Thanks for the Add ... er I mean the Delete

Ever wonder what someone thinks when you add them as a friend on Facebook but you met them a long time ago. Or more to the point if you delete someone that you have not talked to in a long time? What's the protocol for that?

Apparently someone in Britain has come out with a list of etiquette rules for social networking. They are in response to a survey done by Orange Telecom showed that almost two thirds of social networkers are frustrated and confused by on-line etiquette.

News Story

In terms of User Experience (and software product design in general) social networking is one of the hottest topics around. On mobile applications like MySpace and Facebook are among the top applications on networks like AT&T. And with good reason, humans are fundamentally social and the most compelling applications on computers or on mobile phones are about communication. Indeed talking on your mobile to someone else may always be more popular than any software application that happens to run on there.

I think that it is also interesting to note this is not the first time that etiquette has suddenly become of interest to people using social- and communication-oriented technology. When eMail first started to become popular users loved the service, but became concerned about how long one could wait to respond to a message before the sender would become upset and not having received a response.

Here's some specific thoughts on the User Experience design aspects of etiquette and social networking:

• In time people work out the etiquette on their own. As social networking (and specifically social networking on mobile devices) matures the users of these services will understand on their own what is ok and what is not.
• I think it's interesting to think about letting users display their emotional state in social networking applications. On MySpace today people can say, in general, how their mood is. For example "I'm feeling happy today!" However this idea could be extended to allow users to show their emotional state in regards to specific events. For example, what if I could show that I was unhappy that I had bee Deleted as a friend by someone else on Facebook? That sort of thing could provide interesting feedback that helps people realize the need for etiquette.
• I think it's useful for a user of social networking to show if actions they have taken were from a mobile device. People may not be able to make the same sort or response that they would if they were sitting in front of a computer with a full keyboard and spell check, etc. You already see something like this today when you receive an email from someone and it was composed on a Blackberry or an iPhone. At the end of the message you may see a line in the signature that says "This message was composed on the Blackberry."
  

Do people want to do social networking with complete stangers?

A company called Screenvision (who provides pre-movie advertising to theaters) is planning to offer SMS based polling. The idea is that the audience can participate in polls while they are waiting for a movie to start. They text their answers to a phone number that is shown on the screen. The results of the polls are shown to the whole audience before the movie starts.

Full Story

This got me wondering about mobile social networking. Is participating in a poll using your cell phone but in a public place a form of social networking. Well most polls are anonymous, so I don't think they qualify as social networking.

But let's work with this concept for a minute. What if users could tag their votes either with their real identities, or with pseudo identities (like some people have on MySpace and Yahoo Answers)? That, in effect, would be using your mobile phone to participate in a group activity and pseudo identities would allow people to do things commonly associated with social networking. Like connecting as friends, sending private messages etc. AND! Since you would all be located in one place you can actually meet in real life if you so chose. Could be cool. :-) Will have to think about this on some more.

We should all be scared

I don't understand this exactly, but check out this video. Apparently you can pop pop corn using a few cell phones.

I use vibrate mode all the time on my cell phone and now I'm wondering, is it dangerous in some way?

Don't forget your phone!

IDC just conducted a survey that asked people if they could only have one thing out of their Keys, Wallet, Cell Phone, Laptop, or Digital Music Player for 24 hours, which would they choose.

The answer for 38% was Cell Phones. That was the most popular answer. The second most popular answer was wallet at 30%.

Reuters Article

This got me thinking that the cell phone can and should be a replacement for those other things anyway. In Japan you can already use your cell phone to buy train tickets and other things. And we all know phones can be digital music players.

Can the idea of the phone replacing your laptop and keys be that far behind?

You have a Text from the Pope

No Joke, the Pope plans to use text messaging to reach young catholics.

News Story from Reuters

In case you don't know the Catholic Church does not exactly embrace change. So that makes this an interesting, if not significant, event. Text messaging as a communication channel is a big deal. An undeniablly big deal. I'll stop short of saying it is as significant as the telephone, but it's close and has uniquely interesting aspects to it.

An awful lot of UE design goes into products that are oriented towards communication, and many of them have been so called "Killer Apps." [A Killer App is something that is so popular that it drives the adoption of your platform, for example Email and the Web Browser driving adoption of the internet]

From the User Experience point of view, here's a list of things that are interesting about Text Messaging

1. Texting can not be overheard by people around you, unlike a phone call. It's worth noting that texting first became popular Japan and Europe, where people can live in high density cities and the average person spends a lot of time in public places. Texting was an amazing way to have semi-private interaction.
   
