Exploring new markets for Firefox OS: mobile and internet behaviours in Central Europe

Experientia has lately been doing a lot of work on mobile OSes, from feature evaluations of some of the more interesting new arrivals, to comparisons of some of the classics. We have also conducted user research into people’s behaviours and attitudes to OSes, exploring their relationships with mobile phones, internet, brands, and with OSes themselves.

In 2013, Experientia worked with Mozilla’s User Experience Research team as they prepared to enter new, emerging markets with FireFox OS. Experientia led an ethnographic research project exploring mobile and internet behaviours in Poland and Hungary. The project involved observation, shadowing and interviews in the two Central European countries.

In keeping with their open source roots, the Mozilla team has shared some key insights from these intriguing emerging markets in a three part blog series on mobile behaviours in Poland and Hungary. Among other insights, the project discovered a uniquely Hungarian mobile culture, where traditions of close family networks and group buying have left a legacy of complicated mobile contracts and ownership

Mozilla blog posts:

• Mobile Research in Hungary: Five Highlights from the Field
  by Bill Selman, Mozilla User Researcher
• Poland & Hungary Series #1: Understanding how people use their mobile phones
  by Dominik Strohmeier and Lindsay Kenzig, Mozilla User Researchers
• Poland & Hungary Series #2: The Phone is in My Life, not My Life is in the Phone
  by Lindsay Kenzig and Dominik Strohmeier, Mozilla User Researchers