Interviewed by IDEO on Mobile Market scenarios

Posted on 30/06/2006 by admin

A few weeks ago I received a mail from Jennifer Leonard asking me for a brief interview for a paper whe was writing. The interesting thins is Jennifer’s employer: the uberfamous design firm IDEO: they’re preparing a deep research on mobile future scenarios and wanted to hear the thoughts of this humble Italian guy.

So, here below all the questions and my answers; in their full form.

IDEO: When you think about the future of mobile multimedia, what comes to mind?

Matteo: I have this dream in mind. That – as Bill Gates correctly pointed out (and
this is probably the only time I’m completely agree with him) – mobile devices,
cellphones in particular, could be the main ingredient in the solution of the
digital divide. They’re cheaper, more reliable, with long lasting batteries
and with already existing wireless networks.

Thus, when I think about the future of this type of devices I see vertical multimedia application and devices capable of very few tasks at the same time, but absolutely perfect in these task accomplishment.

Even if at a very seminal stage Mobup is a perfect example of what I’m saying. Just install this less-then-40KB app on your cameraphone and you’ll transofrm it in a full featured moblogging platform. Dare I say Ubicomp?

I: What are you most excited about?

M: I’m 30, and just a few years after I was born the first personal computers
appeared. I saw their raise and the computational power becoming greater anbd
greater. Now the same thing is happening with cell phones: just 7 years ago we
had narrow-band monochromatic devices useful just for talking and sending SMS.
Now we have broadband multifunctional devices where – if you like this kind of
things – you can also receive TV programs and films, you can use them as
photocameras (I’ve choosen a Megapixel device to be used as a slim camera
always in my pocket), you can read your favourites weblogs… just as you were
in front of your computer.

If this is happened in this short time-frame, the next 7 years are going to be even more exciting!

I: Where in the world are the most interesting things happening?

M: Tough question. US have a GREAT wi-fi diffusion, but is in EU that mobile
networks are becoming mature. Thus it’s here in Europe that we’re seeing great
innovation in mobile services; but Japan (and the wider Asian area) is a
challenging competitor.

I: Any unmet needs you can think of when it comes to mobile phones?

M: Usability. Let me spell it: U-S-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y; Nokia is probably the
cellphones manufacturer who’s trying its best in following usability and ergonomy
principles when projecting its devices. But we’re light-years faraway the accomplishment of this objective; I still haven’t found the perfect device where everything is easy and quickly accessible.

I: What would be your dream mobile phone application and/or service?

M: Me and my wife had a baby last year (Francesca is in her 10th month while I’m
writing) and – since I’m often far from home I’d like a mobile who can be “awaken” when she performs or discovers something new (a new movement, a new expression, a new word learned, etc.), record it and send it to me to be viewed. That would be really lovely…

Nathan Shedroff at the Interaction Frontiers 2006

Posted on 24/05/2006 by admin

It’s with great pleasure that I’m here to announce that, thanks to our friend – and Frontiersman – Fabio Sergio, we’ll host an exclusive video contribute at the Interaction Frontiers by the great Nathan Shedroff.

Here below you’ll find his own introduction to the speech:

Nathan will discuss and illuminate the connection between emotion, values, and meaning for customers and users and show a process for developing products, services, and interfaces directly configured around them.

Meaning is the most important part of any experience we create and offer to others and it’s only been recently recognized and analyzed.

Since we’re not planning to make this video publicly available the only way to see this is by subscribing (FOR FREE) at the event (seats are limited).

Busy week

Posted on 05/05/2006 by admin

I’d say this was really a tough and busy week, not many like this one in a year!

The Interaction Frontiers organizing

After the Interaction Frontiers 2006 site has been launched we started getting confirmation from the potential speakers we have contacted: names like Pabini Gabriel-Petit (who’s gonna key-noting), Sebastiano Bagnara (Politecnico Design), Christian Peters (Fraunhofer Institute) and Antonio Rizzo (Siena University) are all onboard; but other big names are about to be added!

I’m really enjoining this year organizing: having a sponsor (Kallideas) behind us makes possible have speakers from abroad that otherwise would have been difficult to bring to Italy. I’m pretty confident this year Frontiers’re gonna be such a inspiting and wonderful event.

Writing on Eyetracking

The few days of vacation I had have made it possible to write down the analysis I made on label positioning in web forms. I started the whole lab setup from Luke Wroblesky article “Web application form design” and Luke himself who’s to kind to help me both during test prep and results analysis. Cannot wait to see your feedback on my results (quite interesting, I’d say )

Card sorting

In the last weeks we conduct some interviews at Regione Lombardia key people in order to design a site devoted to security and prevention. This interviews lead to a 140+ cards to be communitary sorted in a 12 people meeting.

The results were absolutely great and I’m sure that site info architecture will rocks (I’ll spend part of the next week analysing the card sorting results and merging them together in a wireframing prototype).

Family life

Tomorrow we’re having Francesca’s baptism: it’s been a tough week organizing the lunch for our friends and relatives, the small cadeaux and Francesca’s dress (Maurizio and Elena finally solved the situation with a present of a couple of wonderful dresses for our little princess).