offering a fresh and humorous approach. Diego Buñuel will introduce you to alternative solutions in order to change your consumers habits.

- Trailer
- Background article (in French)
- Watch live (March 21th , 8:55pm CET on CANAL+)

The ubiquitous presence of cell phones in emerging economies has brought about a wide range of cell phone-based services for low-income groups. Often times, the success of such technologies highly depends on its adaptation to the needs and habits of each social group.

In an attempt to understand how cell phones are being used by citizens in an emerging economy, the authors, Vanessa Frias-Martinez and Jesus Virseda of Telefonica Research, present a large-scale study to analyze the relationship between specific socio-economic factors and the way people use cell phones in an emerging economy in Latin America. They propose a novel analytical approach that combines large-scale datasets of cell phone records with countrywide census data to reveal findings at a national level.

The main results show correlations between socio-economic levels and social network or mobility patterns among others. The authors also provide analytical models to accurately approximate census variables from cell phone records with R2≈0.82.

Download paper (posted on MobileActive.org)

Using an ethnographic action research approach, the study by Jonathan Donner (Microsoft Research India) and Shikoh Gitau and Gary Marsden (University of Cape Town) explores the challenges, practices, and emergent framings of mobile-only Internet use in a resource-constrained setting.

“We trained eight women in a nongovernmental organization’s collective in South Africa, none of whom had used a personal computer, how to access the Internet on mobile handsets they already owned. Six months after training, most continued to use the mobile Internet for a combination of utility, entertainment, and connection, but they had encountered barriers, including affordability and difficulty of use. Participants’ assessments mingled aspirational and actual utility of the channel with and against a background of socioeconomic constraints. Discussion links the digital literacy perspective to the broader theoretical frameworks of domestication, adaptive structuration, and appropriation.”

The study was published in the International Journal of Communication.

Download paper (MobileActive.org)

Abstract

In this paper we present results from an anthropological study of everyday mobile internet adoption among teenagers in a lowincome urban setting. We attempt to use this study to explore how information about everyday ICT use may be relevant for development research even if it is largely dominated by entertainment uses.

To understand how ICT tools are used, we need to study the spaces users inhabit, even if these spaces are dominated by mundane, non-instrumental and entertainment driven needs. The key here is for ICTD discourse to situate insights from anthropological studies (such as this one) within an understanding of what drives a specific user population to adopt technologies in particular ways. Clearly there is a link between context and use, and understanding this may be invaluable for development research. Adopting a narrow development lens of technology use may miss the actual engagements and ingenious strategies marginal populations use to instate technologies into their everyday.

- Download paper
- Key findings (synthesis by MobileActive)

A report, recently published by UNDP, on mobile technologies and human development, “Mobile Technologies and Empowerment: Enhancing Human Development through Participation and Innovation”, does a good job of summarizing the many ways in which mobile technologies are being used successfully as tools for stimulating development.

It’s intended to provide information and ideas for development practitioners on how mobile technologies and applications can be used appropriately and effectively in international development projects.

The aim is not to employ technology-based solutions as an end in themselves, but rather as the means to achieving desired development outcomes.

- Read review (MobileActive)
- Executive summary
- Download report

This report by Hani Eskandar (ITU), Barbara- Chiara Ubaldi (OECD) and Vyacheslav Cherkasov (UN-DESA) highlights the critical potential of mobile technologies for improved public governance, as well as for economic and social progress in achieving the internationally agreed development goals including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The September 2011 report also provides an in-depth analysis of the prerequisites for m-government, its main benefits and challenges, the value-chain and key stakeholders, and the checklist of concrete actions to sustain policy makers in monitoring and updating their knowledge on m-government.

Chapters:
1. Toward the next generation of public services
2. Benefits and outcomes of m-government
3. Understanding m-government adoption
4. Prerequisites for agility and ubiquity
5. Technology options for mobile solutions
6. M-Vision and a call to action

The report was drafted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in collaboration with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).

Download report

(via MobileActive)

On International Women’s Day, the GSMA mWomen Programme released a study called “Striving and Surviving – Exploring the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid,” reports MobileActive.org.

Drawn from 2,500 interviews with women (aged 16-64 in both rural and urban areas) living on less that $2 a day in Egypt, India, Papua New Guinea, and Uganda, the report looks at how mobile technology influences the way women approach health, economic development, and family relationships, and what mobile operators can do to reach more low-income women.

The report is divided into three parts; part one looks at the social, cultural, and economic factors that women at the base of the economic pyramid face in their daily lives, part two looks at the role of mobile technology in their lives, and part three looks at how technology can be used to further reach low-income women.

