The Big Picture
By David Pescovitz, Thu Jun 23 11:15:00 EEST 2005

Mobile researcher John Poisson, CEO of the Fours Initiative, focuses on how cameraphones could revolutionize photography and communication -- if people would only start using them more.




As the leader of Sony Corporation's mobile media research and design groups in Tokyo, John Poisson spent two years focused on how people use cameraphones, and why they don't use them more often. Now, he and human-computer interaction researchers Chris Beckmann and Scott Lederer are developing cameraphone software and services they hope will get the world snapping and sharing. The ubiquity of cameraphones could lead to a "whole new class of photography," Poisson says, but only if people realize that the devices are much more than the digital equivalent of Polaroids in our pockets.

TheFeature: What have you learned over the course of your research?

Poisson: People think of the cameraphone as a more convenient tool for digital photography, an extension of the digital camera. That's missing the mark. The mobile phone is a communications device. The minute you attach a camera to that, and give people the ability to share the content that they're creating in real time, the dynamic changes significantly.

TheFeature: Aren't providers already developing applications to take advantage of that shift?

Poisson: Well, we have things like the ability to moblog, to publish pictures to a blog, which is not necessarily the most relevant model to consumers. Those tools are developed by people who understand blogging and apply it in their daily lives. But it ignores the trend that we and Mimi Ito and others are seeing as part of the evolution of photography. If you look at the way people have (historically) used cameras, it started off with portraiture and photographs of record -- formalized photographs with a capital "P." Then as the technology evolved, we had this notion of something called a snapshot, which is much more informal. People could take a higher number of pictures with not so much concern over composition. It was more about capturing an experience than photographing something. The limit of that path was the Polaroid. It was about taking the picture and sharing it instantly. What we have today is the ability to create today is a kind of distributed digital manifestation of that process.

TheFeature: Through multimedia messaging services (MMS)?

Poisson: MMS is a one-to-one push model that ignores the nature of sharing. We're focusing much more on the ability to share in a real-time space with people that you know. You have a camera that's with you every waking hour of the day and is always connected to the Internet. The idea is that if you enable people's natural inclination to share what they're doing with their friends, then you've got something that unlocks usage characteristics that are interesting from a sociological standpoint but also very interesting from a business standpoint.

TheFeature: Why do you think MMS hasn't caught on?

Poisson: MMS has several problems. Cameraphones are kind of like home exercise equipment: the ad make it look like a cameraphone will be fun, easy to use, improve your life and make you smile more. But when you get home and try it, you realize it's a pain in the ass. So you don't really use it. We think it's the software. The MMS interface on most phones is user-hostile. It can take 40 clicks to do what you want to do. There isn't really that ability to take a picture and share it with someone intuitively like you can when sending a text message. And the ability to add music or a little icon to a picture is not aligned with people's simple desire. There's also very little feedback that what you sent was received. It's simply a send mechanism and not a communication mechanism. That ignores the very nature of what this mobile device is.

TheFeature: Short messaging services (SMS) don't really provide confirmation of receipt either.

Poisson: I think that's a liability, but SMS caught on despite that. When I send someone a text message, they're mostly likely going to reply, even if only briefly to confirm they've received my message. If I send you a picture though, are you going to send another picture back to me?

TheFeature: Do you also see problems with the provider's business model for MMS?

Poisson: The pay-per-use model, even for SMS, is a bit of a liability. The way carriers are charging for MMS is fundamentally broken. I may incur a cost when I send you a picture. I may also incur a cost for you though. It's like sending someone a letter and they have to pay the postage as well. Now carriers are trying to support unlimited picture messaging within their network. You can see they're trying to capitalize on their investment in MMS infrastructure, but they're using that technology as a way to lock people into their network. But people want to communicate with each other regardless of their carrier. I understand the carriers' point of view, but they're continuing to not provide a use for that cameraphone that's relevant to people.

TheFeature: I know you're in development mode, but can you hint at what your company, The Fours Initiative, will deliver?

Poisson: We are developing software and services that allow people to make use of their cameraphone as media-powered communication. Principally, the idea is not just about sharing photographs, but sharing experiences.