Molecularist

Tom, below, makes an interesting observation that is complemented by another observation by Mark Curtis.

Two points jump our to me:
1) Do we have any flippin’ clue, in the end, what folks are doing with their mobile phones?
2) The answer lies in building your product, releasing it into the wild, and doing some simple observation.

But, as we all know, we try to do all the guess work, contingency planning, and pitching before the product is released.

I think the optimum is somewhere between pre-design research, gut instinct, and trust that your users will quickly converge on the real use of your product.*

Link: Tom Hume: Off-hours mobile usage.

Mark Curtis on mobilising our meat based selves: "On Flirtomatic, a flirting community on mobile and web that I’m closely involved with, we see our biggest interaction (chat) levels at 4.30 in the afternoon and between 10 and 12 midnight – and equally on phones and web. These latter users are to some extent choosing a virtual night out."

We see similar behaviour with mobile puzzling. We expected commuting times to be the big hours for it – 7-9am and 5-7am, mirroring the times when crosswords and sudoku are embedded into everyday lives already. (We can track when people are actually wanting to puzzle because Puzzler uses a single download, pay-per-play model)

No way. Usage grows steadily throughout the day and peaks in the wee hours (2-3am). This is complementary to puzzling in the real world.

*Thinking back, I’ve always understood this (I’m a died-in-the-wool arch-skeptic) and have always tried to place products in strange places. I was looking for that ‘they did what with it?’ kinda response. It’s a minima-maxima thing that the science geek in me can ramble on but will spare you.

I’ve been doing a bit of reading into audio streaming lately and someone mentioned a term that I had to look up just to make sure – Sideloading, or transferring files from server to server or from server or PC to mobile device or memory card (as opposed to uploading or downloading – device-server actions). Two other definitions here and here.

The funny thing is that this has been one of the main ways that I listen to podcasts on my phone. So I’m a sideloader. 🙂

Some folks think downloads, some think direct connection from mobile device network. I think they are all interlinked and all the options should be there. We should make it easy for users to choose which method suits their style and budget. Such a versatile and integrated way of transferring large files is really only part of that fusion of PC-mobile-Web I keep harping about.

So, if you are building services that use large files, such as video or audio, think of all the ways someone wants to get that stuff on their device and make them all available. Of course, your biz model needs to be amenable to such things, too.

And practical surveys are showing that people do not always want to download stuff over the air (sometimes slow and expensive!). See blurb below.

Link: Research Weighs Mobile Music Downloading, Side-Loading // Zeropaid.com.

Just recently, San Francisco-based Telephia released a report comparing OTA track downloading and side-loading among British consumers. The company found that 27 percent of 3G users downloaded content to their phones, and the average user grabbed 4.1 files per month. In terms of the preferred method of music delivery, though, some other findings emerged. In the survey, 44 percent of 3G subscribers preferred side-loading ripped content from their computers, while 49 percent of non-3G subscribers preferred the same. Comparatively, 14 percent of 3G users surveyed preferred downloading tracks directly from a carrier or non-carrier service, while 16 percent of non-3G subscribers preferred the same.

*And something tells me that most folks download phone apps to their PC and then ‘sideload’ them into their phones. I think that’s mostly because it’s easier to find apps via a PC browser. Ja?