IMS and Utility

By Mikael E. Björling, Jennie Carlsten, Piotr Kessler, Erik Kruse and Mats Stille
IMS is an ideal platform for developing an ecosystem of enriched communication services that can work across numerous device platforms and operator networks. While the promise of IMS is exciting, players in the telecommunications industry would be well served to make utility the guiding principle when creating these services.

The industry can greatly improve person-to-person communication by paying attention to, and taking advantage of, known user behavior patterns when taking steps to enrich voice communication and improve interaction between voice and data services. It would be a shame if the new services that IMS enables are too complicated for widespread adoption.

Usability helps determine the success or failure of mobile services. Poor usability is a significant barrier to diffusion. This was very evident for services such as the Mobile Internet (WAP) and picture messaging (MMS). At the time of their introduction, these services were simply too complicated: users had to configure the services manually, they were difficult to use and their performance was lackluster.

For enriched communications services to succeed, particularly in the mobile space, users must find them easy to use and interact with. Therefore, a criterion for developing enriched communicationservices is coherent interaction and system design.

At Ericsson, utility was a key consideration when planning and developing Ericsson IMS weShare, which at present includes four services: 1) Image, for sharing snapshots; 2) Motion, for sharing live video; 3) Media File, for sharing a stored file, such as a picture or video clip; and 4) Whiteboard, for sharing what is drawn on a picture or a black background.

Guiding the development of Ericsson IMS weShare were fundamental utility questions such as:

• How will the service be used and in what context?

• Which goals should be supported and what are the driving forces for enriched communication?

Ericsson conducted extensive consumer research to address these and other important utility issues. The research, conducted in China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the UK and the USA, was based on:

• 3-hour interviews with 334 focus-group participants;

• 1.5-hour, in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 105 participants; and

• a quantitative study of combinational services based on a survey of 14,500 consumers (representative sample).

The specific Ericsson IMS weShare study consisted of:

• 7 focus groups with 56 consumers (Early Adopters) in Sweden and the UK;

• 20 in-depth interviews (Early Adopters) in Sweden and the UK;

• A web survey of 500 participants (Early Adopters) in Sweden; and

• 10 pairs of consumers in a detailed usability test (Early Adopters) in Sweden.

Research indicates that users are most likely to use Ericsson IMS weShare services outside the home (e.g., when they are purchasing something, when they are at an event or simply when out and about). In many such situations, the user will be in a demanding environment and must thus pay attention to his or her surroundings. Therefore, the service must be easy and quick to use (spontaneous usage).

Device configuration is another key utility consideration. When MMS was introduced, many users had to visit a webpage or call their operator to obtain the right configuration for their phone. Ericsson is addressing this matter by introducing a technique called automatic device configuration (ADC). Ericsson IMS weShare reuses ADC to give consumers a high-quality, out-of-the-box experience. If the Ericsson IMS weShare application has been pre-installed on a phone, the configuration will be set up automatically.

The most interesting use-case for pervasive usage of Ericsson IMS weShare services calls for installing the application in phones already in use. Ericsson has developed a simple model for downloading applications and associated configuration parameters over the air. This method eliminates configuration-related hassles for users. Additional work is underway to complement this model with automatic downloading when a user powers on a phone for the first time after having subscribed to Ericsson IMS weShare services. This is one way of ensuring that consumers have an immediate and positive out-of-the-box experience.

A new communication culture has sprung up, putting new demands on the future. Voice communication is still a fundamental element, but by itself it is not always enough in today’s fragmented society. Rich and spontaneous communication, on the other hand, adds tremendous value when physical presence is not an option.

Successful operators will understand that meeting the expectations of the future (consumer requirements regarding mobile services) means working with clear and understandable concepts that are easy to use and deliver quality and consensus. Understanding consumers, the context of usage and what goals need to be supported is fundamental to developing the many new services that IMS will enable.

Ericsson’s authors: Mikael E. Björling, ConsumerLab Researcher; Jennie Carlsten, IMS weShare Marketing Manager; Piotr Kessler, Chief Architect, Client Software Service Layer; Erik Kruse, Senior Expert Consumer Behavior, Consumer Lab; Mats Stille, Expert, Mobile Switching and Network Architecture.

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