2. It is really oriented toward short interactions, unlike Email and most phone conversations. People text one another one-liner jokes. Or they tell someone something that does not require a response, for example "I'll be late."
   
3. You can communicate without having to actually engage in a phone conversation. I was surprised to discover this, but I think it is true. Sometimes a phone conversation is too intrusive in one's life. And once someone has you on the phone you can't be sure how long they'll keep you. I went to an on-line forum frequented by young people and posed this question "What do you like most about text messaging?" The most popular answer given was "You don't actually have to talk to the person."
4. At any time you can receive a message from a friend or loved one. You can't always answer a phone call. But whether you are in a business meeting or a college class room you can usually read a text without interrupting anyone else. Most people I think would say this provides a lift in your day to know someone was thinking of you. You can probably reply surreptitiously as well.
   
5. Texting is very popular among young people. Among people that are 25 and younger texting is very popular and there's little doubt that it is a channel that can be used to reach young people. The Pope's decision to use it shows that, but so does voting for American Idol via text. Future generations are literally growing up with it as part of their lives.
6. A text-based conversation is limited by the keyboard and character limit per message. In general texting conversations are made up of short messages because entering text is cumbersome on a phone keypad. Smartphones with full QWERTY keyboards may be changing that. Also note that text messages are NOT guaranteed to be delivered by most carriers, AND a message that is longer than 160 characters is split up into multiple texts that are delivered separately. These two together really cut down on the length of each message that is sent back and forth.

Cellular Data Plans: A billion here and there is starting to add up

At the end of April cellular carriers in the US announced quarterly results, and wow both AT&T and Verizon had growth in data services.

• AT&T data revenues grew to $2.3 billion for the quarter. That 57.3% growth over the same quarter last year. Data now represents an amazing 21.5% of total wireless revenue
  Source: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/att-adds-1.3-mil-subscribers-in-1q/2008-04-22
  
• Verizon also made 2.3 billion this quarter off data services. Per user that's $11.94 and it represents 23% of total service revenue.
  Source: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizon-wireless-adds-1.5m-customers/2008-04-28
  

So what do these figure mean for mobile user experience? Well for one thing it means that people are using their phones for more than just talking. Use of texting, email, and even the hopelessly broken mobile web are all going up.

Mobile devices have long made voice calls the most easy to find and prominent features. Where as data services are typically buried inside WAP decks and the phone's web browser. Many phones do place text messaging in an easy to find place. And of course phones like the Blackberry place a high importance on making email easily seen.

So all of this brings up an interesting Mobile UE question. How can device designers place messaging and other data services in easier places for users to find, while not making voice calling any more difficult? After all, on most phones a phone call can be dialed from the main screen (aka the idle screen or the home screen). True there are some short cuts to other applications, but the main screen of most phones doesn't offer any data services on it's own. In the coming years I think we will see more phones place some kind of data service on their main screens.

Hey baby, what's your sign?

Apparently Virgin Mobile has a large budget for doing user research. How else to make sense of the fact that they did a study of users by their astrological sign to see if people of the same sign had similar habits of communication.

http://about.virginmobile.com/aboutus/media/news/2006/2006-11-09/

I mean come on! Most UE professionals would love to have more money for user research. Maybe I'm just jealous, but how'd you like to have such a large budget for research that you'd choose to do that study?

Can your cell phone find you parking?

According to an article from today's San Francisco Chronicle, the SF city government is considering a system that would embed sensors in the pavement below parking spaces and free spaces would be broadcast to people over the web or onto your cell phone.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/13/MNTO104818.DTL

Well wouldn't that be handy! Maybe it's because I've actually spent a fair amount of time looking for parking in San Francisco, but it's notorious reputation for limited parking is well deserved.

Some thoughts sprung to mind for me:

The last thing we need is another reason for cell phone users to be staring at their tiny little screens instead of focusing on the road. The cell phone parking application really needs to give you turn by turn directions to the closest spot. Voice input to tell it that you want "the closest spot to 463 Market St."

I can see a scenario where a spot opens and 10 different drivers all have their cell phones telling them to drive to same spot. It gets taken by the first driver and the other 9 are no better off than they would be today.

A mobile parking application that focused on higher level questions such as "what area near my destination tends to have the best parking?" or "Should I pay to park or will I have an easy time finding street parking?" Either of those could end up being quite interesting.

The people at Rubicon Consulting undertook a survey of iPhone users in order to know more about their characteristics, and I suppose to know more about the iPhone phenomenon. It surveyed 460 randomly selected US iPhone users.

