Hasta La Creative!

Eighty percent of the world’s population has access to a mobile communications network, but only half the people have a mobile phone. That kind of opportunity–literally billions of potential customers–has big business on the move. Everyone from product designers to marketers to academics are working to advance the cause of global connectivity.

The fact of which explains why Sara Corbett, writing for The New York Times Magazine, brings a cool eye to her piece on Jan Chipchase and his quest to help people living in poverty emerge from those conditions. His tool of change? Naturally, the cellphone.

Chipchase works for the Finnish cellphone company Nokia as a “human-behavior researcher.” He’s also sometimes referred to as a “user anthropologist.” He gathers the sort of on-the-ground intelligence that is central to human-centered design.

One morning last fall, I arranged to meet Chipchase in a neighborhood in Accra where he and a few other Nokia people were doing research. At his suggestion, I took a taxi to the general area and then called him on his cellphone. Chipchase used his phone to pilot me through the unfamiliar chaos, allowing us to have what he calls a “just in time” moment.

There are a growing number of economists who maintain that cellphones can restructure developing countries in a similar way. Cellphones, after all, have an economizing effect. My “just in time” meeting with Chipchase required little in the way of advance planning and was more efficient than the oft-imperfect practice of designating a specific time and a place to rendezvous. He didn’t have to leave his work until he knew I was in the vicinity. Knowing that he wasn’t waiting for me, I didn’t fret about the extra 15 minutes my taxi driver sat blaring his horn in Accra’s unpredictable traffic. And now, on foot, if I moved in the wrong direction, it could be quickly corrected. Using mobile phones, we were able to coordinate incrementally.

To someone who has spent years using a mobile phone, these moments are common enough to feel banal, but for people living in a shantytown like Nima — and by extension in similar places across Africa and beyond — the possibilities afforded by a proliferation of cellphones are potentially revolutionary.

Speaking to the potential for meaningful change, cellphones as transaction devices is an area that’s getting tons of attention from users and carriers alike. Here’s an interesting scenario that shows how a cell connects people and can facilitate a monetary transaction between them at the same time.