Вы услышите рассказ молодого человека о своей работе в компании Nokia. В следующих заданиях выберите правильный ответ.
1. The narrator says that his job in the usability group at Nokia was
1) designing software for an economics project.
2) connected with designing mobile phones.
3) aimed at exploring people’s experience.
2. According to the narrator, mobile phones
1) are carried more often than keys and money.
2) can be used to identify people.
3) usually fail in emergency situations.
3. In the past few years, the narrator has done a lot of research
1) in large communities like New York.
2) in places where people are just beginning to use mobiles.
3) in different parts of the USA.
4. The research shows that
1) farmers use mobiles more often than bankers.
2) mobiles are more beneficial to people on the lowest rungs of society.
3) people on the lowest rungs of society have fewer opportunities to use mobile phones.
5. The narrator is surprised that in some countries
1) most mobiles are prepay.
2) people are incredibly price-conscious.
3) people use mobiles not only as a means of communication.
6. The narrator says that their latest innovations have made it possible
1) to create a special mobile phone for those who can’t read.
2) to design four new products.
3) for people to keep privacy while sharing their mobiles.
7. The narrator runs his own blog because
1) he finds it interesting and attractive.
2) he wants to work with talented people.
3) he would like to answer people’s questions.
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My first job out of university was designing software for an economics project, but I realised that I didn’t know what I was doing, so I took a master’s in user interface design. In 2000 a job in the usability group at Nokia came up. At the time I didn’t even own a mobile phone. The task was to carry out ‘user experience research’ so we pitched a year-long international study on what objects people carry with them and why.
It turned out that the common denominator between cultures, regardless of age, gender or context is: keys, money and, if you own one, a mobile phone. Why those three objects? Without wanting to sound hyperbolic, essentially it boils down to survival. Keys provide access to warmth and shelter, money is a very versatile tool that can buy food, transport and so on. A mobile phone is actually a great tool for recovering from emergency situations, especially if the first two fail. We’ve also started to see the mobile phone being used as the primary form of projecting your identity. For instance, if you live in a community with no street signs, because your street is off the map or not officially recognised, you find people are writing their phone numbers above their door.
In the past few years, we’ve done a lot of work with people in so-called emerging markets. A mobile phone is just as valid for a farmer on the outskirts of New Delhi as a banker in New York. What we’ve discovered is that for people on the lowest rungs of society, the mobile phone actually has a disproportionately great benefit to them compared with the banker in New York, because they have fewer alternatives. We do research in such communities because they are incredibly innovative in the way they use their mobile phones.
In some countries people are incredibly price-conscious and measure costs in seconds and cents. In Ghana, for example, we saw that people tend to buy two or more SIM cards, one for each network provider. In a country like Uganda, most mobile phones are prepay. What really surprised us was that people are using their phones as a kind of money transfer system. They would buy prepaid credit in the city, ring up a phone kiosk operator in a village and ask the credit to be passed on to someone in the village — say, their sister — in cash.
The tough part of my job is using the data we collect to inform and inspire how my colleagues think, and in turning this research into new ideas. For instance, we did a study on phone sharing in Uganda and Indonesia, and within a year we had two products out. They support multiple address books, allowing people to share a device within a family or a company while giving them a degree of privacy. We have also carried out a lot of research into how people who can’t read communicate using mobile phones. We fed that back to the device designers, so the phones could be designed to work better. But we didn’t want to create a phone specifically for those who can’t read — they’re not going to buy this kind of phone because of the social stigma it would carry.
My blog ‘Future Perfect’ includes a lot of my musings about what I see on my travels. The motivation behind the blog is that I do something that totally fascinates me, and I’m lucky to be well resourced and to work with very talented people. I want to be able to communicate some of that. It’s not about saying what the answers are; it’s about asking the questions and maybe some of those will stick in people’s minds and they’ll ask those questions in their own contexts.