Announcement: http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2008/04/announcing-new-survey-of-iphone-users.html

Summary Findings: http://rubiconconsulting.com/downloads/whitepapers/Rubicon-iPhone_User_Survey.pdf

Business Related Findings of the Survey
The survey produced some interesting User Experience tidbits (see below) but it was much more informative about business issues in the mobile industry. Here's some stand out mobile industry findings.

• Almost half of iPhone users switched cellular carriers in order to get the iPhone. Wow! Subscriber churn is one of the key metrics in the carrier business.
  

• The iPhone increases mobile browsing. About 75% of iPhone users say the device has lead them to use more mobile web browsing.
  

• The iPhone has increased its users' monthly mobile phone bills by an average of 24% or $228 per year.

• The iPhone is expanding the smart phone market. The survey found that about 50% of iPhones replaced a conventional cell phone (by conventional cell phone I would guess they mean a non-touch screen device that does not have a full keyboard and does not specialize in email).

• About 28% of iPhone users said they sometimes carry an iPhone instead of their laptops.

All of the above statistics clearly indicate that (a) the AT&T move to get the iPhone exclusively was a good strategy in terms of subscriber churn -- it has driven an increase in the number of subscribers; (b) the iPhone is a successful smart phone and is being used for email & web browsing and may well force other handset manufacturers to make these and all tasks easier and more appealing; (c) The new model of handset manufacturers getting a slice of monthly subscriber payments has been established -- I am very curious to see how that plays out.

User Experience Findings of the Survey
In terms of User Experience here's what stood out to me about Rubicon's survey.

• Reading Email is the #1 function of the iPhone. A whopping 72% of iPhone users read email on their phones every day. An additional 11% do it occasionally. Composing email is a bit less popular with about 58% doing it daily. As the Rubicon report points out this isn't that surprising since the iPhone lacks a physical keyboard.
  
  But it also points out a fundamental of mobile user experience: composing anything (an email or an Excel spreadsheet) on a small device will happen less frequently than reading the same data. People will put up with a lot to communicate with other humans (see text message composing) but in general users will compose documents on computers, and when they are mobile they'll want to read these documents on devices.
  

• The fact that 75% of iPhone users have increased the amount of mobile browsing also stands out from a UE point of view. Everyone knows that the mobile browsing user experience is absolutely atrocious! It's slow, it's expensive, normal web pages do not layout correctly, and WAP is a sad alternative that features hyper-links but no interesting content other than news articles.
  
  The report also notes that 40% of iPhone users reported web sites that do not display correctly. Even so, the layout engine and zooming feature (with it's associated multi-touch gesture) both are clearly UE gains over previous mobile browsing designs
  

• One of the more intriguing User experience questions suggested by the study centers around the finding that most iPhone users appear to be early adopters, Mac enthusiasts and/or technology savvy users. They are also younger, with 50% being under the age of 30 and 16% are students.
  
  So, does this take anything away from the much touted ease of use of the iPhone? In other words could the iPhone not be as easy to use as has been said? After all early adopters, technology savvy users and students should all find it easier to use any product than the general population would find it to be.
  
  My take is that the ease of use of the iPhone may be slightly over rated because it has mostly been used by power users so far. Users with less education and less technology sophistication would probably have a harder time learning the device than today's iPhone users.
  
  However! The iPhone user experience has a couple big things going for it. First of all it is a simple device compared to other smart phones. It has less features than say Nokia Series 60 and so those features are easier to find. Have you looked recently at all the items in a series 60 menu? It's amazing that anyone can find anything.
  
  The second factor is the enthusiasm for learning that any iPhone user has because of the magical and theatrical nature of the iPhone user interface. If you've talked to anyone who's owned one of these devices then you know how excited they are to own one and learn everything about it. For those that may not know, average users can overcome big usability issues if they poses enthusiasm and a willingness to experiment and learn.

• Finally it is interesting to note that 10% of iPhone users reported hand pain at some point during their ownership of the device. To me this points out an interesting thing about the large touch screen of the iPhone. I think touch devices can have higher ease of use than conventional phones because any UI object is directly manipulable (and therefore users don't have to go searching for functions that may be hidden in menus or invoked by a random hard key). However, users have to move their fingers and hands all over the device as interactive elements can appear anywhere on the large touch screen.
  
  Compare that to a typical Nokia device with 5-way key, two soft buttons and an ITU keypad. Users of those devices don't have to move their hands nearly at all, and in fact can easily operate their phones with one hand (if say they are pushing a shopping cart or even driving a car).
  
  Many mobile user experience experts think touch screens are the wave of the future. They clearly will have a large part in mobile UE going forward, but it's important to remember that conventional phones have advantages too.