STUDY IN USER BEHAVIOUR:
MOBILE DEVICES

_status:
Design study—prototype produced.
More about the developed strategies
can be read in this>>PDF document<<

_about:
The goal of this study was to learn what
can be improved in consumer electonic
devices by interviewing real users
of those products. A critical evaluation
of the user–device relationship can help
identify areas for improvement and
suggest ways of addressing the change.

In this study I interviewed a successful
57-year old businesswoman who uses
her Nokia 6300 mobile phone to contact
customers on a daily basis.

The interviewed user identifies:
1) main user problems that she expe-
riences with the mobile phone;
2) key functionalities that she requires
from a communication device;
3) major problems that she faces
throughout the life cycle of the product;
4) overal impression on using the device
and her experience with it.

This interview informed the design
process that came later. Three distinct
design strategies were developed to
improve user experience in the future
(two of those presented here).

The starting point for the whole process
was to learn, understand and analyse
user's experience of the device.

_user's narrative:

gender: female
age: 57
country: Poland
occupation: independent entrepreneur
device: mobile phone, Nokia 6300

I use my mobile phone very intensively.
Each day I make/receive 15–20 calls and
write around 10 text messages. I have a
huge database of my business partners
with surnames, often two telephone
numbers, e-mails, addresses and other
sensitive data. In total there is approx.
300 contacts in my mobile database.
It is a large amount of data that is
essential for my work, and which I use
on everyday basis.

Whenever I need to change the phone
(which is usually every 18–24 months)
because of the device's life expectancy
and component/material wearing-out,
I hate the feeling I will need to transfer
all my contacts from my old device to
the new one. It usually takes me one
whole evening to sort everything out,
and somehow I always loose some
contacts during the transfer anyway.
I manage to transfer the contacts
automatically only to some extent,
because one part of them is saved on
the sim-card (which does the migration
for me), but some are stored in the old
device's memory, and the process of
automated transfer is really confusing
for me, that in the end I decide to copy
everything manually. This makes me
really angry and disappointed with the
technology, which is supposed to help
me in my life.

Changing the phone is a pain because
of one other fact as well: I always need
to spend somewhat a month to learn
and discover all the menus and paths,
which lead me to desired functions.
Therefore, I like to stick to one brand
only, because of similarities in interface
design, but then I often suffer from
other badly designed things, which might
have been better solved by different
manufacturers.

In general, I feel like a hostage of my
own mobile phone. I am constantly
forced to learn it anew and do things
that take me a whole day, but normally
could be solved in a minute. Whenever
it is possible I ask a person in my
operator's branch to help me with
transferring all my data to a new device,
but it is so humiliating for me, that I
recently decided to struggle on my own.
2010