Discussing smartphone use with various people recently, I quickly come back to the same question - what do you need it for? This is not a masked way of saying they don’t need a smartphone, but a genuine question. I’m personally happy to accept that people use smartphones for a variety of reasons, from professional work, to having to pay for parking, and from medical technology to not having access to laptops or computers.
So maybe a stepping stone to better co-design of smartphone use is to be more open about what we need to use our phones for, and why we carry them around with us. This post, then, is a bit of an experiment to start surfacing thoughts. The question is applicable to all devices, but I figure a) better to start somewhere specific, and b) smartphones are a particularly “invasive” device. So…
Which functions on your smartphone do you feel you NEED it for, and why?
To start, I’d say there are some things I like to have my phone on me for - camera, photo editing, note-taking. But the things I probably need it for on the go are:
- Necessary contact from family and friends via phone call, text and (specific) group chats
- Parking apps, as paying by machine often isn’t available here
- Finding directions in strange places
- Access to passwords and one-time codes
- Transferring emergency funds to kids’ bank cards
- Checking my calendar
I guess there will be a lot of overlap, but that’s good to know. And it would also be interesting to know what less common cases exist: I think a mindful tech movement risks coming from a privileged position, and so awareness of these less common needs is all an essential part of the discussion.
There are no right or wrong answers here, just the opportunity to open up and find out from others :)
I’d add public transport to the list. Searching connections, booking tickets, navigating through large train stations etc.
I struggle to agree in the strict sense of need. But it’s a boiling frog scenario.
Public transport managers have mostly quit offering printed schedules and maps. IMO that’s borderline a violation of human rights (all people are entitled to equal access to public services, and I would consider providing info about public transport to be an indispensible part of that public service). Although in terms of smartphones, you can typically use a PC instead. And inside the stations you often have schedules and maps on the walls. But the bus infrastructure is dicier.
In Germany there are ticket sales with online exclusive pricing. Offline people must pay more for the same trip, or even lose access to some tickets entirely. Although a PC may still be an option there.
Sure, you don’t need apps, but they can save you hours of waiting if you can change your plans quickly, for example when a train is delayed or cancelled and you need to find other alternatives.
Yeah I agree, I’ll easily file public transportation apps as a need. During delays it can be vital. And have fun when you find yourself in an area new to you late at night after being out with friends and you don’t even know where the closest bus stop/train or subway station is, without a way to look it up on the phone. You definitely need an app to look that up and to plan your route home.
I used the proprietary apps for public transport back in my pre-Google boycott days and indeed they were quite useful for last minute changes on unfamiliar routes. Then public transport started blocking Tor which broke their app. But I eventually realised public transport is not the way forward anyway.
I switched to a bicycle (more independance and autonomy, better for the environment, better for health [not just exercise but less viral exposure], much more privacy, and cheaper). So if your travel is in cycling range or you can make it so, it makes more sense to ditch public transport entirely.
Public transport is getting increasingly more privacy hostile. More and more networks refusing cash payments, transitions to SMS tickets, more surveillance & facial recognition, more tracking, and despite all that privacy compromise in the end you are still less safe than cycling due to viruses and the unavoidable possibility of attacks (though that’s city-dependant to some extent… some cities are rough cycling).
Cycling is great and I wish I could make it an option, but where I live commute times to most work places are about 1h using public transport. Biking is out of the question unless you have time to sit on a bike for a couple of hours every day. To me even 1h commutes are too much but I have no choice unless I want to pay at least double in rent, which in turn takes away a big part of my freedom.
I’m in a city where the furthest points of the city are reachable in less than 45 min on the bicycle. I took public transport for years. The commute time on public transport was about the same as cycling. This is because cycling is door-to-door. Public transport requires walking to/from the stations on both ends. That walk takes triple the time on foot than on bike. Then you have to wait, and possibly wait again at a transfer point. So that overhead time makes the door-to-door trip the same as cycling. Tram stops are also frequent enough that if I am cycling next to a tram, I pass the tram every time it stops at a stop. The trams average speed side-by-side seems to be only slightly faster than cycling. Also figure that cyclists get more direct routes, one-way streets are two-way to cyclists, and cyclists have traffic immunity and strike immunity.
A 1 hr public transport commute should not be a 2 hr cycle. I’m not sure what crazy circumstance would cause that. Unless you live next to a heavy-rail train with just ~2-3 stops.
If a city is as big as London, then I could see cycling losing the avg race against public transport because the overhead time becomes less significant over long hauls. But you can still control where you work and live to organise your situation to shrink the city, in effect.
Of course it depends on the circumstances. I’m talking about 25 minutes commuter train (~10 stops), changing to either subway, bus or tram. Waiting times are usually pretty short and the walking distance is rarely very long. I’ve ridden my bike three commuter rail stops away and that takes 30 minutes. Going all the way into the city would take way more than twice as long, and then there’s the rest of the way to go.
Yes, the question of how we define “need” is absolutely a key point here, and I guess I deliberately left it open to interpretation as I think it’s subjective, but also that how we define it can change as we think about it and question it too.
The online/offline benefits always irks me - I mean I get the economics behind pushing people to be more “convenient” (on behalf of the company, usually) but it avoids the entire conversation about digital exclusion and accessibility. Strangely, I often see parking rates cost more when you use the app, as you get charged for paying with their card service. Ho hum.