Involving Users in Innovating Mobile Services

Copenhagen.
The post-lunch session at COST298 starts with Hanne Westh Nicolajsen, who focusses on users as co-innovators. This is in the context of CAMMP (Converged Advanced Mobile Media Platforms), which sounds not unlike aspects of our Smart Services CRC. Such research is driven by convergence between the Net, digital TV and radio, and 3G mobile technologies. How can users be best involved in the design of rich mobile media services for the future?

Approaches to this are based on a living lab model (providing a real context to technology use, focussing on the medium to long term, engaging in participatory design, and involving multiple stakeholders), which also means aiming for creativity (through employing creative methods, engendering trust in the process to encourage wild ideas, and basing creative processes on existing knowledge of what is possible through technology).

But where to start? The CAMMP project combines both technology-driven inputs (available services and content, coverage, and available tools), and user-driven inputs (trends in society including social networking and user-generated content, existing knowledge about user needs, and prior experiences with mobile services). This leads to a cyclical process which involves both user testing of concepts and prototypes (evaluating technologies and providing input into the process) and user workshops and user experiments which create input and ideas, with both approaches informing one another.

These iterative phases of development and user input are important; additionally, there is also a need to provide real context (through hands-on prototypes, or preferably through natural use situations) and social context (focussing on communities rather than merely a representative sample of users). Finally, users should be engaged over the longer term, in order to build trust and observe their evolving use, which creates new insights.

The project has put these ideas into practice in testing a number of mobile phone prototypes that use the DVB-H mobile TV standard; early results from this show that good content is likely to be a driver of uptake, but that users are also highly interested in creating and sharing content (within their established communities and networks). Phones were mainly used during break time or in public transport, for accessing both mainstream and user-generated content. The broadcasting of UGC video in a continuous loop was seen as a particular problem - direct choice was favoured, and rating was seen as desirable if enough users were participating. Users also came up with additional ideas for mobile TV content.

Technorati : COST298, innovation, mobile, mobile TV, participation, television, user design
Del.icio.us : COST298, innovation, mobile, mobile TV, participation, television, user design