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."

Cellphones as "enablers"

[HishamMuhammad]

Interesting to see the big players noticing the possibilities in the lower end [wikipedia.org] 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".

Re:Stale Contacts

[nbert]

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...

Re:Old Hat?

[ztransform]

When I visited Tokyo in March I was amazed just how much more advanced the basic mobile phones are in Japan compared to the top level phones available in Western societies.

Almost all Japanese mobiles have large screens, built in dictionaries for translating between English and Japanese, and have cameras that can 1) read in universal square barcodes that represent web addresses and 2) can read text from a distance.

I wonder if the study also takes into account the different ways societies as a whole use their phone - from the tightly networked gang cultures, to the highly individualistic.

"Anthropologist"

[vision4bg]

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...

The US could learn a few things from Uganda. :)

[Shag]

I've been to Uganda (and Kenya) a few times, and there are some things I'd like to see in the US.

1. Basically all phones are sold unlocked, from the cheapest to the most full-featured.
2. A SIM card, usually with an hour's service on it, costs about $1. (Pertinent to the article, I have friends who have 1 phone and multiple SIMs - one for work, one for personal use)
3. Reasonably priced prepaid service is widely available.
4. Incoming calls don't cost money.
5. International texts are at most twice the cost of domestic ones.

In Uganda - and a lot of other developing countries - people are a lot more likely to have mobiles than landlines anyway. If you've got electricity, and cell coverage, that mobile is pretty handy, since the telco will want an arm and a leg to actually run wires out to your place.