Google explains its "mobile user experience strategy"

Via Clive Shepherd and someone who commented on Clive's recent post about Mobile Learning, I came across this informative piece by Stephen Wellman - "an upfront look at how Google designs its mobile applications" - reporting from an event addressed by Google's Leland Rechis in New York on 10 April 2007. The three categories - 'repetitive now', 'bored now', and 'urgent now' - that Google breaks mobile users into when designing services are certainly striking:

• "The 'repetitive now' user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.
• The 'bored now' are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behaviour group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don't offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.
• The 'urgent now' is (sic) a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries."