mTrends - mobile media lifestyle trends - m-trends.org

My first thought to start this years’ 3GSM wrapup was to check what I wrote last year: “It took me a couple of days to be able to digest the whole event with it’s many cocktails and parties surrounding. The best part for me were the many wonderfull people I met behind the companies, projects and blogs.” I couldn’t find any better paragraph to resume’s this year event. Check the image (left) I took from the same spot as last year and notice that the telecom world is still a Man’s Man’s Man’s World. I invite you to find the women on the image… This incited me to continue my “Women in Mobile” interviews

Does this mean it was boring? Not really…too many interesting people around to talk to and change opinion with… No big news coming from the exhibition either: no real differences with last years’ show apart from more people, 60.000 (!) and an extra Mobile Content pavillon, but one could tell from small things that changes are (finally?) to come. Let’s have a closer look at all things mobile.

DEVICES
On the handset side, no real innovations as last years’ Nokia Nseries, but a lot of improvements by many manufacturers and cool handsets I got the chance to play with.

Nokia N95 and the new Nokia Communicator E90 lanched at 3GSM, N95 is a real cool phone, I’m looking forward to the mobile apps that are going to play with the GPS functionality, the E90 Communicator is a really cool phone with many apps but honestly a bit too heavy for me. The LG Shine phone (check also the LG Prada phone) was surprisingly solid and extremely good in usability design, and the touchscreen… a big improvement with the Chocolate. I played around with the MOTORIZR Z8, it’s the first time since longtime I got a good feeling about a Motorola I would like to mention also the coming Samsung’s F700 Ultra Smart Phone, with touchscreen, slide-out qwerty keyboard and 5-megapixel camera(!) My favorite design phone goes to Sony-Ericcson with the W880i Walkman Phone (metallic edition), real cool as you can see on the picture here, cool design and easy usability.

Note that Blackberry is still very popular amongst business people in the telecom industry, not one conversation without having someone look at his BB or do something urgent with it. What about the real BB, guys?

You can view my 3GSM Flickr Photoset here.

On May 29-30 you can join me in Girona for a LAB on MEDIA and Human Experience, organised by the Club of Amsterdam. I will join this “immersed experience of a Do-Tank” together with Laurence Desarzens, urban communicator at beatmap.com, Paul F.M.J. Verschure, ICREA research professor at the Technology Department of the University Pompeu Fabra and Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Director, Yahoo! Research and moderated by Humberto Schwab, Director, Club of Amsterdam, Innovation Philosopher.

We have an urgent need to construct via dialogue a coherent frame of meaning. Consumers need to get a grip on the driving forces that media exercise on them. Business wants to anticipate the impact of technological driving forces on media innovations and media producers want to anticipate this as quickly as possible. Above all there is an explosion of new and hybrid media and of new users-media relations. It is important to exchange meta-knowledge of experts from different fields, to draw some sketches of the real character of this phenomenon.

The underlying question is:

“What is the meaning of media innovation on the quality of the human experience?” If we talk about human experience we mean the inner- and outer experience. So cognitive technology knowledge, related fields of neuroscience and anthropology are essential in these matters.

We start from the knowledge we have about brain and computer games, television and our psychological state, Internet and communications, identity and images. We use the experience we have with the relation between media and mobility, learning, politics, power etc.

Given the ubiquity of media, the change to read and write media, the nano-technology revolution and the open source movement: we have to determine the burning questions. With different brainstorm tools we will innovate al these concepts so we can integrate these new hybrids and innovations in strong human oriented meanings and human values.

All related info to participate to this LAB can be found here at the website of Club of Amsterdam. Check also their bi-weekly insightful journals and past events, really interesting stuff!

