Vodafone and mobile evolution

Last Thursday I gave a little interactive presentation to a couple of user experience guys at Vodafone in Paddington. It was so interactive that we only got halfway through my slides before the hour was up and they both had to head off to other meetings. However, I got loads of great insight and feedback in that time - these interviews and presentations are helping me to build a very rich picture of the evolution of the mobile phone from a diverse range of perspectives.

Of particular interest was a discussion on whether on an abstract level, the evolution of the mobile product category could be compared to that of the bicycle, and if so, what is the equivalent stage or product in the bike category that could be compared to the current maturity of the mobile. The answer was not clear cut - depending of the level of abstraction, different parallels could be drawn. One problem is that mobiles don't stand alone, there are so many external factors acting on them from networks, subsidisation, operating systems and their homogenisation with other products and functionalities. This is an area that I will need to explore in more detail in my thesis (which I'd better get back to).

Orange Design Group

Last Thursday I presented my mobile research to Orange's Group Design and User Experience team in Paddington. It was a great experience - really good to share my ideas with some experts in the industry, learn from their insight/heckling, and get some feedback on where I might take it next. It was particularly interesting to hear from the perspective of a mobile service provider, a different view from the designers, user experience experts, technology strategists and journalists I've spoken to so far.

This Friday I will be presenting to Samsung's European design group in Farringdon, I'm looking forward to meeting the group and hearing what they have to say about my work. The feedback from this presentation will hopefully move me closer to having a complete picture of form evolution in the mobile product category, which takes care of a couple of chapters of the thesis!

Rob Phaal - Visual Strategy

Just saw a talk by Rob on roadmapping and developing visual strategies. He is trying to develop a universal language for mapping organisational strategy - a bit like electrical circuits or flow charting. He has gathered over 1000 roadmaps and sorted them into different types, and he runs workshops around the world teaching people and companies visual strategy techniques.

I might send him a few of my hastily scrawled mega-diagrams for a bit of feedback! Meanwhile if you are interested in this kind of stuff, then check out the Visual Strategy Network google group, there is a bit of discussion and some great links and tools on there. I liked this periodic table of visualisation methods particularly. This also reminds me of a really cool information visualisation blog.