{"id":1072,"date":"2008-09-02T14:30:37","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T12:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2008-09-02T14:30:37","modified_gmt":"2008-09-02T12:30:37","slug":"design-related-endnotes-for-momo-ams-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2008\/09\/02\/design-related-endnotes-for-momo-ams-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Design-related endnotes for MoMo AMS #7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I attended my first Mobile Monday<\/a> in Amsterdam. The theme was \u201cvalue\u201d and in my mind, I had already equated the term with \u201cuser experience\u201d. This was a mistake. Contrary to my expectations, the event was well outside of my comfort zone. Discussions were dominated by business and technology perspectives. I found the experience frustrating at times, but I guess this is good. Frustration often leads to new insights. Therefore, although this may not sound as a recommendation, I would say MoMo<\/acronym> is an event worth visiting for any designer interested in mobility. It will remind you that in this industry, many ideas you take for granted are far from accepted.<\/p>\n

I thought I\u2019d share some thoughts concerning the salient points of the evening.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Context<\/h4>\n

Context<\/em> was often equated with location.<\/em> To me, these two are far from the same. Location is, at best, a component of context, which also involves what people are doing, who else is there, what objects are present, etc. But, more importantly: Context arises from interactions, it is relational and therefore cannot be objectified. Coincidentally, Adam Greenfield has posted some valuable insights on this topic<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As an example, consider a person present in the White House, in the possession of a firearm, in clear sight of the president. The meaning<\/em> of this situation (i.e. the context<\/em>) depends completely on who this person is and what his motivations are. He might be working<\/strong> (bodyguarding the president), he might be at war<\/strong> (making an attempt at the president\u2019s life) or he might be playing around<\/strong> (the gun isn\u2019t real, he’s the president’s son). <\/p>\n

Anyway — I subscribe to the view that we should not attempt to guess context, the above example has hopefully shown that this is an impossible task. (At least, as long as we cannot reliably read the minds of people.) In stead, we should ‘limit’ ourselves to giving places, things, etc. a voice<\/em> in the conversation (making them self-describing, and accountable) and having context arise those voices, as determined by the people involved. <\/p>\n

Open source<\/h4>\n

Ajit Jaokar<\/a> posited that open source mobile software (such as Android<\/a>) will lead to new device manufacturers entering the arena. The analogy was made to the PC industry with the emergence of white-label boxes. I wonder though, for this to truly happen, shouldn’t the hardware be open-sourced too, not (just) the software?<\/p>\n

In any case, I think having more handset manufacturers is wonderful. Not in the least for the fact that it will open the door for a more diverse offering, one potentially tailored to regions so far under-served by device manufacturers. Which brings me to my next point.<\/p>\n

Local, global, diversity, relevance\u2026<\/h4>\n

Several speakers alluded to the fact that mobile is a global market, and that businesses shouldn\u2019t be shy about launching world-wide. I see several issues with this. First of all, without wanting to sound too anti-globalistic, do we really want to continue on making stuff that is the same no matter where you go? I find diversity a vital stimulus in my life and would hate to see software experiences become more and more the same the world over.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s in stead consider the following: A service that might make perfect sense in one locale very likely does not offer any distinctive value in another. I think the example of the now defunct Skoeps<\/a>1<\/a><\/sup>, which was discussed at the event, illustrates this perfectly. It did not work in the Dutch market, but offers real value in \u2018developing\u2019 countries, where the amount of video crews on the ground is limited and images captured by locals using mobile phones are therefore a welcome addition to the ‘official’ coverage.<\/p>\n

Context redux<\/h4>\n

Which brings me back to the question of context, but in this case, the role it plays not as a component of a service, but in the design and development process itself. I was sad to see the most important point of Rachel Hinman<\/a>\u2019s video message go unnoticed (at least, judging from the fact that it was not discussed at all). She said that starting point for any new service should be to go out \u201cinto the wild\u201d and observe what people are doing, what they want, what they need, what they enjoy and so on.2<\/a><\/sup> From this real and deep understanding of people\u2019s contexts, you can start making meaningful choices that will help you create something that offers true value.<\/p>\n

It was this notion of starting from people’s context that I found most lacking at MoMo<\/acronym> AMS<\/abbr>. Besides Hinman, I was surprised to find only Yme Bosma<\/a> of Hyves<\/a>3<\/a><\/sup> alluding to it. Who’d have thought?<\/p>

  1. Skoeps — pronounced “scoops” — was a social video site focused on citizen journalism. It went out of business because not enough “users” were “generating content”. Ugh. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Not surprisingly, Hinman works at Adaptive Path<\/a>. Athough I very much agree with her presentation’s premise, I felt her example was a bit disingenuous. I find it hard to believe Apple designed iTunes to fit the mixtape usage scenario. This, I think, is more of a happy coincidence than anything else. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Hyves is the biggest social networking site of the Netherlands. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yesterday I attended my first Mobile Monday in Amsterdam. The theme was \u201cvalue\u201d and in my mind, I had already equated the term with \u201cuser experience\u201d. This was a mistake. Contrary to my expectations, the event was well outside of my comfort zone. Discussions were dominated by business and technology perspectives. I found the experience … Continue reading Design-related endnotes for MoMo AMS #7<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[625],"tags":[10,663,665,668,15,666,11,145,33,662,127,667,664],"class_list":["post-1072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-ixd","tag-mobile-monday-amsterdam","tag-context","tag-diversity","tag-events","tag-global","tag-interaction-design","tag-location","tag-mobile","tag-momoams","tag-open-source","tag-regional","tag-value"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1086,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions\/1086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}