Generation X - Are We Building the Services They Want?
In a post on Blogspotting by Stephen Baker he states that his son and his friends don't wear watches anymore. If they need to tell the time, they reach into their pockets and pull out their mobiles.
This reminded me of a funny story I was told a few years ago in a meeting with Ericsson. One of the attendees was driving his Daughter and her friend home and was watching them texting away frantically in the back. When he asked them who they were texting, they said "each other". When he asked why they didn't just talk to each other, they said "because they didn't want him to hear".
Sometimes I worry that the whole technology community is far too insular. We use each others services & products, we read each others blogs. Rather than thinking about what the general market want, and also appreciating that the way they use technology may be different to us, we focus on delivering services that we want to use.
What use does the man on the street have for mobile internet or mobile email? What use is 3G if a large percentage of phone users don't even know how to program the phone's address book? Why would he want Wi-Fi if he doesn't even have broadband at home? Why would he want a PVR when he only watches terrestrial TV?
Although these and other current developments are great technologies, maybe more time needs to be put into thinking about how these services can be opened up to the mass market, rather than catering to our own needs.
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