The Silent Mode

The other day we discussed how certain functionality is standard in some media environments, and not in others. Imagine having a mobile phone without the possibility to put it in silent mode? It would severely impair your experience of the phone as you couldn't bring it to places where such an interruption would be a problem. Unless you turn the phone off of course, but then you lose the whole point of having it.

One simple function enables you to adjust the product to a much wider set of circumstances. So what happens when you mix these characteristics with other media formats? Interesting things.

For instance, what if you could turn on the silent mode on an online newspaper? In this context that might entail turning off everything else but the newspaper article itself. No IM messages, no email notifications, no Twitter updates - just the article, against a faded background to ensure an easy and pleasant reading experience. And as soon as you've finished reading and want to interact, you turn the silent mode off and the site springs into action.

For working with different types of media, we as an industry have been surprisingly unimaginative when it comes to the user experience while consuming our products online. Things can move and be interactive - that's great. But do we want that all the time? Or should this functionality be on demand, just as the media itself?

A simple suggested scenario: First you choose what media you want to consume, then you choose where and when you want to consume it. And then perhaps you choose what mode to consume it in, according to your mood at that time.

There is so much innovation to be done in this space.