In case you were wondering, the beeping and blinking thing stuck in 16 year-old Peter’s hand is a mobile. Yes, the mobile is a fixed item of young Danes’ every-day lives. To be exact, 95.5% of Danish children and young people between 12-18 years have a mobile.

For the last two years, the “extended hand” of today’s young people has been under careful scrutiny by the corporate sector and academic institutions. Here, the project Mobile Content Lab has provided the framework for working together on developing ideas and concepts for mobile media for the 15 – 24-year-olds. Project Manager Kasper Kofod looks back and into the future of young people’s mobile use.

Why did you choose the 15-24 year olds as your target group?

“This age group has been the first generation to grow up with the mobile as a natural part of their every-day lives. It is their media, so to speak. They use the mobile all the time as a platform for all their activities. With this device they are not stuck in one place in front of for example a screen but can move around being connected constantly.” So, young people like to be “connected” all the time. How have you thought this into your concepts for mobile content?

“We have created concepts based on Location Based services, meaning applications that react according to triggers in the mobile user’s geographical surroundings. Our concept “iTAGweTAG” is a good example. Here, virtual tags can be placed and accessed in the physical space. Mobile users can then send information to a billboard in their immediate physical surroundings”

What will happen in the future? And how do you think the mobile will be used?

”People will use the mobile to communicate with their physical surroundings. Finding the nearest restaurant in the local area you are in or meeting up with people with similar interests. This is particularly due to the development of new mobile devices and the wireless network. In the future, people will be using all the mobile services that exist on the internet. But these will first and foremost be used more location based and contextually.”

Mobile Content Lab is a co-operation between the corporate sector and academic institutions in Denmark. The collaborators are DR, TDC Mobil, the University of Copenhagen, the IT University of Copenhagen, the Danish School of Design and Innovation Lab. Mobile Content Lab is a project connected to the network Crossroads Copenhagen.

Gry Hasselbalch, The Danish Media Council for Children and Youth