Speaking about S60 user study
The mixed feeling of excitement, panic and fear hits me before any public presentation. Yesterday this happened in Vienna, where I talked about the results of our recent Smartphone360 study on the last day of the Mapos conference. Nevertheless, I managed to show all my slides and I guess the presentation went pretty ok.
Smartphone360 is our nickname for a study where a Symbian application in a S60 device is used to collect data on the device usage.
Some excellent questions were raised after the presentation. The study results on 3rd party application installation, usage and traffic generation were very encouraging. Moreover, device personalization in many forms was popular, and the audience seemed to agree with these conclusions. However, there was a question whether the frequent usage of add-on applications continues after the ‘honeymoon’ period with a new device is over. As far as I know, observing this kind of long-term usage patterns is excluded from the current study. Perhaps that’s something which should be added in the method when developing it further.
There was also a good discussion on how applicable the results are in general. Here we must be careful. The study does provide interesting, valuable and reliable data on how consumers really use their S60 devices. However, the results only tell how those who took part in the study were using their device during the study period, nothing else. Nevertheless, this is valuable information which works as a great input to product planning, operator service planning, application design etc.
Sorry of no comments.
are any of the 360 study results publically available? I participated, and am curious to see the outcome, even if just at a high level.
So far the study results have been presented in face-to-face meetings as going through the results usually generates a lot of good discussion. The other reason is that we simply do not have any nice and neat communication package of the key findings. Perhaps the team behind the study can write a short article about the results in the What’s Hot section of the S60.com. Will talk to them…
The results are indeed only presented and shared in face-to-face meetings with customers. They do generate a lot of discussion and we want to make sure they are interpreted in the right way. This way all the application developers, device manufacturers and operators can use them to their full extent when planning applications and features for your S60 devices. It is also Nokia’s policy not to share its study results, like the Smartphone360 results, in public.
So, instead of an article, I’ll only reply to Esa’s comment about the 3rd party application “honey moon”.
As with most new and exciting things I guess, first there is excitment followed by less activity as the new thing becomes more familiar. Such was the case also with 3rd party apps.
Study participants tended to install more apps in the beginning. And after some time the amount of installations decreased a bit. What was more interesting though was that a good portion of the 3rd party apps made it through the honey moon. That is, participants kept on using them long after the installation. As the apps ranged from simple to very complex and from fun to enterprise apps, the average figures on long-term usage don’t really paint the right picture of things.
It seemed that participants valued some apps over others and continued using them even after the honey moon period. Without saying any names, I’m sure you’ll find Tommi ranting & raving about some of them in his application blog.
How would someone become a tester on the Smartphone 360 study?
thanks
James
The participants for the Smartphone 360 study are invited randomly in the countries the research is done, so it is not possible to volunteer for the study.
Naturally, those who get the invitation can decide whether they want to join the study or not.
Very useful information. Thanks. thanks for this guys
I completely agree with all that here is told