I’m looking forward to this do-tank, double-thinking my daughter surfing YouTube on her PSP, a conf call with Katrin Verclas from N-TEN last week on mobile appliance in Africa, the evolution of GSM, UMTS, WLAN, Bluetooth, and WiMAX, from web 2.0 to mobile 2.0, sensuous gear, Negroponte’s $100 laptop for the world’s children education, the kinetic elite, Babel from Alejandro González Iñárritu, global warming, sustainability, the Mobile Web in the Developing World, lift, aspiration tech, while listening to the ‘The Awakening‘ of Ursula Rucker (check the lyrics!) on 4 Hero’s -btw- excellent new ‘Play With The Changes‘ album.

I have been writing and reporting for quite some time now on the convergence of networks, the introduction of hybrid devices and media becoming accessible on mobile devices, lately all connecting easily to the web. With game devices such as the PSP accessing the Internet over wifi and the introduction of the iPhone, we now embrace the era of ubiquitous mobility and nomadic computing. This will have a far-reaching impact on the way we access products/services, and the way we communicate with humans and machines. It will change our mobile lifestyle and the way we consume media and advertising.

m-trends.org started as a personal opinion blog on mobile media lifestyle trends and continues doing this with a framed focus, critical opinions and analytical thinking going beyond the hype. To create a broader view and opinion, I invited Yasmine Abbas and Martin Sauter, two personalities I highly respect for their opinion and work, to join me and write regularly at m-trends.org on subjects that are in the air, things we have in common or like to discuss and write about, to start conversations on topics, each from his own perspective and experience.

Yasmine Abbas, is a French DPLG architect, holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS 2001) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Doctor of Design (DDes 2006) from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. At Harvard she focused on how neo-nomads, digitally geared people on the move, reclaim a sense of belonging to places in the age of multiple mobilities and digital technologies. She does that too: research and problem solving to design environments, products and services that work for people and drive business results! Yasmine will bring her design/cultural/social context and sensibility to m-trends.org. I interviewed her earlier this year in the Women in Mobile series. Do checkout Yasmine’s personal blog neo-nomad.

Martin Sauter has a special twist on Web 2.0. His professional focus is on mobile network technology and services and he consults mobile network operators for Nortel, one of the major network infrastructure vendors for 2G and 3G networks. His quality time activities include his mobile network blog and book writing. His latest book, “Communication Systems for the Mobile Information Society“, discusses the how’s and why’s of GSM, GPRS, UMTS, Wifi, WiMAX and Bluetooth. On the academic side, Martin holds a Dipl. Ing. (FH) degree from the University of Applied Sciences in Ravensburg, Germany and when not busy travelling enjoys lecturing and discussing today’s and tomorrows mobile networks. This is also the area that Martin is going to cover at m-trends.org. Check Martin’s Mobile Technology Page, his personal blog about his thoughts on the evolution of GSM, UMTS, WLAN, Bluetooth, and WiMAX.

A French girl living in the Boston, US, a German living in Paris, France and a Belgian living in Barcelona, Spain, this looks like other kinds of hybrids: different opinions on various topics in a ubiquitous mobility era with views from different angles, written from different locations, by people who are always on the move… This will definately create more value to m-trends.org; if there are any subjects you would like to have covered here, please suggest or contact me by email.

Expect some diverse and interesting subjects covered soon here, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do, initiating this kind of projects together.

(*) sub-title: “Connected Holidays (with the N91)”

Back from a 2-week holiday… time flies… just realizing it’s the end of the week… and I haven’t blogged yet (!) … while there are so many interesting things happening to write about…

Before I left with my family and some friends to enjoy The Emporada Triangle I managed to buy the Nokia N91, the phone David Williams from Nokia demonstrated to me in November last year in London and which has been described in the blogosphere as the iPod killer.

Regulars of m-trends know about my passion for music-on-the-move and I had the pleasure to experience the Apple iPod 40Gb for over a year until it crashed unluckily and unreparable, too bad for such a solid music device. I decided to wait for the first real music-phone, it came later then expected but it has been worth the wait.

Apart from some adress book sync problems I managed to counter quickly thanks to Justin’s post and some Mac hacks here, my whole experience with the N91 has been just brilliant!

