Wireless Informatics Forum

Although not to the extent that we saw a few years ago, mobile phone sales still spike over the Christmas period. This has got me wondering; just how long do people spend learning about their new ‘toy’ before jumping in and throwing away the manual?

Mobile phones are so familiar to most of us that I suspect the majority, recognizing familiar icons, menus and applications, just jump right in. What this means is that we typically map our existing usage and behavior onto the new device – irrespective of possible new features and functionality.

If that’s the case it becomes increasingly unlikely that users are even exposed to new features (email, LBS, IM, browsing), and in turn are unlikely to deliver any revenue from them. They stick with what they know.

There’s a limited window of opportunity to engage with users when they power-up their new handset for the first time. We need to move them out of their comfort-zones and paper manuals just don’t cut it anymore. What about media-rich tutorials, demos, even intelligent OS that understand you have just taken a picture and guide you through an MMS wizard?

As a straw poll……how long did you spend understanding the features and services or your latest handset? Did you read the manual or just jump-right in and use services already familiar to you?