“When it comes to mobile innovation, the gap between developed and developing countries is not much of a gap at all. Mobile innovation in the West, largely technology-lead, sits in contrast to that in the developing world where combating the geographic, economic and cultural constraints of users is considered a more sensible way to go. This explains the emergence of the torch phone, for users who live in areas with little or no regular light, or multiple phone books for users who share their phones with family members. On the heavyweight side, a plethora of financial applications have hit the streets, with Safaricom’s m-Pesa service getting by far the biggest press to date. Regularly used by hundreds of thousands of Kenyans, you often hear it described as the “Kenyan Debit Card”, allowing users to transfer money through their mobile phones to help out family and friends, or to buy and sell goods and services across the airwaves. For the tens of millions of Kenyans without bank accounts, m-Pesa represents both a revolution and a revelation. It is now being rolled out in other countries, with Afghanistan next on the list.”

Link: Africa’s grassroots mobile revolution – a traveller’s perspective (vodafone.com)

Related:

• Mobile as computing platform (again)
• Mobiles and Development
• The next generation of mobile interface technology

Share on Facebook | Save to del.icio.us | Small Surfaces is published by Gabriel White.

“A key issue is the need for language, and perhaps cultural localization. To be useful, applications need to function in a language that users can both understand and feel comfortable using. The linguistic variety in many developing countries can represent a significant hurdle in the development of applications intended to have broad appeal and usability.”

Link: Going Wireless: Dialing for Development (acumenfund.org, 400k PDF)

Related:

• Mobiles and the developing world interview
• Nokia Usability Forum
• New mobile user experience blog

Share on Facebook | Save to del.icio.us | Small Surfaces is published by Gabriel White.

“This product is aimed at first time users – “the next billion customers” – the majority of whom may only have been introduced to any kind of high tech computing device via their experience with their mobile phone. We can safely assume this, there are umpteen billion mobile phones being used in the world right now, 60% of them in developing nations. From this context, the user interface that ASUS presents as “easy to use” feels familiar to them, if only that the majority of cellphones now use some kind of icon based navigation and demonstrate a similar look and feel. Compare that to the intimidation of facing a totally unfamiliar desktop environment. Even the charger that comes with the eeePC resembles that of a mobile phone.”

Link: The little eeePC that could has become the real ‘iPod’ of personal computing (nitibhan.com)

Related:

• Location-aware reminders
• Designing products at Nokia
• Nokia’s Director of Design Strategy

Share on Facebook | Save to del.icio.us | Small Surfaces is published by Gabriel White.