Understanding Future Communication Needs: Maypole Experiences

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Speaker
Katja Battarbee
Nokia Ventures Organization

When
-

Where
Newell-Simon Hall 3002

Description

Cellular phones were originally designed for business use. However, communities have found their own ways of using them in leisure. For example, in Scandinavia short text messages have been a great success especially among teenagers, although originally the designers doubted whether anyone would really want to send text messages of such limited length over a wireless network.

The recognition of this possibility to expand the telecommunications business towards leisure use motivated the partners of Maypole project to further explore the future needs for communication. Maypole was funded by the European Union in 1997–1999. The project partners were CURE, Helsinki University of Technology, IDEO product development, Meru research, Netherlands Design Institute, and NOKIA.

Maypole partners decided to focus on children. It was assumed that the understanding of their needs could be also applied in designing leisure communication applications for other user groups. The assumption was based on the notion of how first teenagers, and then later adult users created new ways of using mobile phones. Moreover, also gadgets designed for children, such as Tamagotchis, seemed to appeal to adult consumers at the time Maypole was started.

This presentation will first describe how Maypole designers, social scientists, and psychologists worked together for two years and used several different methods in order to understand future communication needs. They studied children’s current patterns of social interaction and the use of existing products, validated and tested product concepts with children, and conducted a field trial with functional prototypes. The presentation with conclude with the key Maypole findings regarding future communication needs.

Host
Jodi Forlizzi