The Content Chasm
Market Discontinuity and the User Experience of Wireless Internet

So Oracle launched their new wireless mobile portal last week, OracleMobile.com. This is the first of potentially many players in the highly controlled world of wireless internet portals. In the new high technology marketing world of "Ready, Fire, Aim", it is considered essential to be first to market and build mind share. However, it's not difficult to spot where the Chasm lies ahead in this new wireless market. With wireless internet services, the User Experience isn't defined merely by the Interaction Designer. In this case, as I said earlier, "It's the Content, stupid!"

With the arrival of OracleMobile.com and the new WAP Phones, it is possible to subscribe to a number of services which can be delivered to, or interact with your phone. This is a new market. The high technology market adoption lifecycle tells us that new markets are populated by technology enthusiasts - geeks! What this means is simple, a geek near you, in a pub not so far away, will some Friday evening quite soon, be demonstrating to his friends, how it is possible using his phone and his OracleMobile account to pick a restaurant in Baltimore. He is unlikely to understand when his friends say, "But we're not in Baltimore! Can it do it in Dublin?"

You have just been witness to the true Technology Enthusiast at work. Technology, for such a person, doesn't need to work particularly well. It doesn't need to deliver "compelling". It doesn't need to deliver a "Whole Product". It just has to perform some "cool" function. For the Technology Enthusiast it is important to be there, in the pub, on a Friday night, FIRST! Just to show off that with a bit of effort and perhaps an hour of agonized learning that it is now possible, however unlikely, that you can book a restaurant in Baltimore. Never mind that in the whole world over, the restaurant booking system only works in 5 major US cities.

The Early Chasm

It is now widely expected and understood that the discontinuity in the growth of a High Technology market lies between the Early Adopter (or Visionary) market and the early mainstream (or Pragmatist) market. However, I believe that with Wireless Internet, there will be an early discontinuity - a chasm in the market growth. Let me explain why that should be so.

Crossing the Chasm

Traditionally, a Chasm develops between visionary Early Adopters and Pragmatist mainstream buyers. This Chasm is crossed through time by increasing the "compelling" attraction of the technology in more and more niche markets. This is best achieved by taking a User Centered Design approach and delivering solutions which meet Users' needs in any given market. Recently, the term User Experience has become the trendy way of expressing this. An improved User Experience leads to more and more Users. The Web World trying to appeal to a broader and broader market of people has recognized that the secret to traffic volume and customer loyalty is improved User Experience.

This by-and-large is great news for Interaction/UI Designers. It is becoming widely accepted that the path to riches in the mainstream market is paved by such a UI Designer or User Experience Architect.

However, the market growth gap between Visionaries and Pragmatists is not the only Chasm. Discontinuities have been recognized [Moore 99] between each sector in the lifecycle With Wireless Internet, the first Chasm will be deep. This first Chasm is the gap between Technology Enthusiasts and Visionaries. To cross that chasm you need Content.

What the Visionary needs

In traditional PC applications, or the growing number of Web based Data Warehouse Applications, Data is always available. Businesses accumulate it all the time as business takes place and transactions are made. An Application which tracks the delivery of parcels within a given parcel delivery service is accumulating data every day, every minute. When the system designers developed such a system, they could make a perfectly valid assumption that data would be available.

So along comes a visionary boss at a parcel delivery company, and he correctly realizes that he can gain a competitive advantage by deploying high technology to track his company's business. Money and time are spent and in due course such a system is implemented. Later, it's made available on the web and the Customer can now track their own parcels. What is important here is to realize that there was a Vision. A Vision which could show that a clear competitive business advantage could be made from implementing such a system. That vision was dependent on the fact that the data was available for every parcel in the system, anywhere in the world.

What for example, would be the use of a parcel delivery tracking system, if it only worked in 5 major cities in the US. "Yes, sir! Our tracking system works in the Baltimore area. You are in Baltimore so we can track your pickup.", "But my parcel is going to Paris, France". "Ah yes. Well. Errr. We don't quite cover France yet!"

To deliver a vision, you need data. Without data it's just an interesting piece of technology.

The Wireless Vision

So let's get back to our Restaurant example. Before these wireless mobile services can deliver the vision to an oft traveled businessman, the service has to be able to deliver a broad range of restaurants in every business destination in North America and beyond. It needs data.

Let's take another example - Golf. Let us say that the "compelling" argument for the visionary business user, is that it will optimize his leisure time. That 4 hour dead period waiting for the next flight could be easily turned into 9 holes of golf, at a course next to the airport. Well, in order to do that, it isn't enough simply to have access to golf course Tee-times at 5 selected courses in the San Diego area. It has to work in places where businessmen go and expect to play golf. Places like Scotland and Ireland as well as Florida and California.

Until you have data, to deliver the answer, ubiquitously, all you really have is an interesting piece of technology.

Interaction Design is not the answer!

What this means is, that perhaps for the first time in the high technology industry, the User Experience is out-of-control of the Interaction Designer. You can have the best, the easiest, the friendliest, User Experience in the world but if you don't have data that experience is useless. The technology is destined for the bin or the shelf to collect dust.

Getting the data for these services is a problem. The answer is Vertical Content Aggregation which will ultimately be supplied to the Wireless Portals. For example, a Vertical Portal for Golf Club services - Tee-Times, Green Fees, Course description, difficulty rating and user reviews will be needed. Such portals could spring up in Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Florida, and the world over. They in turn will supply their data to global aggregators. Such an aggregator will be vertical in nature. Perhaps only Golf. Perhaps, wider - Sports for example. The global aggregator will supply to the wireless portal, which in turn delivers to the End User.

Finally, when we have n-tiered vertical content aggregation will we be able to deliver compelling, whole products which can appeal to Visionaries and later to Pragmatist mainstream buyers. Only then will the mobile wireless market have matured and start to produce the returns which are expected of it. Don't expect that to be soon. Building this infrastructure of n-tiered vertical content aggregation is going to take a long time and be a painful process. Until that time, expect the User Experience with wireless internet to be spectactularly "geekish".

References:

Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm, 2/ed, 1999