The Situation

People who are constantly bombarded with repeated Bluetooth requests every time they walk past Co-op’s Bluetooth gopping device are slowly or possibly very quickly going to get annoyed with the vibration in the pocket requiring their attention. It’s just bad etiquette to interrupt someone with something un-expected and then probably ask them again the next day. So if during their personal time, while a client is choosing a sandwich, they’re re-asked to about downloading something, are we providing them with some very simple and mostly detrimental choices, get it, ignore it or turn their Bluetooth off.

Either option is going to be painful to the project, because as the Pervasive group mind map diagram shows, certain media should be subtle and intelligent. If someone’s who’s already downloaded the Application is repeatedly prompted to “Accept the incoming transfer” when they were thinking about which sausage roll to buy from Greggs, they’re gunna’ be pissed off and a little more worn with the whole idea.

A Parallel

To re-enforce the idea of fatigue, imagine work experience tea-boy who keeps forgetting how many sugars you take, and each morning will interrupt you anywhere and everywhere to ask. Not only is he tiring you each time, he’s meant to be (within reason) intelligent about the situation so should remember, the same way people will assume a digital device knows what you’ve got already.

The Issues

Unfortunately, the technology surrounding Bluetooth isn’t always going to know who has what without extra programming, so keeps searching for new connections and asking them to download some content. Which presents us with the problem of Digitally Fatiguing our users.

This clearly brings up the wider questions and solutions, is there a situation where Bluetooth Gopping won’t completely ruin a fragile relationship people might have with the technology already? Is the best way to interact with people over Bluetooth using loads of P.R (Pervasive Relations) or maybe if there were certain zones where people walked into to get content?

Is handset technology at a ripe state to start picking at the branches of Bluetooth, Wifi and GPS? For example, when you look around in the street do enough people have the N95′s ‘always on’ WiFi, or the K750i Sony Ericsson’s Bluetooth, let alone GPS. It’s possible lots of people’s phones probably have their extra connections powered off to preserve battery?

Moving on from worrying about the technology, how about the human controlling each device? Are we going to find that certain social demographics are completely unable to fathom the concept of Bluetooth and end up not having access to the extra services?

However a lot of great things come from really challenging a technology until it pushes social and technological change, as an example the Internet started out incredibly slow, so sites like Youtube would have melted British Telecom with-in seconds. Through pure demand however, the Internet has pushed technological changes increasing bandwidth, allowing to socially alter how people spend their evenings and free time.

In respect of the demographics knowledge it seems Ben’s younger cousins spent Christmas Bluetoothing their content to each other, music, videos and pictures, generally anything they can fit into their phones. Where-as our friends in their 20s regularly swap around silly pictures and naughty naughty videos. Even generations who normally fit into the “can’t program my VCR” at my Barbershop Chorus aren’t afraid to swap their learning tapes around on Bluetooth.

So if we start pushing the technology with Happy Packages and have enough solid partners both commercial and research, could we change the face of Pervasive media? Only with some of the Blue-sky ideas and solid concepts we’ve been imaganeering, things are really really getting exciting. It just seems starting blocks for the Pervasive Sandbox are perfectly timed and we’re about to start something exciting in this age. Especially when people are so keen to enjoy new digital ideas like Facebook, USB Missile Launchers or TV over the internet…

Thought Den and Mobile Pie are now very keen to cultivate that acorn.