Mobile social computing: From research to product

 Younghee Jung and Per Persson, Nokia Corporation
mail@younghee.com, per.persson@nokia.com

Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Stanford University April 8, 2005

Telecommunication products and applications have great influences on the ways people behave, perceive and construct their social identity and relationships. On the other hand, users appropriate communication products over time to adopt them into their everyday lives. The design of such products and applications therefore entail much more than good usability at hand: It is about the social system that is manifested through user interactions enabled by the products, and how the community of the users experience the product over time. This is particularly important in the domain of mobile social computing since it is difficult to simulate social experiences in order to validate the concept with users.

This talk will present the process of designing a mobile social proximity application from the very early conception to productization. Various aspects of the design process will be highlighted, especially with regard to the validation methods of novel social application concepts, utilization of the user research to guide the design, and real-world constraints in designing applications for mobile phones.

Younghee Jung is senior interaction designer in Nokia's User Experience unit. In Nokia, Younghee specializes in developing future product concepts, incubating the product concepts before they are 'adopted' in the productization line, and creating evolutionary roadmaps of core applications of mobile phones. Her past endeavours include the incubation research for Nokia Lifeblog and she is currently working on creating the vision for mobile phonebook application. Her passion is to learn and understand various cultures of humanity and make contribution to enrich them via design. She studied interaction design at Carnegie Mellon University as a Fulbright scholar, and industrial design at KAIST, South Korea.

Per Persson has worked in IT research and industry since 1997, and is currently product manager at Nokia Corporation, Finland. His fields of interests span across social computing with emphasis on mobile applications, ubiquitous computing, identity expression through technology, location-based services, and interactive characters. At Nokia, Per has undertaken all phases of the product development cycle: Pre-studies, concepting, specification, prototyping, field tests of prototypes, product development and all the way up to product launch. In doing so, he has worked with software application as well product design. Previous employers include Nokia Research Center and Swedish Institute of Computer Science. He holds a Ph.D. in communication studies. His website: www.perpersson.net.

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