How to Build an SMS Service
ISBN: 789742233
EAN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2007
Pages: 52
Pages: 52
SMS Interaction Design Considerations > Always On Everywhere
It's not all grief and tears, though. SMS offers a number of advantages over other modes of communication, and if you design your service to take advantage of these, you can distinguish yourself smartly from your competition.
The most obvious of these is always on everywhere. Unlike a PC, people tend to carry their mobile phones with them everywhere they go, and they never turn them off. Because this is the primary distinguishing characteristic of an SMS service, you need to ask yourself "what do people need access to everywhere they go, at any moment?"
If what you're delivering doesn't fit this description, you ought to ask yourself whether you need to be delivering your information via SMS. Is it really critical that I know what my horoscope is while I'm on the bus? Well, perhaps if the influence of Mercury on my moon sign makes travel dangerous, but that ought to be rare.
On the other hand, if you are offering a service that is relevant to the untethered user, providing some information critical in the field, you ought to have a winner. TsunamiSMS (http://www.tsunamisms.com) is an excellent example of this. Do you really want to wait until you check your email to find out there is a tsunami warning for your area?