Note from the Author: I am an American working in India. While I make daily observations about life here I in no way claim to be providing an official company perception of the world at large. The opinions and views here in are my own.
Recently I traveled from Mumbai to Delhi via the Mumbai Rajdhani train and I was fascinated to see the way one family made use of their mobile, a simple Nokia feature phone. I say “their” mobile because this seemed to be a truly family phone: bouncing from one set of hands to the next over the period of 2 hrs., with each family member making use of it in a different way.
First the Dad of the family seemed to be reading something. He sat and hit one button again and again which from my perspective seemed to be the “down” key. He was engrossed in what he was doing and had to be “snapped out of it” (physically tapped) for various other concerns that popped up: screaming kid, tea service, food. Made me think of some recent estimates I’ve heard and read about the average amount of time people are spending in “virtual space” each day. At the India Design Forum in Delhi, Karim Rashid passed on an estimate that the average time US citizens were spending in virtual space had reached 6 hrs/day. A study titled “Virtual Mobility and the Process of Displacement” (2002) shared that Swiss users spent an average of 4 hrs. each day in virtual space- a number that has no doubt increased over the past decade. So how much time are Indian users spending in virtual (mobile, internet, gaming) space?
Next Mom got the phone. Mom was checking in with the relatives. She called two it seemed, talked for some time, and reported that the family had made it on to the train. Her use was functional and locating: “Here we are, okay, okay, more info on location later.” Her use of the phone enabled the daughter’s use…
The daughter identified which relative was on the phone, snatched the phone and pressed the speaker phone button. Now everyone was listening. She spoke to an elder relative for a few minutes before asking for someone who seemed to be a cousin of similar age. Now the two girls were yelling back and forth, carrying on a conversation that had direction but over time the two just broke down into making sounds and laughing about it: the mobile phone had become only a speaker, with the same usefulness of a tin-can telephone: how well does it work? What can we hear?
The youngest, a boy, finally was given his turn on the phone. After a lengthy cry his parents brought the phone over as a last resort. Dad navigated to and started a game and the boy zoned into the phone and began to play. He didn’t seem to be winning, but it didn’t seem to matter and again, audio played a roll as he appeared to be more driven by sound effects than winning.
As Jigsee designs an application that’s intended for everyone, we keep use patterns like these in mind. Our aim is to keep navigation and content discovery so simple and easy that everyone in the family can find something they’d like to watch: be it news reports, cooking shows, or cartoons. Observations like this one help us understand just how complex our audience can be!
