Mobile Entertainment

The iPhone may not be the perfect device, but in one area it undoubtedly trumps everything that has come before it: user experience. Apple’s big gamble has thrown into sharp relief the shortcomings of most other devices. ME joined an industry thinktank into UE, and here are the highlights...

Marek Pawlowski, PMN: User experience is suddenly at the fore of mobile thinking. Why is that?

Mike Short, 02: Three reasons. First, the mobile industry is now global, but we mustn’t forget local requirements. Second, many countries are heavily penetrated, so the only route to growth is through increased usage. Thirdly, people are using mobile devices in a broader range of contexts.

Steve Ives, Taptu: UE has become magnified because the complexity of services has escalated. The ‘soft key’ templates for calling and texting are no longer up to the job.

John West, Nuance: The key thing is making sure people can find content and services from the handset. In the PC world, apps like Google Desktop Search can find almost anything from one box. That’s the way mobile will have to go.

Marek Pawlowski: Mobile is becoming more integrated in people’s lives. That throws up a whole new list of UE requirements. This is as much about social as technological change. Even aeroplanes are no longer a refuge from the ringtone.

Steve Ives: Exactly. And it’s not just talking and texting – younger people especially seem to have no problem with playing their favourite music with their phones on loudspeaker at the back of the bus!

Norman Lewis, Wireless Grids: You have to look at other industries to see how good, standardised UE can benefit everyone. No matter where you are in the world, if you get in a car the basic controls will be in the same place. We need to have that mindset in mobile.

Steve Ives: But don’t standards stifle innovation? The iPhone UE truly breaks the mould, but it’s something Apple conjured by itself.

Marek Pawlowski: The car example is interesting because aside from safety requirements I expect all the other design conventions were set in place by the industry itself rather than through some kind of mandate.

Thomas Kleist, Native: That’s right. But in the car industry the trend is for technological innovation to be linked to the manufacturer’s brand. Sometimes this leads to a great UE, sometimes it’s abysmal.

Marek Pawlowski: If you ask people about mobile products with great UE the iPhone and BlackBerry come up a lot. These are companies that have built infrastructure by themselves. Last year Motorola lost about $6.40 for every handset it sold – that’s a negative margin of 5.4 per cent. Apple is making a 50 per cent margin on each device.

Steve Ives: It sounds like we’re talking about a feature war. If you listen to the designer Philippe Starck he talks about products that are 90 per cent crap. He argues that products should be de-featured.

Joia Shillingford, Freelance: I wouldn’t say operators and handset manufacturers need to pack more features into their products, but they absolutely need to find something new that will make people buy. That could even be a single-feature phone.

Norman Lewis: I’d argue the iPhone is closer to the Starck way of thinking. It’s not feature rich. In fact it’s the only device I’ve ever owned on which I use every app. I had an N95 before it and used about three per cent of what it offered.

John West: We also have to look at the correlation between features and price. Going back to the car analogy, what makes someone pay £50,000 for a BMW over an £8,000 KIA? It’s a complex marriage between brand equity, personal style and functionality. But that relationship is turned on its head in emerging markets where people need affordable phones with web access as there’s no fixed line internet.

Marek Pawlowski: What about search? Is it a distinct app, or could it be a whole new way to interface with the device like Google Desktop? Do we need to move away from the traditional 3x3 icon grid?

Norman Lewis: I think the term ‘search’ is too narrow for what’s possible today. Mobile has a great opportunity to become the unifying device to keep users in contact with things that are important – both people and content. We’re working on a technology like Google Desktop for an entire personal ‘infrastructure’.

Mike Short: But if that’s not search what is it? Maybe we’re going to need a few more verbs…

Steve Ives: Mobile is super-social device but that’s something regular desktop search isn’t good at – it’s very hard for example to find social networking results in a Google search as that kind of stuff is hidden in the ‘deep’ web. Desktop search is also bad at sharing results. Mobile search doesn’t end when the user has found something, it must address what they do with that information.

Stuart O’Brien: This touches on a huge UE issue that’s consuming developers at the moment. It’s about transcoding and whether mobile users should be surfing the full web or an optimised version of it through dotmobi sites and the like. iPhone is based around the former, but even Apple has evangelists asking big media companies to tailor sites specifically for their device…

Mike Short: I personally think this pattern will evolve to reflect the number of full web browsing devices in the market. But I also believe we’re going to see more and more devices tailored to specific experiences, whether that’s web browsing or watching video.

John West: In that respect I think we’ll have a similar situation with the evolution of the mobile internet as we have with digital TV – soon analogue signals will be switched off and digital TV will be the only option left. In a few years from now even basic handsets may pre-load full web browsers, so that will just become the norm.

Mike Short: One thing we should do more of as an industry is think about what impact newcomers to mobile with fresh thoughts could have on UE. For example, TATA in India is both a mobile company and the new owner of Jaguar and Land Rover – what could it bring to the party? Or Unilever – what’s its impact going to be as the mobile ad sector grows?

Participants

Marek Pawlowski, Editorial Director, PMN & founder of the MEX conference
Steve Ives, CEO, Taptu
Dr. Norman Lewis, Chief Strategy Officer, Wireless Grids Corporation
Mike Short, Vice President, R&D, O2 & Chairman, Mobile Data Association
John West, Director, Business Development, Nuance
Thomas Kleist, Director of Interaction Experience Design, Native
Ewan MacLeod, Editor, SMSTextNews.com
Stuart O'Brien, Editor, Mobile Entertainment Magazine
Joia Shillingford, Freelance (The Independent, Financial Times and The Sun)