First of Three Rambling Posts

The January-February, 2013, issue of the Harvard Business Review had two somewhat interesting articles. I was reading a print issue while waiting for my wife's car to be serviced. Unfortunately, one can't read the entire article on-line without a subscription. But here are my notes. One of the two articles was titled "How People Really Use Mobile; Seven Primary Motivations."

• Self-expression was defined as hobbies and interests. Like using mobile to read about bass fishing.
• Discovery: seeking news and information. Like using mobile to learn about the various bass species.
• Preparation: planning for upcoming activities. Like using mobile to find next bass fishing tournament.
• Accomplishing: managing financial health and productivity. Like using mobile to access cash at one's Schwab account to pay for the bass tournament.
• Shopping: self-explanatory. Like using mobile to buy plane tickets to get you to the bass fishing tourney.
• "Me Time": social networking, videos, window shopping; purely goofing around on the net; nothing serious; relaxing; couch potato stuff

Okay, excluding e-mailing, SMS messages, and voice-over-internet (telephone calls), how do folks use their mobile devices?

• Self-expression: 1% of the time, folks are using mobile to learn more about their hobby, such as fishing
• Discovery: 4% of the time, folks are using mobile to learn about the various bass species 
• Preparation: 7% of the time, folks are using mobile to find the next bass tourney; how to get there, etc
• Accomplishing: 11% of the time, folks are using mobile to access cash to pay for their trip
• Shopping: 12% of the time, folks are using mobile to actually buy the plane ticket
• "Me Time": 47% of the time, folks are using mobile to mindless surf the net

I would assume, that outside the office, this about the same for folks who don't have a SmartPhone or a tablet and use their laptops for the same purposes as above. Actually, my hunch is that "Me Time" decreases on a laptop, and shopping drops down considerably. It only takes a few minutes to actually but a plane ticket on-line or order books through Amazon. Remember, looking for the plane ticket and/or looking for a book is covered under "discovery" and "preparation."

On a laptop, more time would be spent on "accomplishing," managing financial health and productivity. "Accomplishing" would have a higher percent value, and "Me Time" would have a lower percent value. Laptops are much, much better for productivity. I can't imagine many folks "doing their taxes" on their SmartPhone or even their tablet.

The percentages for each category would likely vary among different groups. I can't imaging non-working spouses with no responsibility for family finances actually spending 11% of their mobile time on managing financial health and/or productivity. I assume the percentages were taken from web-data in the aggregate without concentrating on any specific group.

That mobile devices are used almost half the time for "me time" is not surprising. And much "me time" was probably not captured if this was data from the web: a lot of time is spent playing solitaire and Free Cell.