The death of dead time
Way back when, every mobile gadget aimed to fill in little gaps in people’s day: dead times like waiting for a bus, walking to a train, or perhaps when out at lunch.
I’m struck by how the dead time opportunity no longer exists. Every morning I take the tube to work. Ten years ago people read newspapers, or books, or just stood and avoided eye contact. The latter may be just a London thing. Now, everyone is fiddling with their phone, tapping emails on a Blackberry, listening to music on mp3 players, or playing games on Nintendos. I even saw someone with a Sony Ebook reader on the way home last night. Result: There is no dead time left to fill. People already have multiple fun or work options that help them to avoid boredom.
So, 2009′s new mobile phones, other devices or mobile software have to displace an existing digital activity. In fact, they have to compete with multiple digital options as well as books, newspapers and the ubiquitous freesheets. This is hard. For Londoners, it’s never been easier to avoid eye contact underground.
We’re in the run up to MWC, when the great of the mobile industry will make their major 2009 product launches. To succeed, these products have to be: attractive to persuade people to buy them; be easy to take along all the time (so are light, small and have a long battery life); and deliver a compelling enough experience that people reach for that device or launch that application/game/music/movie/website/social network on a regular basis.
The death of dead time means that to succeed, companies have to father the birth of excellence.
When I was in London in January, I felt that relatively few people were looking at mobile device screens compared with Tokyo. (Although I think there may be a higher percentage of passengers in London who listen to music). Also the free newspapers (and lack of dustbins) at Tube stations create an interesting “behavior”, whereby people retrieve the discarded trash of previous travellers to use as time-filler reading materials for their journeys…
So I think that device makers still have plenty of of idle eyes to entertain in London. London’s early adopters might have picked up habits that occupy all of their “dead” time, but I think there’s a large follower population that are still old-school newspaper readers and eye-contact avoiders.
I wonder if you also see mobile device use happening more frequently outside of “dead time” – displacing other activities in people’s lives. A few people in Japan have commented on the amount of mobile device use during “golden time” — while people are watching TV at home etc.
(The terms that I have seen to descibe this are “between time” which corresponds to your “dead time” – and “golden time” which means that mobile device use displaces an existing activity or distracts attention from an existing activity)
Jonathan Browne
February 6, 2009 at 2:15 am
So reading a book or the news on paper is “dead time”, but reading it on a slab of silicon isn’t? I think your prejudices are showing a little.
A point I think you’re missing for compelling mobile devices, though you’ve mentioned it before in other contexts: instant or near-instant powering up and down. If you’re changing trains, grabbing a seat, or whatever, you need to be able to pull the gadget out of your pocket and start using it straight away – like a book. This is not just a hardware- and OS-level decision; games for mobile devices need to be pauseable and saveable at any time, for example.
RogerBW
February 6, 2009 at 9:39 am
Jonathan – replacing other activities is key. I love the idea of “golden time” use. I see that happening here too.
Freesheets are key: This morning on the tube I could see no one reading a paid newspaper or a book. Last night the only person reading a (dead trees) book had a book that was a giveaway with The Times earlier in the week, so at least one person still buys newspapers.
There are definitely many more mobile devices — not just phones — in use on the tube now than ten years ago. I was just as sensitive/aware to gadget use around me then as I used to work for Psion, the former PDA maker.
Key difference with Japan is that on the underground parts of London’s tube, there is no mobile network reception. So, phones only work there in offline mode: That has to hit their utility and so the frequency of phone use. I wrote a post on the old Jupiter blog about the importance of offline and why the iPhone is so poor at that scenario compared with a Blackberry. Will link to that blog entry once I find time to re-publish the Jupiter blog archive online.
Ian Fogg
February 6, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Roger – No, you misunderstand. The time is dead if someone isn’t doing anything with it. If they are reading a paper or a book then it isn’t dead time.
My observation is fewer people are idle on the tube now – Those that aren’t interested in reading now have numerous other potential activities that didn’t exist 10 years ago for the mass market in a convenient form (the ease of use is key): email, digital music, console quality games, web browsing, podcasts, watching tv video, ebooks, social networks, even SMS, youtube clips, etc. etc.
Many of those that like reading, including me, read a little less on the way to/from work as there are so many other alternatives. I used to always read a magazine or newspaper on the tube, now I do so only some of the time.
Ian Fogg
February 6, 2009 at 1:23 pm
One very popular tube activity you overlooked is relatively new but platform-neutral – the sudoku. It’s my ‘dead-time- filler of choice and when I used to supply content to publishers I recall the observation that the sudoku alone doubled the time many reader spent with certain free papers.
Part of its appeal (as with other puzzles in print and on phones and on consoles – cf Brain Training) is the sense that it is an ‘improving’ activity, a mental workout rather than just a way of passing the time.
I agree with you about the shift in the last few years from dead time to being occupied on tube journeys. The UK has adopted more of a US-style fear of dead time, I’d posit, which means more of us, aided by technology, now fill every gap in the day with something ‘improving’.
Nick Thomas
February 6, 2009 at 2:47 pm