Mobile Phone Designers Challenged to Keep up With Users

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, August 24, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile phone handset designers should look to social networking for inspiration to improve the management of communications on phones, says BulkSMS.com (http://www.bulksms.com) managing director, Dr Pieter Streicher. He maintains that many aspects of the mobile phone user interface haven't changed in ten years, especially contact management and SMS functionality.

Naomi Baron's 2009 study into mobile phone behaviour highlighted the "reachability conundrum" in consumers' attitudes to always being in touch. Reachability was one of the aspects of the mobile phone that users liked the most, and the least. People were finding it more difficult to separate their work life from leisure time.

To help solve this, designers and manufacturers can learn from the way social networking platforms such as Twitter and Facebook allow users to manage their contacts, build lists and 'unfriend' or 'unfollow' people.

The creation of groups of contacts, for example, work, family, would allow people to separate work and leisure time. They would have the ability to respond to calls differently at different times, so, for example, a work call received after hours could be replied to via SMS asking the caller to respond in the same way. Some of this functionality is starting to appear on phones, but none are fully integrated yet.

Other suggested improvements:

1. Users should be able to search their messages. With more businesses using SMS to send customers important information such as reference or account numbers, customers want to be able to quickly the find information in their saved messages.

2. Delivery reports are currently stored separately to the messages, and usually only a limited number of reports are kept. These should be integrated with the sent message, allowing the user to easily see whether or not a message has been delivered.

3. While some smartphones do allow you to list SMSs as a threaded conversation, similar to the way instant messaging (IM) software behaves, this capability should be introduced as a matter of course to better reflect how people use messaging.

It doesn't make sense that handset manufacturers haven't kept pace with the way consumers behave, says Streicher. This could be explained by SMS not being intended to be a commercial service - it was something that evolved more or less by accident. But its popularity amongst users, and its growing adoption as a major business tool, means that SMS and messaging behaviour should really be a critical factor directing handset designers.

About BulkSMS.com

BulkSMS.com, a division of Celerity Systems (Pty) Ltd, has been in operation since 2000 and is headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa. BulkSMS is a leading wireless application service provider offering bulk SMS messaging solutions to large and small businesses, public benefit organisations, and individuals. BulkSMS.com has a global market presence, including Europe, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

BulkSMS offers two-way bulk SMS messaging, premium rate solutions and supports mobile marketing campaigns to further an organisation's SMS communication needs. BulkSMS flagship messaging solution is the BulkSMS Text Messenger, an application that allows clients to quickly deploy an SMS service (http://www.bulksms.com) from a computer.

The company is a member of the Wireless Application Service Provider Association (WASPA) and the Mobile Marketing Association.

For more information on BulkSMS's commercial messaging services visit http://www.bulksms.com. For direct enquiries email [email protected] or contact BulkSMS telephonically on +27-21-528-3420.

SOURCE BulkSMS.com