Day 3 of Man Machine Interface for Mobile
By Terry
Simpson, reporting from Rome
Day 3 Report: Marek Pawlowski of PMN Publications gave the
first presentation with an overview of todays devices and suggestions
for the future. He quoted Kevin Werbach of TheFeature "Wireless internet
devices will be neither desktop computers scaled down nor mobile telephones
scaled up; they will be people scaled out". He emphasised that testing
in context was vital but need not be expensive. As an example, he
said that the 3D form of the Palm was a result of a designer spending
weeks carrying a wooden mockup in his shirt pocket and pretending
to use it occasionally.
Philios Andreou presented a marketing analysis discussing the many
questions and dimensions to be addressed by businesses in the arena
of mobile technology. In a response a question from the floor, he
said that the walled garden approach to services was bad if it meant
that customers could not leave the garden. Businesses should be seeking
to make it worthwhile for customers to stay rather than raising barriers
to prevent them leaving.
Paul Hoffman of Sendo generated a lot of discussion about the launch
of their new phone which has customisation as a basic concept. As
long as the GSM stack is preserved intact, he said that there was
potential to customise and add anything. The phone will be launched
soon under another brand name and may be seen with a variety of fun
and animated graphics supporting menus.
Eija Kaasinen of VTT presented a detailed discussion of usability.
and showed a technique such as usability logging which records issues
rejected and the reasons so that if circumstances change, the log
can be reviewed. She also made a point that it was much better to
do many small tests than one big one.
Knut Nordby of ETSI turned the definition of special needs on its
head. He said that it was the people who wanted games, WAP, contact
managers, etc on the phone that should be thought of as special. People
with limited eyesight and limited dexterity that wanted basic phone
functions to be easy to use should be considered as normal. He said
that not only was it important for products to support an increasing
range of users with limitations, but legislation is already in place
requiring it in the US. European legislation is either in place already
(e.g. Human Rights) or may soon follow.
Steve Hughes of PSD Associates reviewed digital branding. He said
that it wasn't appropriate to simply put digital products in the form
occupied by their analogue predecessors. There were many exciting
and interesting opportunities for creating successful products provided
by digital technology. He illustrated his talk with many examples
including a contrast of early digital music players (which looked
like cassette players) with modern ones (which took on a variety of
shapes).
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