Abstract :
There are many ways to combine devices, data and functions. It is a fact of modern marketing that device makers often try to create ecosystems around their products. They seek to provide accessories for their gadgets, often as hardware but increasingly as software add-ons. One consequence of this ability to add capabilities to devices is the ability to concentrate functions previously requiring many gadgets in a single piece of hardware -just one form of convergence. The word ´convergence´ is an overloaded term in the communications industry. Here, I want to explore how devices are beginning to implement convergence in a number of ways. The most common form of convergence is combining functions on one device. Today´s mobile phone offers decent implementations of the functions of a music player and what used to be carried as a separate personal digital assistant (PDA), such as a calendar, contacts and note-taking facilities. There are many ways to combine different sets of functions and a range of choices when it comes to the platform which the devices are based on, be it Windows Mobile, PalmOS, or OS X. It is healthy for the marketplace and innovation generally that these choices exist. It is also the case that single-function devices are still marketed, often concentrating on doing one task really well, or within some exceptional performance criteria, without the inevitable design compromises of a multifunctional device. The second type of convergence brings together more than one role or context for the user. How many people have you seen juggling more than one device in order to look at their personal home diary as well as a work calendar on their company´s enterprise system? This convergence is even more powerful when implemented across a number of applications calendars, address books and email accounts, for example. One device showing, for example, a complete but filterable picture of your personal information spanning home and work contexts is extremely - owerful. The third type of convergence is in access networks. It wasn´t so long ago that users would need to change to a different device if they needed a different network connection, for speed, greater coverage or some other reason. More devices now support multiple networking technologies. Device designers are increasingly realising that making intelligent selection and access to different networks transparent to the user is vital. Streamlining authentication to networks and concealing changeover between networks is essential to making it easy for people to use a device. And if you make something easy, people will do it.
