Harri Salminen's Forum Nokia Blog

Random thoughts about mobile (enterprise) application development.

MWS and mobile applications for families

widianuser | 20 June, 2007 23:15

Like bloggers here, there and everywhere have already reported, Nokia has released a new version of the mobile web server solution. Unlike Raccoon, the previous version of the solution, this version is targeted more to end-users and I must admit that installation, setup and usage was now really easy. When I installed this application and tried sharing my calendar with my family, I suddenly remembered Hanna Parkkola's dissertation "Designing ICT for Mothers".

In her paper Parkkola studies technologies used in intra-family communications and notices that for the families, mothers are the real decision makers regarding the ICT technologies used and that

"mothers are willing to use technologies and even implement new ones if they can obtain benefits with them."

So, my big question is: Where are the mobile services for the families?

Some examples of mobile services I'd love to see are:

sharing family calendar. I have my own calendar in my mobile phone and so has my wife. Soon my kids will have their calendars, too. Synchronizing these calendars is a difficult task - haven't seen a mobile solution for this
mobile grocery list. Saving grocery list to a shared web server allowing all family members to access it using their mobile devices is something I think every time I go shopping and try to remember what to buy
"family message mediator". This solution would allow me to send messages to all family members at once and also verify who really has read it.

For the design of mobile applications for families, remember two reasons from Parkkola's study why an application would not be successful: