Project 74: Communications Widget Suite

Background

Mobile WRT widgets are emerging to modern Symbian phones. Yet the real potential from the end-user perspective is still to be discovered.

The widgets of today are quite incoherent from look and feel point of view. As the name states, the Communications Widget Suite provides a set of communications oriented widgets. All the widgets should follow the same uniform look and feel. They should be easy to install and easy to take in to the use even for people who are not previously installed additional software to their mobile phones. The widgets should also feel as friendly as possible, for example the amount of security related questions during the installation and during everyday usage should try to be minimized.

In general the end-users have already access to the information provided by these widgets. However, the widget suite gathers the information to one place. From end user point of view these widgets provide everyday tools to make the mobile service usage even more fun and fluent.

Project goal

Create a set of communications oriented mobile WRT widgets.  These widgets should be easy-to-use and they should follow uniform look and feel. Also a down-to-earth business model around the provided concept should be made, however the level of details may vary widget by widget.

The initial set of widgets is the following:

1) Mobile Event Planner Widget:

You are reserving a restaurant for a dinner and want everybody to vote for their favourite restaurant. Since it's already 5pm, all your buddies are not reachable through email and you don't want to call each of them separately. SMS-based notification about dinner & voting options would be easiest for everybody, but there is limited offering of this kind of mobile services at the moment. There are multiple ways to do event planning by using current Internet service like Doodle, Nimenhuuto.com or Google Calendar. They all rely on email notifications, which can't always reach all required recipients in time. Each of them have limited mobility support, especially for older devices without capable browsers. Now it's right time to implement an easy-to-use event planner, which is targeted for mobile users.

The service should be able to answer  to following three user questions: Who's coming?, What time & date is ok? What is your favourite option?

2) Phone Number Resolver widget:

This widget is capable of resolving the names behind the numbers in the missed calls list. It can also be enhanced to include the capability to show the calls, which are missed due to the fact that the phone is not connected to the network, e.g. switched off. This feature is similar to Sonera Kuka Soitti-service.  ( http://www.sonera.fi/Puhelin+ja+liittym%E4/Palvelut/Tavoitettavuus/Kuka%... ).
 
3) Phone Number Search widget:

Allows one to search the phone numbers for a given name.

4) Social Phonebook widget:

Shows visual information about ones contacts. Based on the log files in the phone the widget shows the contacts one has been communicating the most with.  Who have you been calling the most, who has called you most actively? Who are your most active messaging partners? Etc.

5) Local Service Numbers widget:

Shows phone numbers for services, which have local numbers. The first service to be added is the local Taxi phone numbers. The widget first positions the caller and then shows the number of the local taxi center.

The project group will begin by analyzing the technical and functional feasibility of these widgets. If one or some of them cannot be implemented due to some reasons those can be left out of the scope. On the other hand, the project group can also suggest some additional widgets to be included to the suite.  All the widgets should be installable and usable as part of the suite but also as individual widgets.

The widgets will be built as standalone WRT widgets if possible. But the implementation may also contain a server part to accomplish some tasks, which cannot be done in the mobile phone.

Desired student skills / team size

Project manager, graphical designer, usability expert, software specialists, business case expert

Contact persons:

Antti Leinonen, TeliaSonera, antti.leinonen (at) teliasonera.com

Rami Lehtonen, TeliaSonera, rami.lehtonen (at) teliasonera.com

Please also inform Demola Staff when you contact the company contact person.