On the other side - The Flow

In my quest for finding a usage of a double sided mobile device I have tried to be as exhaustive as I can. I have put a flashlight on the backside. I have even put a mirror there for the vain mobile users. Here's my third attempt to fill that empty space. I've been thinking of the possible yins and yangs of a mobile device. My first thought was content/applications on one side and communication on the other. It may not be possible to separate those entities since they might overlap. Why not put the Flow there which I tried to describe in my previous post? It would be like a digital diary of your life. You can go back in history of your Flow as long as you would like to. From the days when you were a kid (if you wish) until now. You would also have the possibility to bookmark certain dates or events in your flow, so that you'll find them easier later on.

In some of my first posts, I was hallucinating about "context sensitive time navigators" and proposed the turntable. I don't know if that's the best way to navigate in the Flow. But since I came up with that idea then, I thought it would be nice to squeeze that one in as well. So, what you see below is the backside of your future mobile device. All events in the Flow go in the first tab, while the other tabs filter specific types of events. The Flow will not be bound to your mobile device since all handhelds will use fingerprint biometrics for authorization. That means you can access your Flow in any mobile device or computer. The Flow will be stored on the net somewhere, somehow. Hehe, when thinking about it, the Flow will be ridiculously long when you have turned 86... :-)

Double sided mobile device - Yin and Yang

In a series of posts I have argued that it is a waste of space to use just one side of a mobile device. By thinking out load I have tried to find possible usages of such a device. You know that Apple's IPhone has a touch screen to interact with the device. Why not put a touch screen on the other side as well? Why would you do that you might think? Why would you not? I bet there are lots of situations where a double sided device would be more practical, more intuitive and easier to use. As a hypothesis, would it make sense to split up the most common usages and put them on each side? Like the Yin and Yang of a mobile device. I can think of several possible Yins and Yangs of a mobile device. Here are some of them:

• Yin - Content and applications. Yang - Communication.
• Yin - Geography. Location services, GPS, Navigation. Yang - The rest.
• Yin - Media and gaming. Yang - The rest.
• Yin - Health meters (such as pulse, blood pressure) Yang - The rest.
• Yin - Authentication. Fingerprint sensors. Security. Yang - The rest.
• Yin - Practical functions such as a flashlight or a mirror. Yang - The rest.

The question is: Is the single sided mobile device sufficient for all of the examples above? Is it more logical, more intuitive to use only one side? Are two sides only confusing for the user? I don't know since I haven't used a double sided one. An interesting aspect is if the two sides could be able to communicate with each other. How would that work? To be Xhausted...

On the other side - A flashlight

Imagine you're sitting on your sofa watching a good movie a late Friday night. Then suddenly, a "click". Everything turns dark. Your TV, your room, and all the street lights outside. It's a major power outage. You can't see anything really. Luckily you have your mobile device in your pocket as usual. You slide up the backside face of the mobile device and turn on the built-in flashlight. Your room lits up, and you can navigate in your apartment.
In an earlier post, I argued that it was a pity that the IPhone only uses half the space available. One side is full of goodies, while the other side is just an empty space of plastic - useless. So, since the backside of the IPhone gives no value at all to the user, then anything that adds value would be infinitely better (mathematically speaking, that is). Your mobile device is a thing you carry with you all day long. Why not put as many usages as possible to it since it's available all the time? Maybe it would feel kind of dorky to have a built-in flashlight in your mobile device. But I think you'd appreciate it in the scenario described above. In an other post, I came up with the idea of having a built-in recordable mirror on the backside. I guess that would attract the vain mobile users of the world. But what do I know, I'm just thinking out loud.

IPhone - A waste of space

Don't get me wrong. I love my IPhone. It has all the functionality that I need to retrieve information and to communicate with other people. Plus a whole lot more: a camera, calendar, maps, Ipod, YouTube, weather etc. My previous phone, a Sony Ericsson, is light years behind IPhone when it comes to usability. The touch screen is surprisingly easy to use. You almost don't even have to read the manual to get started using this device. The user interface is so slick and utterly well designed that every task you perform becomes joyful. To put it shortly, it's a hallmark of design by Apple.

According to the technical specification for IPhone, the height is 4.5 inches (115.5 mm) and the width is 2.4 inches (62.1 mm). It has a 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen with 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 ppi. Nothing strange about that. But take a close look at the back side of the IPhone here beside. It looks slick with the rounded corners and the silvery Apple logo. But what else? Really, it's just an empty black plastic surface which gives the user no value at all. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. To me that seems like a great waste of space. A mobile device of the future needs as much space as possible to squeeze in functionality and content. Instead of using the total area of the both sides together (143.4 cm²), IPhone is only using half of that. I'm going to try to find out possible usages of a double sided mobile device. To be continued.

images courtesy of Apple Inc.