The first thing that impressed me was the quality of the sound watching a Real Player video… impressive. I added some 500 of my favourite tunes to the 4Gb harddrive, synchronised from my iTunes library and created new playlists on the fly while I connected the device to a hi-fi stereo… this is the first phone I know of with whom you can create instant parties everywhere, anytime I have been writing before on my doubts how to scroll big music libraries without a scroll wheel (as the ipod) but this doubt vanished completely after the first use.

The rest of the HD space I used mainly to download some podcasts with the Nokia Podcasting Application, I also installed Shozu (probably one of the best mobile apps around!) to upload some holiday pics with a click to Flickr.

Our host had a wi-fi connection in the house so I could browse the mobile web the first time for free (!) The latest Nokia Web Browser for S60 is probably the best I have experienced on a phone, with it’s zooming capabilities you can ‘browse’ a webpage the way you want it. The same browser lets you subscribe and store your favourite feeds; I can tell you I haven’t missed a thing on the news side though I had planned to disconnect completely for at least a couple of days

I could perfectly browse my MyStrands Mobile account, I had some problems though listening to the Real Player audio previews due to some tough operator proxy settings. I read Justin Oberman selected my Connecting Cultures through Music article as Post of the Week of his Carnival of the Mobilists #41 hosting. I’ll accept the invitation for the brownies, Paula! I also installed the Free Mobilists’ Mobile RSS Reader package so I stayed tuned on my mobilists friends’ feeds, nicely bundled.

I wouldn’t type loads of email with that phone - there are other models for that, like the BlackBerry killer, but I could easily configure my regular email account and check my mails once in a while. I read Caroline launched the Wireless Industry Partnership and she informed me the 2nd CTIA Gathering of the Mobilists was fully booked for the 2nd time, great!

Well, this is basically a sum-up of the apps I used the most upto now, there’s still lots to discover - oh that SIP Client - and Visual Radio, no stations avilable yet in Catalonia… but too much to mention in one post, so I will have to update you on more experiences I guess…

So, what has this article to do with my title? Simply, it looks much more obvious that Nokia can add now easily more music features and storage to it’s phones than seeing Apple creating all those phone features to the iPod…

And oh btw: one of the features I appreciate the most is the ‘one touch button’ to switch from music listening to an incoming call and the ability to create a ringtone from any song in my library. You won’t get bored with this phone, Nokia is listening to it’s users… Mobile 2.0 is definately here… Driewerf hoera!

… Then he came home and did a Phone Software Update… better get used to it!

I wrote an article on Connecting cultures through music for edition #16 of the Vodafone Receiver magazine. The main topic was ‘A Night Out’, interesting challenge and braintwister to write. This issue is covered with some excellent articles by authors like Charlie Schick, Mark Curtis, Lee Humphreys, Tim Cole, Karenza Moore, Frank Lantz, and Antony Bruno (sorry Bruno could not find your link). Definately worth a read, check out the Receiver archives too!

“This receiver issue wants to spark off some ideas about social networking the mobile way: clubbing, seeing your favourite band, sharing memories of a night out or playfully exploring the city, getting to know and experiencing, even creating, music – can mobile add to all these? And how does it affect how we get our friends together for joint action? Does it trigger emergent behaviour? Or is it the ideal means to pull it all together? What do *you* think?”

There is room for discussion on the website, needless to say it would be great to get some of your comments, thoughts and ideas on the evolution of music culture from our mobile lifestyle perspective.

The Artwork for receiver #16 is done by Zaza+Crusher, illustrations by students from the University of Duisburg-Essen (Essen, Germany).

Analysis, Announcements, Art Culture, ethnographics, Mobile Lifestyle, mobile music, Predictions, receiver, vodafone, vodafone receiver

Listen to the podcast of ‘design ethnographer’ Kelly Goto of Gotomedia at Webvisions 2006.

“In this enlightening session, design ethnographer and web veteran Kelly Goto discusses the evolution of Web, handheld, and product interfaces and their cultural impact. Learn how companies are utilizing ethnographic-based research to conduct rapid, immersive studies of people and their lifestyles to inform the usefulness and viability of interfaces both online and offline.”

