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The Emerging Mobile Mindset


Rachel Hinman

Most mobile features and services have little-to-no value to the common, everyday user of mobile devices. The results of field studies in the US, Europe, and Asia share an eerily similar user sentiment: “A phone is just a phone. I use it to make calls… maybe text,” or “The Internet on my phone is too slow… and too expensive,” or “It’s too complicated. Why can’t it just be simpler?”

While the iPhone and Nokia N95 are heralded as the answer to delivering value to users, friction remains. User experiences on mobile devices remain broken because they are modeled after the PC computing experience and the rigid structure and brittleness of technology instead of the fluidity and grace of human experience.

The friction between the current mobile experiences of everyday people and the promise of mobile technology is evidence of an important shift in not only how we view mobile phones but also how we think of computing and the opportunity designers and user experience professionals have in shaping that future.

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