I was walking along Holborn with the camera equipment yesterday heading to a Nokia briefing about 10 blocks away. As I walked past an unfamiliar bus stop and briefly wondered if the number 38 that has just pulled up went past Great Windmill Street.
The bus stop signage was blank with a 'sorry there's no information here' message from Transport for London. I considered getting my iPhone out -- for I knew the London Bus app would tell me in a few clicks.
But what I really wanted to do was point my phone at the bus and for my phone's screen to immediately change to a contextual menu of possibilities. Right-away I wanted it to do a 'Terminator' -- you know -- list a whole load of pertinent information about the bus. I wanted to route-map from here (my location) to the end of the line. I wanted it to have automatically calculated that by taking *this* bus, I would arrive at Great Windmill Street in 5.8 minutes. It would have naturally been aware of my schedule and the location of my next meeting.
I'd have also liked it to have polled the available taxis in the area and automatically determined that I could be there in 3 minutes for a cost of 6 pounds. I'd have liked to have seen the "Book taxi? 15 seconds arrival time" option on screen. I'd have liked it to have presented the taxi option to me because it knows I prefer, all things being equal, to use pre-taxed income as a business expense and thus 6 quid wouldn't have bothered me too much, especially given my heightened blood pressure, heart rate and stress indicators (from carrying all the camera gear). Further, I'd have liked to have seen that the system automatically prioritised Taxi-Man-Joe, the kind and jovial chap who's cab I've taken a few times across the months.
This should all have been displayed to me dynamically and *immediately*. No clicking, no data lag, no messing around.
For all the 'my Desire is better than your N900 which is better than your N8 and your X10', for all that hot air, the sad reality is that this kind of user experience is decades away. Decades. The basic 'apps' exist -- on the iPhone. I can piece together the experience across maybe 5 minutes with multiple, multiple apps and some phone calls. But goodness me, the industry can't even collectively ensure I can make a 4k/sec voice call without it dropping as I walk down Oxford Street.
The industry can't even sort itself out with an ecosystem that enables app developers to plug-in to some kind of greater mobile consciousness that would deliver this kind of experience to everyone. This is the same industry that collectively demands 30-40% of 'anything' that goes through its transactional systems. Dear me.
Its going to be years and years before we can get this kind of thing.
