What do people want in future mobile phones? Simplicity!
By Ben Robinson on Saturday, October 4th, 2008 at 12:27 PM PST In Ideas and rants, Research, The Digital Life
In the face of the multiple (and increasingly complex) Smartphone launches of late, comes the output from a conference on the future of the mobile phone – and the key requirement: simplicity!
The event was organised by mashup*, a membership-based organisation of executives, entrepreneurs and investors affected by and working within the commercial application of digital technology, products and services.
There was much discussion, and many points put forward and received – but it’s a fascinating conclusion, given where the mobile devices/services ecosystem has been going recently. Of course, simplicity may not necessarily mean the dumbing-down of the diverse range of apps, devices, and services – it may just mean that people want access to potentially complex offerings, but in an intuitive and clear way.
Anyhow, if you’d like to read more on the thoughts of the group, then pop over to the mashup* site, here.
[Via: mobilemarketingnews.co.uk]
> and the key requirement: simplicity!
Well, several attempts to provide ultra-simple phones have failed commercially. I’m a passionate believer of simplicity too, but the reality unfortunately seems not to be that simple.
See also:
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/simplicity_is_not_th.html
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/simplicity_is_highly.html
I think one of the problems is that SMS text messaging is becoming an increasingly popular communication method, perhaps even more so than using a cellphone to make calls. It stands to reason that a “simple” phone that is used to make calls will actually make it to more difficult to send a text, because a person will need to learn to tap words through a keypad or use some sort of predictive text input like T9. Unfortunately, for most causal users phones with full QWERTY keyboards are typically available through smartphones and pocket PC type phones, such as blackberry, palm, Windows Mobile, etc. Of course there are players like the Apple with their iPhone that make a relatively intuitive and “touch friendly” user interface, which can act as a “gateway” for casual users to access more advanced features such as mobile browsing, media player, mobile e-mail, etc., but there are always phone users that want simpler phones who do not need those advanced features and do not want to pay the extra data charges to have those features. I think the answer are more “baseline” model phones that have both a regular keypad and a slide out or fold-up QWERTY keyboard may be a step in the right direction. I think LG and Samsung are starting to put out such “non-smartphone” QWERTY models. The next step would be simplifying the user interface so that the main functions are easy to get to and not buried 3 or 4 levels deep.
It isn’t just simplicity in Phones that the vast majority of the people want, it’s simplicity in all consumer goods and electronics. That’s one of the reasons why the Nintendo DS, WII, the iPod and Philips Senseo are such great selling products. The only have basic functionality, but are good at what they do and simple (enough) to use and operate.
I think companies always have to walk a thin line between simplicity and functionality when creating a new device. A little too much or too little and they have a sub optimal device. Getting it just right must be really hard.