Scenarios for Location-based SMS

Scenarios offer a lot of advantages in the design process. One often overlooked is that the marketing folks can re-use the same scenarios used for product conceptualization and usability testing for their advertising campaigns.

ATT has been offering a service based on location aware SMS called Find Friends. They have a great flash animation showing people in slightly contrived situations in which they might use the service. Go here and click 'view demo' on the right. The great thing about scenarios is that they show potential problem situations that may arise. See if you can spot them in the flash clips.

One of the problems with getting group communication applications to take off is making sure a critical mass of people have the capability to use it. SMS in the USA took forever to take off, in large part because most standard phones didn't support sending SMSs. Unfortunately it appears ATT is making people selectively sign up for the service - meaning all the people you want to coordinate with probably won't be contactable using it.