The telecom industry claims to have received enough negative feedback about the first wave of 3G mobiles that it now knows how to make them user-friendly. This includes not forcing customers to use the new services, for example this quote: “MMS is a new experience for a lot of users. It’s a good mechanism for delivering content, but there are a lot of unknowns for the subscriber,” Corrigan says. “He sees an ad to download a Kylie ringtone, and he’d like to download it, but he sees he has to send an MMS and doesn’t know how to do that, so he ends up not downloading. But if you use SMS as a request channel, SMS is more familiar and he knows how to do that, so he’s more likely to buy that ringtone.”
Suggestions also include that operators provide a single access point for services, with the configuration stored on the network and downloaded to the phone once it connects. This sounds a little like the derided “walled garden” approach for my taste. However I like the similar idea of remote diagnostics – when your phone doesn’t work the operator can fix any software glitches or configuration over the network, rather than have the user study the text-book like manual or get interrogated by the “help desk”.
There’s also “dynamic idle”. When the phone’s not doing anything, your screen shows up-to-date stock information or a scrolling news bar at the bottom. “You could also put a box in the middle of the screen where the operator can communicate with you and, say, offer you a free gaming trial. Put a trial version of Monopoly or something in that box that users can play for a couple of levels, then ask them if they want to buy the full version or try another game.” Imagine if the screen-saver on your computer ran ads…
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