5 initial themes for the next MEX Manifesto & Conference – what do you think?
The next MEX Conference is in London on 19th / 20th May. We’re currently deciding what should be in the new MEX Manifesto which will be at the heart of the Conference agenda and we wanted to provoke some different thinking: what are the *real* consumer trends which will shape the future of mobile user experience?
Below are 5 ideas about what we think is happening on the street and what it means for the industry, but we don’t have all the answers… We’d like to know, what are you hearing from users? What kind of mobile experiences are you seeing on trains and in cafes?
1. Consumer trend: “I want better ways to keep in touch.”
Industry challenge: Voice and sound remain the dominant dimensions of mobile user experience, but the industry is increasingly obsessed with designing purely for the visual dimension. What new experiences and revenue streams can we create by weaving together legacy voice infrastructure and data services?
2. Consumer trend: “I want it to look beautiful.”
Industry challenge: In users’ minds, functional and rational interfaces are a basic expectation, not a privilege. Next generation interfaces must evolve into places of beauty where graphical creativity, 3D, touch and haptics create surprising moments of magic. How will the industry balance this new aesthetic with logical interaction flow?
3. Consumer trend: “I want to find what I seek, when I want it.”
Industry challenge: The potential for mobile handsets as discovery tools is relatively untapped. How can we evolve the industry’s understanding of discovery dynamics to create better ways to find content, download apps, connect with advertisers and interact with the physical environment?
4. Consumer trend: “I want everything connected.”
Industry challenge: User experience pathways have expanded outside traditional device-centric boundaries, with individual services now spanning multiple touch-points across handsets, home entertainment systems, car dashboards and PCs. Does the mobile industry need to re-evaluate its product design processes to succeed in this new multi-platform world?
5. Consumer trend: “I want entertainment in new ways.”
Industry challenge: The variety of wireless entertainment devices is increasingly rapidly to include e-book readers, dual-screen and larger form-factor tablets. How can the presence of mobile connectivity enhance the entertainment experience and how must mobile application design evolve to take advantage of these new physical characteristics?
MEX brings together 100 of the brightest people from mobile, media and design, encouraging cross-industry learning and co-operative working between job functions. Put simply, we get all of the people needed to create genuine change in the user experience sitting around the same tables: from chipset manufacturers to software developers. Whether you’re a strategist at an operator or a designer in a content company, we’d love to hear your ideas and feedback, so please get in touch:
Marek Pawlowski, Founder (mp@pmn.co.uk) or Norbert Metzner, Research Director (norbertmetzner@pmn.co.uk).
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