Kelly takes designing for ubiquitous computing one step further, she calls it Designing for Lifestyle.

“Interaction design is no longer limited to the web. The concept of user experience is being redefined as multiple delivery methods of social and business interaction merge into our lifestyles. As design migrates from the web to mobile devices we carry and interact with on a daily basis, our approach must also shift into cycles of design and research centered around the way people actually live.”

Podcast link - About Interface: Designing for Lifestyle. More podcasts of the event are available here.

Kelly Goto on the importance of context & iterative testing cycles:

“Traveling through a remote area in the south of Spain has caused me to rethink the importance of context in the mobile user experience. Without an active internet connection (only available through a much-used public hotel lobby) I have started to rely on my mobile as more than just a business tool or communication device - it is a lifeline. I have been able to recieve urgent SMS messages and email through my P910a and it has offered much comfort knowing I can reach my colleagues, friends and family at any time. Context is the missing piece of most testing and research methods, because during a normal usability test or a short interview, it is impossible to gain insight on the true emotional impact and lifestyle needs the mobile device has on it’s owner.”

Tags: Mobile Ethnography Mobile Usability Mobile User Testing

Last week I have been working on a project with Kelly Goto from gotomedia. Kelly has been at the forefront of web and online usability for 16 years. Kelly and I both share the same vision:

While the wireless market has largely been dependent on the experimentation of the youth culture (especially in Asia) and the early adopter, the next wave of mobile success is dependent on creating sustainable brands, products and services that offer real value in the migration process to mobile.

Mobile usability design and user experience research and testing will be an essential key in helping defining successful mobile business applications and services for companies. The next coming years, any serious business needs to be easy accessible globally through diverse mobile devices and different network technologies.

The success of mobile products lies in the fact they need to be simple to use, they need to work and they need to have a clearly identified added value for the end user. This looks simple ‘on screen’ to write down but mobile professionals know how difficult this is; just look how many mobile products & services fail due to not respecting one of the above reasons…

Until now the mobile usability design space has been merely used by mobile value chain players but the convergence of 3G/UMTS/WiFi networks in combination with the availability of hybrid phones will open a different kind of mobile market space to content providers. The arrival of MVNO’s introduces a new era in mobile. More initiatives are to be expected coming from existing and/or new internet services moving in the mobile market space.

The mobile industry gathered around theW3C’s Mobile Web Initiative is busy working to develop a set of technical best practices and associated materials in support of development of Web sites that provide an appropriate user experience on mobile devices and that is needed.

In order to start a new dialog around web usability and discussions towards mobile, Kelly has launched the gotomobile blog, that will focus on mobile usability, mobile user experience (mUXP) and convergence.

In a recent article on mUXP - mobile user experience, she writes:

“Wireless companies and developers are typically put in the position of either chasing developing trends or taking the costly risk of launching new products and services that may never catch on. How can mobile designers, developers and content providers create effective mobile user experiences with the speed and accuracy required to succeed in the market?”"The answer lies in adopting mUXP, a user-centered approach to mobile authoring that focuses as much on the needs of specific consumer lifestyles as on technical considerations. The purpose of this blog is to provide an overview of both the cultural and technological trends shaping the wireless market from a usability and user centered point-of-view, and to outline best practices for incorporating these factors into the development and deployment of mobile products and services.”

I am encouraging this initiative - and will help guest-writing the blog, because we are talking for more then 5 years about the mobile internet but, personally, still I haven’s seen too many webs, applications or services correctly working on a mobile phone. A lot of work needs to be done still so I think more focused information and disseminating knowledge in this area is valuable for the mobile industry, no doubt about that. What about you?

TAGS: gotomobile gotomedia muxp mobile user experience mobile usability mobile usability design participitary design user-centered design interaction design ethnographics design research mobile web mobile internet contextual research mobile trends mobile life m-trends.org mtrends