what’s wrong with this picture?

Tags: Design,  Devices
April 7, 2008 by Steven

The wife and I had some friends over for dinner last night. He’s a former researcher and now is an interaction designer, all for a mobile telecom, and she works in the IT department of a large local city.
City-issed Moto Q, with some scotch tape visible?

That’s her phone, a city-issued Moto Q. I’ve never played with one, but others have told me its a perfectly useful smartphone. This one is used heavily enough its got the extended battery. And… a sheet of paper, folded many times and taped to the back of the phone:
Moto Q with a call list taped to the back.

She’s on call, for system failures, disasters, other task-force qualifying emergencies. The paper is the list of on-call contacts from every other department. Apparently, this is approximately what everyone else in the municipal government does as well.

It strikes me that there’s something terribly wrong with smartphone data entry, synch or… something when whole teams of perfectly smart people with access to all the enterprise servers and security systems have to resort to significantly inconvenient paper.

Its possible, sure, that the device has restrictions placed on it. But this was not mentioned, and I know almost no one who uses their device for document reading. The call list is distributed as a PDF, and even my phone has an Acrobat reader, so why not?

I feel, despite discussions of mobiles displacing laptops, that there’s something missing. I don’t have data, so its purely anecdotal, but something in mindset seems to be preventing serious use of mobiles, at least in the US.

I see lots of calling, quite a bit of texting, some photography with some MMS, and… a little bit of other stuff, but nothing worth mentioning. A lot of what I notice is not people from my age group, but the college kids on the bus, and they have phones for calling and texting (sometimes a second device for text and email, Blackberry or WinMobile) and a music player (always iPod of some sort) that is totally separate, regardless of the capability of either of their phones. More often than not, there is a laptop, but they are usually left in the bag. Books and paper may be used.

I wonder if this is a matter of some improvement in smartphones, waiting for the next (even more mobile-centric) generation, or whether there is indeed a need for a gap device like the UMPC. Either way, it should be fun to work on.


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4 Comments »

  1. There’s this new thing called an iPhone…

    Seriously, though, one of the reasons I haven’t given up my Kyocera 7135 is because I hate the little keyboard. Interface matters. Interoperability matters. Support matters.

    If I was satisfied with Apple products (and not a sandal-wearing open source hippie), I’d have an iPhone to cleverly and cleanly do all of the tasks cited above. I’ve played with them, the interface is quite nice.

    I’d say the above problem with the Q, though, is twofold:
    1) The interface on the Q isn’t conducive to learning new tasks. Nothing is easy.
    2) There’s no IT support for the phone list. If Updates happen often enough to warrant taping a piece of paper on the back of the phone every so often, there should be method that allows IT to update the phone contacts list (without destroying personal contacts lists) transparently to the user.

    As a business tool, a smartphone isn’t just the device in your hand, but where that device integrates within the business toolset your company works with.

    Comment by Jason Sullivan — April 7, 2008 @ 11:20 am

  2. Really? iPhone? I admit I am almost automatically cynical about any ‘iPhone will save us all’ comments, but specifically as regards this:

    1) Its closed. So, no 3P software, at least yet. It’ll be interesting to see how this changes in a few months. Similarly, no bluetooth synch, and a slow network means its generally not terrifically easy to get stuff on and off the device. I played with one also for a while, and it didn’t change my phone habits. I was significantly less inclined to get photos off, for example, than I am with my current device.

    2) Anecdotally, the iPhone users I know do not have anything aftermarket loaded yet, or even any content that is not apple provided. Some music, sure, but even then there are too many folks with a separate iPod for music. The iPhone is a snazzy phone, with some internet.

    3) Numbers on that. Looking at the Rubicon report linked above, the only item that really involves interacting with non-entertainment, local data, “Read e-books,” is only done at about a 10% rate in the sample set. So while laptop displacement is mentioned by many users in the same report, I guess its displacing laptop web browsing, email and similar internet-based activities. Lots of computer tasks still involve resident data, and that has not shifted to the mobile, and doesn’t seem about to.

    But that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

    Comment by steven — April 9, 2008 @ 8:57 am

  3. I’m not that mystified by this - I think you are maybe reading too much into the example. I won’t disagree that people often keep multiple devices that “in theory” could be replaced by a single all-in-one (iPhone or whatever). But I think in this case you need to look more closely at the interchange between the paper and the phone and at the kind of data that is contained on each, the purpose it serves and the format in which it is found.

    You said that the document is distributed in PDF format. That means that there will be no easy way to import those names and numbers into the phone. No-one will bother to type them in one by one, and even if the PDF also exists in soft copy on the phone itself, there are likely to be difficulties in getting a phone number from the list actually punched into the phone to make that call. Cut and paste is not great with PDF files and screen switching between the PDF doc and the phone dialling screen is likely to be a pain.

    A second point to consider is the nature of the material on that list (i.e. who’s on call). This no doubt means that there is additional metadata beyond name and phone number that is contained in the PDF - it probably includes some sort of schedule that identifies who’s on call at what times, for example. This is data that is not easily put into the addressbook on a mobile device. In fact it’s even possible that ALL the phone numbers on the list already actually DO exist in your friend’s mobile’s addressbook - but they simply lack the crucial data about who to call when, hence the need for the paper. And given that this type of data changes frequently, I would suggest that printing out the PDF and keeping it with you makes perfect sense.

    So I think you’re right that sometimes people’s adoption of technology seems counterintuitive, but to get any insights into why this is the case you need to look at the tasks people are trying to achieve and the limitations and advantages of the tools they have in place.

    Comment by Ian — April 11, 2008 @ 10:46 am

  4. As is usual for my posting, I can never get to the real point without some comments, discussion around the office, and pondering. But now I may be there.

    Why doesn’t all this data work well together?

    Might as well stick to the example, instead of making generalizations. The PDF is not a photo; its filled with actual text and numbers. It could perfectly easily be made readable, and be parsed into likely formats. “This looks like a call list, should I read it as such?” If the processing is too heavy, make a website you load the file to that exports in mobile-friendly format (business opportunity, anyone?). Web browsers are already halfway there, and understand that phone-number-looking things should be made dialable.

    Also, I have to say that I see lots of dumb, frustrating interfaces, mobile and otherwise. This one I posted for one specific reason. Okay, two: the photo was good. But mostly: because she’s in the IT group. If anyone could bend themselves to the will of the device, and format data correctly, set up a tiny service to serve up a web page with the on-call list (or your favorite solution) its this team.

    What chance to everyday consumers have if these guys have to literally Scotch?? tape the data together?

    Comment by steven — April 11, 2008 @ 12:27 pm

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