Differential charging (idea #81)

The last couple of posts talked about exploiting the "bump into effect" (BIF) to encourage phone users to make calls to people not called recently, such as the "tickle list" of contacts. The BIF can be very powerful in its own right - on average I view (by which I mean click to enlarge) a few photos every hour thanks to the Google sidebar popping the thumbnails in my peripheral vision. When I don't display the sidebar, I view a huge zero.

The visual element here is attractive. That's why I think adding pictures to the phonebook on the phone and using these to remind the user to make calls will have a stronger BIF than just the text directory.

However, there are further obvious incentives, like cheaper calls. The network can simply offer to make the call to an infrequent callee cheaper, such as half-price for a limited time or as a one-off tempter - "Call Fred now for only 5p a minute".

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