Nokia Cell Phone Researcher on TED

A presentation by Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase is now available on TED.com. His talk is about cell phones and how to design the cell phones of the future. He asks why, regardless of culture, do people usually carry with them keys, money, and a cellphone.

Some of Chipchase’s anecdotes come from observing cell phone users in Uganda. In this regard, Chipchase’s work focuses on the use of cellphones by illiterate people. How, for example, do illiterate people deal with the numbers and names stored in cell phones. His answer: delegation; the responsibilities of reading the phones are delegated. He also looks at how cell phones are shared between a number of users.

Chipchase’s participant-observation work for Nokia was reported by Business Week in 2004.

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