Normob watch

Sat on the train down to London this morning I saw a great piece of normob behaviour. A little bit like Ewan’s recent ‘Does your phone do numbers?’ post, it made me smile, so I thought I’d share it with you.

An older gentleman (possibly 65 ish) got an old Nokia out of his jacket pocket (unfortunately I didn’t see the exact model); took it out of its protective wallet and then got ready to make a call. However, instead of accessing the phone’s address book, he opened up a piece of paper that was in the wallet and typed the number into his phone.

Having a written list of the most used numbers was something that my grandparents used to keep by their old landline phone. If they were alive, I could imagine them using a mobile in exactly the same way as this guy sat near me did. This guy didn’t want to use all the clever applications that you and I might … he just wanted to make voice calls while he was mobile.

While I agree that the industry needs to keep innovating, part of the issue is that normobs like this are still a big part of the market for the operators et al.

Of course, as I was on an East Midlands train, the poor guy had no reception … so even his most basic requirement wasn’t met!