Design Futures Lecture

Mobile Design Principles: Insights from the Consumer Field Studies

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

BCNM Commons

Mirjana Spasojevic, Nokia Research Palo Alto

Despite significant challenges, a growing number of Americans and Europeans are turning to their mobile phones to access the Internet. The promises of faster networks and smart phones suggest that, at long last, the web could become truly mobile. Yet, in order to fully realize potential of a mobile Internet, designer and product developers still need to overcome expectations built on the PC legacy.

This talk presents insights from several field studies of consumers in the US, Europe, and Hong Kong conducted in 2006 and 2007. Through a combination of a diary study, in-depth interviews, and deprivation of users to access of Internet on their computers, we collected qualitative data illustrating how people currently use their mobile phones and the Internet. Using this field data, we develop several mobile design principles to drive product design and strategy.

Mirjana Spasojevic is the Senior Principal Scientist and Team Leader of the IDEA (Innovate Design Experience Animate) team at the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, California. In her role as a user research evangelist and a passionate advocate for very human mobile experiences, she focuses on ethnographic and lab-based studies of mobile technologies. In the last several years she has been investigating how and why people use camera phones, and has been conducting international studies of mobile web services. Prior to Nokia, Mirjana has worked as a senior design researcher at Yahoo! Mobile business unit and a senior research scientist and project manager at HP Labs where she was a member of the Cooltown program. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Penn State University.

Last updated: March 26, 2015