Keitai

Bryan and I are heading to the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference on Thursday. Looking forward to a great event and the opportunity to meet up with assorted friends. Many thanks to Rudy for the last minute invites!

Anyone fancy meeting up for dinner on Thursday night?

You know you’re a geek when you have dinner, then settle in to watch mobile usability tests that Bryan filmed this afternoon (for a project I’m not even working on)

Enough said…

The ‘From Business to Buttons‘ PDF and Keynote presentations are live along with some video (look for the ‘Web TV ‘link top right of the page.)

How many times have we heard this before

“Here is another new thing we have developed which will help people do things they always wanted to do and will now do everyday. We have made the important decisions, worked out how it will work, chosen the suppliers and built a very expensive prototype. You have two weeks to design it, or we will be late and it will be your fault.”

Clive Grinyer, Lipstick on a Pig.

Hillarious video (part of a larger presentation Bill Moggridge, IDEO on Interaction Design at the 2007 Potsdam Innovation Forum) demonstrating the incredible patience required to extract a soft drink from a Japanese vending machine via iMode/QR code etc. Scrub through to about 9:35 for the iMode video.

The whole video is worth a listen and begins with an interview with iMode co-founder Takeshi Natsuno regarding the creation of iMode and follows with the creation of the first computer mouse, the designs that led to the creation of MicroSoft Windows, the iPod, Google etc.

Many thanks to Marek Pawlowski, organizer of the MEX, Mobile User Experience conference, for the opportunity to publish my response to the annual MEX Manifesto on the MEX blog.

“In this article responding to point #5 of the MEX Manifesto (’The developing world is the new frontier for mobile user experience‘), Stephanie Rieger of user experience consultancy Yiibu paints a detailed picture of customer lifestyles in South East Asia. Stephanie’s writing interweaves links to a community photo essay from Flickr with her own commentary on the individuals she has met in this region and her observations on the mobile user experience implications.”(more)

I will also be attending the conference on 27-28, May 2008 and co-authoring the annual MEX Report which outlines conference proceedings and the overall response to the Mex Manifesto.

Really looking forward to attending the event!

Via Experentia:

According to a recent Nokia survey of consumers in emerging markets [conducted in India, China, Brazil, Pakistan, Vietnam, Russia and Egypt], a new trend appears to be emerging: phone sharing. More than 50% of respondents in India, Pakistan and nearly 30% in Vietnam indicate that they share, or would share, their mobile phone with family or friends - a figure which contrasts consumer behaviour in more mature markets.

“Phone sharing is a logical trend - more and more families are purchasing a mobile phone for the entire family to use, not just the head of the household. In addition, digital cameras are quickly becoming more popular in these markets, and as such taking and sharing digital images is becoming more common,” adds Lambeek. “In response, Nokia has developed a number of innovative features like the multiple phonebook to support phone sharing, and we have added technologies like Bluetooth to some models to make transferring images and ringtones easy and affordable.”

Interestingly, this is not only occuring in emerging markets (although i’m sure that emerging market lead the way in this behaviour as it just plain makes sense for consumers with lower incomes.)

A recent large French study (French PDF) found that families in varying income brackets tend to share devices:

1. The mobile phone is no longer just a personal device. In 2007, the phone is integrated within collective practices both in the family and between friends.

Mobile phone are increasingly objects that circulate within a group. The owner of the mobile phone is no longer the only one to touch it, check it and use it.

Mobile phones can allow for exchanges based on the amount of credit left before the end of the month and on the range of hourly allowances when calls are free. This can also lead to a collective choice of operators, of discount plans and of prepaid cards, with the sole aim of optimising cost within the group.

Within the family, mobile phone reinforce the asymmetric role and character of the parent-child relationship: whereas parents do not think about money when calling their children, the children themselves try to save money by “beeping” their parents, in order to be called back.

The mobile of the child is a jointly managed tool and a transaction device. It is experienced by the parents - and mainly by the mothers - as an opportunity for exchange with their child and as a way for children to learn to manage a financial budget.

Within a group of friends, mobile phones serve to define roles and affinities. One can find the expert, and the user with difficulties, the “banker” who always has some credit, and the “borrower” who always asks for text messages and minutes (without ever giving them).

Beyond these roles, the mobile phone created relations of exclusivity with those whom one calls most often based on the tariff offers and their compatibility.

More on this study–again on Experentia.

(Preface…not much blogging lately as i’ve been struggling with my spam issue for several months. At least i’m not alone with this particular problem but having to wade through instructions to harden Wordpress and worry about the nasty emails i’ve received from Google are making me reconsider the amount of energy required to host a blog on my server vs a hosted provider. Spam is gone…for now…will see how things continue to develop before I make any drastic decisions…)

Been learning about virtual worlds and economies lately and thought i’d share some of the interesting links i’ve dug up:

• A presentation from the Future Play conference in Toronto. Dr. Constance Steinkuehler, assistant professor in the Educational Communication & Technology program for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argues that MMOs and online worlds are good “push technologies” for education, rather than threats to it. A really nice talk (mp3), very down to earth and informative.
• Presentations from last year’s State of Play conference in Singapore. All talks are worth listening to but highlights for me included the talk on regulating virtual worlds, kids, education and virtual worlds and some great crosscultural insights in the connecting east and west panel. (loads very slowly at first…)
• Play Money by Julian Dibbell. Absolutely brilliant, fun, informative, somewhat of a compulsive read actually…a great introduction to the life of a gold farmer.
• Edward Castronova’s fascinating economic explorations of the MMOG phenomenon in Synthetic Worlds: The business and culture of online games
• Selected talks from Virtual Goods 2007. An overview of the conference plus commentary on the subject is available here from Om Malik along with a list of top ten MMOGs by active user or subscriber. (Update: The conference site seems to have gone down over the past few days but the talks are still available via Brightcove: Conference intro/Habbo/Nexon/Neopets, The value of digital goods, Making virtual economies work, Virtual items, mainstream or not/moderated by Robert Scoble, Business models. Well worth a listen. Not sure how long they will be online.)
• Brief article from the NY Times (free login required) about the rapid growth in virtual worlds for children.
• Some of the most creative Flash-based stuff i’ve seen in years is coming out of France including large games like Dofus, or smaller ones like Piou Pioux (chicks) and DinoParc. Bryan has also recently take a liking to Nexon’s games–in particular KartRider!

Very grumpy today.

Seems my blog’s been hacked and i’m now dispensing links to pharmaceuticals. Had beter things to do this week than try to sort this out.

Hope to be back soon with comments on the Future of Mobile and Mobile Youth Workout.