Telepocalypse

Touchy feely

Continuing the earlier theme on digital meets physical, there’s a nice observation over at mobiface about exchanging contacts via Bluetooth:

I think trying to develop something big like new mobile interface paradigm we sometimes forget about other seemingly smaller issues. Like adding a new contact. A common scenario – a couple of old friends meet and want to exchange phone numbers. Usually someone dictates the number while the other is typing it on a phone and then vice versa.

Why not send contact via Bluetooth? First, you have to enable it (process depends on the UI). Then, search for available devices. Then the cumbersome process of pairing the devices… No wonder people prefer to exchange numbers the old way.

I haven’t seen a lot of ideas how to solve this, the most suitable for now being touch (or proximity) based interaction. Besides “touch” concept on this well-known site I like the “throw” one. Couple it with “directional UI” and something interesting can come up from this.

Again, until someone works out that the user live in 3D meatspace, and not in some abstract data structure, we’ll be stuck with yet more autistic user interfaces. I’m not the first to play down smartphones, but the “big ‘puter shrunk small” idea just misses the fundamental difference between a movable thing and a static PC. I’ll say it again — the key secret of the iPod wasn’t just nice plastic in a cool colour. It was the user interface matched the need to navigate broad, shallow trees of information quickly. The need for the UI to mirror the data structures and use cases also indicates that “convergence” in the device layer is unlikely to be widespread.

Anyhow, here’s another bit of atoms and bits mixing. Disney are launching their MVNO in the US, aimed at famiies:

The service will also include technology that lets a parent view a child’s location through the GPS (Global Positioning System) function of the child’s phone. They can retrieve that information either by address or on a map, on a PC, or their own Disney Mobile phone.

After reading and digesting Douglas Galbi’s treatise on presence, I now see what’s wrong with this service. It’s like a photograph with the foreground blotted out and the background cloned over it. What parents really care about isn’t where their kids are, but who they’re with. The device is supposed to be projecting the sense of “being there” (capital ‘P’ Presence). The location is just the backdrop — if you were really there watching your kids, you’d want to know what they’re up to (which means being an audiovisual spy), or failing that whether they’re in responsible company. Location is the least of your concerns.