MEX is a very different style of conference and this is our manifesto. It is a ‘call to action’ for the industry to wake up to the importance of user experience. We’d love to hear your views and invite you to post them to the blog.
In May 2007, the leading minds in mobile telecoms will come together for two days in London to debate and publish their response to this 10 point blueprint. If you’d like to be a part of MEX, now is the time to talk to us about speaking, sponsorship and attendance. Visit http://www.pmn.co.uk/mex/ for further information or email Marek Pawlowski (marekpawlowski@pmn.co.uk). You can also download a PDF of the manifesto here.
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Understanding users and delivering exceptional customer service is just as important a part of the mobile experience as the latest technology and the size of the marketing budget. It can be the key differentiator for a business. We think too much time and money is invested in getting products to market quickly rather than getting products to market effectively.
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Tearing down the walled garden will enhance the mobile content experience and release value for the industry. The objective should be a free market for content and applications, based on open standards and accessible to all. We think the current fragmentation of formats and channels to market is holding back growth.
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Mobile advertising can enhance the user experience if it is relevant and contextual. It can become a tool which benefits rather than distracts the customer. We think it will fail if it interrupts the flow of action on mobile devices and tries to replicate traditional advertising models.
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Handsets, applications and services should be more aware of the user’s physical environment and adapt to provide the most appropriate interface for sound and visual conditions. We think multi-modal interfaces should be supported on many more mobile devices and can dramatically improve the user experience.
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User experience performance must be measured if it is to be improved. It must be constantly tracked through quantitative and qualitative methods. We think organisations throughout the value chain are failing to recognise the importance of understanding customers because quantifying the return on investment is too difficult.
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The world is gaining embedded intelligence. The mobile industry faces a fundamental user experience challenge to make handsets as effective as communicating with the environment as they are with other humans. We think the connection of millions of machines to wireless communication networks represents the most significant generational change since the introduction of packet data.
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The objective is to provide the best mobile experience for each individual. Developing chipsets, software platforms, handsets and services which make it cost-effective to provide this level of personalisation will delight users and drive profits for the industry. We think the industry can grow its margins if it finds a way to build personalisation into every level of the value chain.
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Mobile devices are the natural choice for interacting with communities. Sharing experiences through your mobile device should be as simple as making a voice call. We think the success of user-generated content, social networking and community interaction through mobile devices will depend on enhancing rather than replicating the desktop experience.
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The mobile experience is limited to voice and text by in-efficient search and discovery mechanisms. We think any service should be accessible from the standby screen and it should be as simple as dialling a number.
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Service pricing is often misaligned with the realities of customer spending patterns. It is one of the defining factors of the mobile user experience and can play a role in determining everything from device choice to ongoing usage of mobile applications. We think the industry needs to become smarter and more dynamic in its approach to pricing and wake-up to the reality of fighting for wallet share.
If you’d like to be a part of MEX, now is the time to talk to us about speaking, sponsorship and attendance. Visit http://www.pmn.co.uk/mex/ for further information or email Marek Pawlowski (marekpawlowski@pmn.co.uk). You can also download a PDF of the manifesto here.
View Comments (15)
If MEX can be held in China,that would be very helpful for our Chinese operator. thanks!
It will be a very good idea to hold MEX in India too as India is one of the fastest growning countries in the Mobile domain.
Our operators do need MEX
We're looking at opportunities to take MEX into new markets and India and China are both strong possibilitis.
Please note we provide published reports summarising the presentations and discussions at every MEX conference to enable those who are unable to attend in person to benefit from the events. You can buy these at:
http://www.pmn.co.uk/mex/report.shtml
We also offer an on-site version of MEX for companies who want to explore the benefits of mobile user experience at their own offices. This comprises a customised programme based around our 10 point manifesto with case studies and workshops for the company's management team. Please contact me at marekpawlowski@pmn.co.uk for further details.
I very much agree with the things you say, and I have over time promoted the same "laws", yet in a much more scattered way.
I totally agree with this manifesto. I participated to the conference in 2005 and if things have improved, the mobile industry is far from having removed the user-experience barrier. Looking at mobile TV or mobile music developments, it sounds like the benefits are not that user-centric and a bit oversold (claiming there are today long tail opportunities on a screen is far from a reality when it is already difficult to merchandize the Top 10-30 songs).
Thomas Husson (JUPITER RESEARCH)
Yes, spot on with all these, guys. I think you know what you're talking about :). Especially number 9...
Alex
phonething.com
Development of mobile use and services is definitely a matter of providing what customer needs, at a reasonable price, and with the quality their are used to with Internet.
To reach that target, global open minded initiatives are mandatory, to show the way. This manifesto seems to be one of it, let's move forward!
Absolutely spot on! My personal favourites are 2, 7, and 8. This is a great work and I applaud that it is bold, creative, collaborative and will make for a great conference.
I was unaware of such an effort going on ... I got to know about this from the mobilemonday yahoogroup and I am very excited about this.
We at Wirkle have been dealing with some of this for quite sometime and have our own patents and technology to deal with this problem.
The recent post on my blog might be relevant to the readers here: http://wirkle.com/blogs/varun/2006/12/barcamp-delhi-talk-by-opera-guys-and.html
1. In an ideal tech industry, we would rather have our products get to market more effectively rather than more quickly, but we can’t overlook the fact that the mobile industry has the potential to be the biggest booming industry ever. There’s no way that we can monitor the speed that products come into the market, especially as the airwaves are opened up in the United States. Consumers want tomorrow’s technology in their phones now; this includes software and hardware. Yes, the key to making it in this industry is giving the consumer exactly what they want and making it easy to use, but we cannot diminish the importance of time to market.
3. There is no way that mobile advertising will fail. It’s just too easy. We can already stream ads to apps and ads are already appearing within mobile games. I think that in 5 years your phone’s web browser will be just as polluted with ads as your computer’s.
4. I’d like to see this taken a step further and not only take into account the user’s physical environment, but also their location. Once more carriers unlock the GPS on the phones, we are in for a slew of new personalization features. It will be very fun.