Mobile Production vs Mobile Consumption: What's our best bet

Leora here, blogging on behalf of metroCode. And even as I write I'm not exactly sure where this post is going but what i do know is that every day, at least once a day, I come up against a problem that makes me think...there's a good  blog post. So I either scribble something cuneiform-like in my daytimer or write something in pen on my hand (the ultimate mobile device?) and then another emergency pops up, or the ink on my hand fades.  But today it's happening. Our topic for today (thank you Bob and Doug MacKenzie) is mobile behaviour, and yes, that's a huge topic. We at Mobile MUSE have been fortunate enough to be tasked with created culturally-based mobile experiences and assessing them in relation to technological and marketplace realities.

Earlier this week my tech lead Nick and I were bashing our heads together (as we often do), this time trying to figure out if our priority should be encouraging mobile media production -- i.e. building frameworks that facilitate the creation of multimedia on mobile devices; or would we be better off thinking about mobile media consumption at this point? We got to thinking about this as we were working up our "plan B" for the part of metroCode known as "The Grid". The idea sprung from David's vision from MUSE 1 for a city-wide Art Grid...an urban environment annotated and enriched by media clips associated with places and things.  

We took a step in this direction with our cell phone tour for the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale. It started out in May as an audio only, IVR-based service. In October we added SMS and MMS features and functionality. We have found that there's a huge amount of education involved in just getting people to use their cell phones as audio devices that deliver information/commentary. The addition of the text and multimedia messaging features, while indisputably cool and interesting, is getting virtually no uptake. Is there a single reason? Is it merely because of the 'fee fear' that people associate with cell phones? Is it because people aren't really all that interested in public art? Is it because of something in the way we designed the content and user experience?  Some of these issues were addressed in the focus groups sponsored by Nokia and conducted by Richard Smith's team at SFU. Other questions remain....which brings me to The Grid.

The idea behind the Grid is to creative a digital creative commons...a place where people can upload and download rich media that relates to, and deepens the experience of, place. This fall metroCode has been working with students from UBC's multimedia program and SFU's Communications Department to create the first layer of content for The Grid. So far we have received close to 20 rich media pieces, suitable for viewing on the web and via mobile device, that use pieces of permanent public art in Vancouver as their subject matter. The students have used video, narration, music and visual effects to pose questions about these pieces, to provide us with background about the pieces where no signage exists, and to generally encourage further thought on what these pieces represent and what the role of public art is.

The grand vision for the Grid is to have it blanket the city, with either physical signage that informs people that media nuggets are available at specific locations, or a system that uses invisible/electronic tagging, such as the applications that Rodger and Mike and their teams at UBC's Magic Lab are working on.

But before we get there I think we need to ask ourselves some tough questions.  Particularly on the eve of MUSE 3, when priorities are directions are being determined.   We are still quite a ways from achieving mainstream/mass uptake of the types of services the various Mobile MUSE projects have developed.  Will the market demand emerge for some of our services? As a group we collectively believe that to be the case. But in the meantime I think we have to deal with some more basic issues. What will it take to get a larger user for our services? How 'dead easy' do we need to make things? Do we need to spend more time promoting/marketing and less time creating software and content? Do we think we're more likely to hook people as mobile content consumers or as  mobile content producers?  In a pre-You Tube, pre-blog world I think most of us would have said 'as  consumers'.  On the other hand we need to ask ourselves how web-specific those activities are?  And then to think about what the parallel mobile experiences are. 

From a theoretical point of view I believe this problem touches on the disruptive technologies argument, first put forward by Clayton Christensen in "The Innovator's Dilemma" (1997). The basic idea is that there are 2 types of technologies: sustainable technologies and disruptive technologies. The sustainable ones are the mass appeal, widely accepted ways of doing things;  Cars for transportation (the Segway was supposed to 'disrupt' this one but apparently didn't).  Physical objects that contain music (obviously the digital counterpart successfully disrupted things on this front). And of course, our favourite example: mobile devices displacing legacy services / land lines and redefining communication in the process.

I will do more thinking about this over the holidays, as I challenge myself to look at where metroCode's efforts are best focused and, pulling the camera back for a wider shot, to think about where MUSE's best bets as a collective entity are. Should we be driving mobile consumption with our services and applications, or focusing more on enabling production?  Or is the answer somewhere in between...and if so, how do we find the sweet spot, the mix of the two that allows us to create a healthy user base and market, while continuing to challenge the public with experimental, innovative features?