Slashdot Mirror
Nokia's Cellphone Anthropologist
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist have an interview with a Nokia researcher who uses anthropological methods to study how people use their phones. His work currently focuses on watching how people in emerging markets like Africa use their devices to inform designs. For example, after finding that in Uganda many people use one handset, they shipped a version with multiple separate address books. There's also a slideshow of Chipchase's research images."
Interesting to see the big players noticing the possibilities in the lower end markets. In the so-called third world we often get expensive products that were designed for rich markets that don't even fit our needs (eg, videogames with network support when the actual services are not offered in our country). Hopefully we'll see more companies designing different products for different economic realities, instead of just dumping 5-year old designs here once they get "cheap enough for the third world".
The filesystem is the package manager
Haven't seen any phone featuring this deliberately. I think it would be also kind of neat to have a plugin for xing or plaxo, which simply updates your contact's numbers whenever they change it, so you don't even have to think about this.
I'd also appreciate a provider field also fed by an online service. Over here people can take their mobile numbers with them when switching providers. Sometimes I'm calling someone with the same operator code in the assumption that I'm using the 1000 minutes I can talk for free calling people on the same mobile network. Of course I could ask whenever I'm calling, but it would be way more convenient to know before I dial...
I don't read replies by ACs.
Wow, this article just really rubs me the wrong way. Any professional ethnographer worth their salt would see a myriad of problems with this guy and his 'research'. I guess that what happens when you apply for a UI job and end up doing usability research. I am shocked that he finds basic things as multiple SIM card adapters as interesting as he does. These have been around for 10 years and are common in first world countries as well. That plus the bland "phones could be designed to work better" conclusion (taken verbatim from the article) makes it obvious how Nokia have lost their way since their highs of the early 2000s...