In case you’ve ever wondered if there’s any scope for innovation in telephony (geddit?), here’s some points to ponder.
First, check out this post by Douglas Galbi, in particular:
Good sensory design of communication services requires understanding behavioral goals. Consider, for example, voice quality. High voice quality might mean transmitting the full audible range of a person’s voice, and nothing else (no “noise”). Research indicates, however, that persons are able to identify locations based on their acoustic qualities. If the goal of a voice conversation is to transmit specific information in speech, then ambient sound is “noise”. But if the goal of a voice conversation is to make sense of the other’s circumstances, then ambient sound might enhance communication, particularly for a mobile device.
So, what about the pre-call context exchange? When someone calls me on Skype, I get to see their picture, if they’ve added one to their profile. If isn’t hard to imagine extending this system to show me more of their context; call me from your home desktop PC and I see a backdrop of ‘home’; from a Pocket PC and I see a ‘cafe’ as the default 3rd place; from a Skype Zones wi-fi hotspot, and it tells me where you are calling from, maybe. Once you get the idea that context is an equal player with content, the possibilities start to explode. How might you modify the UI of a mobile handset to create and display context data? How does the 2nd screen on a clamshell play into this? Douglas is talking about the in-call experience, but the “next-gen caller ID” could turn out to be big business.
In Skype, what’s sometimes notable is how little innovation has taken place rather than how much. For example, the directory lets me specify my country and time zone. But it doesn’t smooth the way by letting me specify what languages I speak/understand (my older daughter can sing unintelligible nonsense rhymes in at least 17 languages).
Here’s another example of why I believe telephony need not be an innovation-free zone. I have a PhoneGnome at home [disclosure: am paid advisor]. It lets me control how long the phone rings before it goes to voicemail. I’ve already set it 5 seconds beyond the default, because in a house with young kids and foot-injuring obstacles spread everywhere the sprint time to the phone is rather extended. We missed a call recently, and whoever was dumped into voicemail didn’t leave a message.
Now, with PhoneGnome we could have a different experience if we so chose. The call could auto-answer and announce (“Ringing home phone. 15 seconds until voicemail activation. 10 seconds. 5 seconds. The callee didn’t answer, please leave your name, number and message after the tone…”)
(Alert readers will already be wondering how to eliminate the “name” and “number” meta-data exchange above.)
We also get a number of calls for a pizza take-away which has the same number as us, but with the last 2 digits transposed. “Hi, do you do deliveries?” “Yes, we’ve got two young girls on offer this evening, only slightly screamy, good price. Can I bring them round straight away?” A simple way to announce who they’re through to whilst the ringing is going on would probably let them self-screen the calls.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 11:41 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/mgeddes/MT/mt-tb.cgi/736.
No, I didn't geddit... until I looked at Douglas Galbi's post and saw the title in mixed case as a trackback.
Posted by: at June 13, 2006 12:45 PM