TED Talks - Thoughts on cell phone design.

Following up from my post last night about interesting places on the web to watch some thoughtf provoking videos with interviews, lectures from a variety of interesting speakers. I wanted to offer some thoughts after watching a presentation by Jan Chipchase of Nokia Research entitled "Our cell phones, ourselves" that was given at this year's TED conference. To provide a brief overview in a ~20 minute discussion he covers some of the interesting findings from a series of Nokia field research projects relating to people's use of mobile phones. This discussion is even more interesting in that it doesn't tackle micro details in the sense of what functionality on today's cell phones and smart phones people use. Instead, he focuses his discussion addressing more fundamental questions about why people take cell phones with them? what other key items do people across the majority of cultures and countries take with them when they leave their home? I'll leave it to you to go watch the video but I think it raises some interesting points about our use of technology and the different use cases that actually arise when a product goes out into the field.

After watching the presentation I took a look at Mr. Chipchase's profile page at Nokia and found some interesting presentations that you can review. Typically they're relatively short 20-30 page presentations that cover a range of research topics he's worked on. A couple that I found particularly interesting dealt with work from a trip to Uganda and addressed the issue of how you recharge a cell phone in an area that does not have access to the central power grid. He touched on some of his team's work in Uganda in terms of first person interviews, home visits, shadowing a person's use of a phone in his TED discussion. The presentations relating to power in Africia show the level of ingenuity that exits as people adapt to meet the requirements of day to day life. His slides detail the existence of street level charging kiosks that operate throughout Ugandan cities where an operator for a fee recharges a customer's cell phone. My key thought in looking thought in flipping through these presentations is that emerging markets will adapt the resources they have at hand as they seek to leverage new technologies. Given the portability and low capital costs required to purchase a mobile handset its clear that a new series of applications will evolve in these markets as people seek to communicate, do business and improve their standard of living.

Great Thought Provoking Videos Online

Here are a couple of my top links that you should check-out if you're interested in learning more about the world.

First up At Google Talks basically this is an internal seminar series held within Google for its employees. The talks are with famous and interesting individuals covering a range of occupations including:

Authors (e.g., Michael Lewis, Michael Bloomberg, Jeffrey Toobin, Tom Brokaw, George Soros, Steve Wozniak)
Candidates (e.g., John Edwards, John McCain .....)
Musicians (e.g., Jose Gonzalez ...)

Needless to say very thought provoking and covers a wide range of topics. I have the feeling that I'm going to be very busy watching a bunch of these interviews over the next few weeks.

Second time to check-out TED. If you haven't heard about TED let me introduce you. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment & Design. The motto of TED is "Ideas worth spreading" and it also covers a range of topics from: Technology, Entertainment, Design, Business, Science, Culture, Arts, and Global Issues. TED is a non-profit organization that hosts a conference once a year for 1,000 attendees in Monterrey, California.