In light of the announcement of the opening of the MEX Awards competition this week, and due to Marek et al’s raging, slobbering levels of common sense when it comes to contextual design and user centred thinking, I thought it might be nice to put together a list of misconceptions that we most commonly see from clients and agencies.

The main one, and one of my most fervent bugbears, is what the ‘average’ mobile user wants. When I say average, I mean, the largest group of mobile users. NOT the media/geek set, but those who make up over 70% of the mobile phone user base in the UK.

As we have been touching on the ‘when will the mass market be ready for enhanced mobile services’ topic for the last week or so, I thought it might be good to plant our feet back on the ground with some good old fashioned luddite vitriol…

So… without further ado.

1. iPhone users are, or will be ubiquitous

Let’s not even go there. They are 14% of smartphone users globally. That’s around 4% in total. Yes 3 million phones have been sold in the UK, and this is as many as read the Sun. It is however the same number of people who voted UKIP in the local elections. It is also mighty hopeful to suggest that those 3 million phones are all still in use as well…

2. People all want their phones to do everything

I know this is anecdotal, but for every excited punter who wants to talk about how their phone does it all, I know 10 people who just want to make calls. Sony Ericsson once said that people will want their phones to do the basics (call text, camera) and One Other Thing. Even looking at behaviours of people with iPhones, I would argue that is still true.

3. Feature development is because customers want it

This is the opposite of the truth. Most users are scared of new features. They would rather be able to get used to a device, and then just keep using it.

However, have you tried to get a simple Nokia in Carphone Warehouse? They are not on display, and if you ask, you are sneered at… by salesmen who make the most commission from phones that have expensive data tariffs.

4. Touchscreen is the future

Unresponsive, difficult to use one handed, suffering from parallax (where there is refraction between the top of the screen and the sensors under it), hard to keep clean, hard not to scratch… The best physical interface I have used was the E71. It has a full keyboard, with beautiful haptic rounded keys. It is a delight to use, and far simpler to get the hang of than any touchscreen.

5. Business users are different to personal users

Who actually uses a different phone for work and home? I mean, there must be some, but proportionally a person’s phone is their phone. People can, you know, answer a call or a text in two different ways. Judging by the conversations on my bus into work, I would say that most people learn to ‘personality multitask’ around age 12… The biggest group of people who have two separate phones is probably drug dealers.

6. Kids are the great adventurers of mobile experiences

Kids just don’t get the chance! The defining thing about kids is that they are skint. They will not use data if it costs them. They will not get a fancy phone if it costs them. What they will do is make do and get the best out of what they have. That is why you see kids using their w810 like it’s an iPhone, with music, games, pics etc etc.

7. People want to change their phone every 6 months or less

For an average, non first adopter punter, you have to wrestle their old phone out of their hands with a crowbar. If the phones didn’t fall apart with increasing regularity, these users would never change. Why would they? New phones have shorter battery life, and are harder to use for texting and calling than the old ones.

8. Everyone wants the mobile internet

If we introduce ANY mobile internet interaction into a mass market campaign for clients, interaction goes down by half to two thirds. This includes a landing page to download free content. People want services that do stuff for them If they are forced to, they will go on the mobile internet to do it.

9. That if stuff is good enough, they will pay for it

Again, we’re not talking about those who feel comfortable buying things via their phone, but people who still think that Premium SMS rip offs are the norm. This is why the boom in mobile social media (the real genesis of mobile internet usage) only happened when data became unlimited, and therefore unnoticeable. Again, some people will pay for some stuff (games and porn spring to mind) but these are usually niche audiences.

10. That Pay As You Go is irrelevant

It is, I believe, still 60% of mobile phones in the UK that are on Pay as you Go. Have you used PaYG? Have you felt the annoyance of having to top up – and not by credit card (that’s cheating) but by going into a shop and buying a card? When you do, things like being able to access Layar seem a little meaningless when you can’t call your boss to tell her you’re going to be late for work…

Thanks again to Caveman Media for the illustration