Jan-Christoph Zoels
Mobile user experience trends
Do you have an appetite for "digital delicacies"?
Jan-Christoph Zoels, senior Associate professor at the Italian Interaction design Institute Ivrea, presented tantalising examples of how mobile technologies will change our world, and in many cases already have. He identified ten major trends:
- moving beyond speech
- changing literacy
- moving beyond text
- desiring personalisation
- changing the way we plan
- making location significant
- enabling collective actions
- supporting social solidarity
- adding control
- rethinking access
Teenagers will no doubt be major consumers of "digital delicacies" (trend n° 1: moving beyond speech). A "teleCatessen" lets you send a personalised SMS message to your beloved, while a link with the physical world arranges chocolate bonbons, inscribed with your original "sweet nothing", for pick-up. Abbreviated SMS texts (trend n° 2: changing literacy) sound like secret code to anyone over 22 years of age, but are becoming the lingua franca of teenagers.
Video karaoke goes many steps beyond mere ring tones to offer consumers the chance to be silly, but also communicate with their friends and loved ones. "We even got a patent for it," says Jan-Christoph.
Not all the applications are for entertainment, however. Mobile technology also helps improve time planning (trend n° 5: changing the way we plan). An application developed by Fluid Time Data Services, for example, helps people manage travel time, auctions, meetings or even the utilisation of appliances better. It can co-ordinate usage of a communal washing machine; the system sends an SMS to your mobile phone to tell you how much time is left on your spin cycle and when the machine is available.
The Vocera system is an intelligent communications assistant that enables fluid communications across teams or entire organisations. Using natural speech, users speak into a badge ("Beam me up, Scottie!") to page people, schedule meetings and much more. It is already in use in hospitals in the US and is being deployed by the US military in Iraq.
In the new un-tethered world, designing with users in mind has become even more important. Zoels ended his talk by presenting ten tools for user-centered design, such as studying "extreme" characters.