Some of the statistics pulled from the report show that when asked what the key benefits of mobile would be: [quoted from report]

• 80% reported being connected to friends and family
• 58% said it would be useful in an emergency
• 40% said it would cut down on travel time
• 15% believed it would help them feel secure
• 93% reported that mobile phones made them feel safer, while the same proportion particularly valued being connected to friends and family.
• 41% reported that owning a mobile had helped them increase their income or their professional prospects
• 85% of mobile owners reported a greater feeling of independence

The study found that despite general positive feelings toward mobile technology, there are many challenges to getting mobile technology into the hands of low-income women. Gender imbalances were a major issue, as although some women had access to mobile phones through friends or family, few owned their own mobile phone. Another major issue was technical ability, as “while 77% of BoP women have made a mobile phone call, only 37% have sent an SMS, regardless of literacy levels.” Among women who were surveyed, 22% who reported not wanting a mobile phone said their reason was because they would not know how to use it.

Other concerns women listed for using mobile phones were a lack of regular access to electricity to keep the phone charged, concerns about theft, and concerns about ownership and usage costs. Furthermore, family pressure was a large influence on women’s view of technology as the report states: “In addition to doubts about the cost/benefit analysis of mobile ownership, 64% of married women who do not wish to own handsets cited the disapproval of their husbands as a principle reason for not wanting to own a phone.”

“Striving and Surviving” also examines how mobile operators can increase their outreach to women at the base of the pyramid by addressing women’s concerns. By developing family plans and reaching out to male and female customers by highlighting security and family connectivity available through mobile technology, mobile operators can broaden their customer base while getting technology into the hands of women who need it.

An interesting aspect of the report is the Portraits series, a fictionalized account of eight women from the base of the pyramid who use mobile technology and explain how that technology fits into their everyday lives. The stories are interspersed throughout the final report, but are also collected in a separate paper called “Portraits: A Glimpse into the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid.”

Although the accounts are fictionalized, they are drawn from the research that went into creating “Striving and Surviving – Exploring the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid.” The reports look at the lives of everyday women and how they use and view mobile technology.

Because the data for the report is drawn from only four countries, the GSMA mWomen Programme has made all of the research tools used to create this report publicly available at www.mwomen.org to inspire further research.

- Executive summary
- Report download
- Portrait series
- Research tools

MobileActive has posted an in-depth new case study that focuses on evaluating mobile health interventions.

Written by Kate Otto, the case study looks at testing the efficacy of using mobile phones in health care in Ethiopia. A team of researchers from The World Bank and Addis Ababa University developed a mobile tool that enables rural community health workers to improve antenatal care and delivery services, improve vaccination coverage, and facilitate emergency referrals. The team is taking the evaluation process beyond the usual survey method and are instead rigorously testing the mobile phone effects through more rigorous research.

The researchers randomly selected three Ethiopian districts and applied the tool in three ways:

• Treatment 1: All Health Extension Workers (HEW) received mobile phones equipped to perform the three use cases (improving antenal care/delivery, vaccination coverage, and emergency referrals).
• Treatment 2: All HEWs and two Volunteer Community Health Workers (VCHW) within each district received mobile phones; HEW phones are software-equipped for the three use cases, while VCHWs received dumbphones intended to make missed calls only.
• Control: No mobile phones distributed.

The test is on-going, but the results will be applicable to organizations that are considering deploying mobile tools into their work. The research is not looking at developing a scalable mobile tool, but is rather examining how mobile tools are used and how they compare to existing methods

Read case study

Tricia Wang of UCSD’s Department of Sociology and Barry Brown of the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Center Stockholm presented the paper “Ethnography of the telephone: Changing uses of communication technology in village life” at MobileHCI 2011.

Abstract

While mobile HCI has encompassed a range of devices and systems, telephone calls on cellphones remain the most prevalent contemporary form of mobile technology use. In this paper we document ethnographic work studying a remote Mexican village’s use of cellphones alongside conventional phones, shared phones and the Internet. While few homes in the village we studied have running water, many children have iPods and the Internet cafe in the closest town is heavily used to access YouTube, Wikipedia, and MSN messenger. Alongside cost, the Internet fits into the communication patterns and daily routines in a way that cellphones do not. We document the variety of communication strategies that balance cost, availability and complexity. Instead of finding that new technologies replace old, we find that different technologies co-exist, with fixed telephones co-existing with instant message, cellphones and shared community phones. The paper concludes by discussing how we can study mobile technology and design for settings defined by cost and infrastructure availability.

Download paper (alternate link)

(via MobileActive)

Sondre Ager-Wick, Nokia’s Head of Design Strategy and Foresight, discusses the evolution and future of mobile design.

His new trends:
- DIY design
- Electronically enhanced senses
- The smartification of everything
- Less digital bling. More content first.
- Getting serious about play

Read article