Wireless Wonders

My blog has moved...

2007-02-14T06:59:00.000-08:00

My blog has moved to here - http://blog.wirelesswanders.com/

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)

Things to do with kids, Play Dough and Blackberry...

2006-11-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

Turn it into a Strawberry (we couldn't resist).

Mobile fiddling...(idea #107)

2006-11-22T16:28:00.000-08:00

I think it was Jakob Nielsen who first identified (in one of the earliest WAP usability field trials) that a great "use" for mobile phones (actually for WAP) was killing time. It is hard not to notice that anywhere you go where there are people sitting waiting, they are usually fiddling with their mobile phone. Of course, some of this "fiddling" is actually doing stuff, like sending messages, cleaning up the folders, and so on. Other times it's adjusting anything that can be adjusted - ring tones, wallpapers, themes etc.

I've done it many times myself - take out my phone, even though I have no new messages or calls or any other change brought to my attention, and just start fiddling with it. Some people just like touching their phone, spinning it round and so on - that's supposedly why Motorola made the PEBL - something with a satisfying touch, just like a real pebble.

However, on close inspection (i.e peeking) at what some people do with their phones, the fiddling is a kind of mindless playing around - poking, changing, reverting back, going up and down menus, swapping settings back and forth, and so on - plain fiddling about. We like to tell kids not to fiddle with things - the remote control, the car controls, the radio, the computer. We often then go and do it ourselves (which doesn't mean the kids can too!) It seems we are born to fiddle. No doubt, psychologists, mobile ergonomists (human factors?) and other ologists know what this is all about and I'm slow to catch up, but I think they may have missed something.

I wonder, have we fully embraced this fiddling-thingy within mobile design, or are we treating it as an exception? In other words, do we think that only idle hands (and fingers) want to fiddle, so give them a game like Snake, or a news feed to the home page, and endless other variants of "time killer" apps (including Nielsen's "nothing better to do" WAP browsing, which it still as tedious as it ever was). Or, should we literally make it easier and give more options for simply fiddling around with the phone (the UI is the app)? I think that a UI designed for fiddling would be a different one that a UI designed for task-driven interaction. We could have two UIs. A playing around one (in pink - the new black) and a doing-stuff one (in the usual doing-stuff palette). Of course, that probably breaks all the UI and usability "rules", which is why it's probably an idea worth exploring.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

The dialler application

2006-11-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

In my book and some workshops, I give an anatomy of a mobile phone. A bit of modem here, an operating system there, a sprinkle of APIs, MIDP sauce and so on. I include a "dialler application", which is not often found on the average handset block diagram. It's the thingy that takes numbers from the user and passes them to the "call processor" software wotsit, which in turn invokes a protocol stack to go send a "set-up call" message to the switch in the mobile network. Incrediblty boring, mundane and obvious. So obvious, that it doesn't often get a mention in the block diagram/handset overview in many (most) treatments of the subject. Is this perhaps why it is so lacking in innovation? After all, it's a dialler - it takes numbers and green-button pushes and does its stuff. Why tinker with this?

Telco marketers have come up with grand gestures of customer satisfaction like the theme of "connecting people" (it has its variants). However, about the only parameter they fiddle around with is the billing arrangement - call home all weekend for free and so on. When I dial a number, why can't I get useful info about the number I'm dialling? For example, the rating of this plumber on plumber-pages-dot-com [don't look - I made that up], or the time zone of the person I'm calling (good for all those Indian/US/Euro projects)?

It's framing again (or paradigms). My daughter asked me today "what's 'old school' mean?" - to which I should have replied green push buttons on phones. Functional thinking is good for programmers, but no good for business people (or "engineers" - who don't make engines anymore, although that word still gets used everywhere, e.g. "speech engine"). What business are operators in? Of course, it's the switching business right? A number here connected to a number there, start the stop watch, stop it and add the number to a bill (I have a great slide that sums up a mobile network like this). OK, by the same functional logic, Google is in the same business. A browser here connected ("switched") to a website there courtesy of the "URL look-up table" (i.e. switch). That's why they charge us for minutes of usage right? No.

I'm reminded of a Parker pens story. It was told to me by my tutor at University. Anyway, I hope the story is true as I've re-told it so many times it feels like a legend. Parker, who make pens and ink, were faltering as a business. This was pre-McKinsey days, but nonetheless they hired a "management consultant" to tell them what to do. (I am not skeptical - I would love to make loads of money doing this.) After a presumably lengthy consultation period with high numbers of noughts on the bill, he merely asked the management board - "what business are you in?" Frustrated by the obviousness of the answer, they replied "pens". He said "no, you're not". They said, "OK, ink?" - "Nope." On it went through a list of functional answers until they gave up in frustration. "The answer" he said, "is that you're in the gift business".

That's an old story and it has now been replaced. In the post-writing age (emails, keyboards, pdas etc.) luxury pens as gifts isn't such a great idea. According to the latest market study for Parker (which I found on Google, so it must be true) they are now in the "accessory" business - things we might want to own ourselves, just like expensive wines have become desirable. What business are operators in now?

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

who's left me a message? (idea #106)

2006-11-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

People like me often get missed calls. For a number of reasons, I can't or don't always answer my mobile. Eventually a bank of voicemails builds up. One of the most tedious mobile experiences ("anti-experience"?) is the laborious wading through a talking voicemail service - "you have seven new messages and ....... [there's always a a pause here]..... four saved messages". Of course, I already know that because I just got a text message telling me the same thing, so why do I need to hear the same message?

What my voicemail fails to do is tell me who any of the messages are from so that I can jump straight to their message. Is this so difficult? It would be nice to jump straight to a message I want or need to hear because it's from a customer (or the boss (wife) of course). Yes, I know you can skip through messages, but please don't make me do that. Do I have to skip through the first few seconds of each CD or DVD track to get to the one I want? No. Today's mobiles are sophisticated tiny computers with mulitple keys, menus and various other interface capabilities, so why are we still in "linear tape recording" mode for voicemail? That's why! It's a recording, so we have to stick with old recording metaphors. Please Google, Apple, someone...rescue us from this Telco -2.0 drudge.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

urgent calls indicator (idea #105)

2006-11-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

When I hold workshops for operators I divide value-added services into basic categories. One category - usually the first - is "enhanced voice". It seems to me an amazing feat that after nearly two decades of mobile telephony (and over a century of regular telephony) we are still stuck with the same basic voice features we started with - dial a number and hit a green button.

In my earlier posting about downloadable ring tones within the ring tone selector app itself, one commentator pointed out that this is exactly what MSN Messenger does today, which is true (with downloadable winks). Many things are already done well on the Internet, but in the so-called "Mobile Internet" the good stuff seldom seems to port across. For example, when I send an email I can mark it as urgent. This, of course, is an old idea carried over from the "snail mail" world - the red "urgent" stamp on the front of the envelope.

I have yet to see the "urgent button" for making a phone call. It seems an obvious thing to offer callers. A callee could control how urgent calls get processed, but at least they would get the option of knowing that a call is urgent. Marking anything urgent is always open to abuse (although I think that the "urgent email" fad has worn off in companies as many users have matured in their discretionary use of such tools). In some cases, it might be an idea to have the handling of urgent calls subject to a corporate policy framework. For example, it might be made difficult to "ignore" urgent calls from a particular number (which might be useful for parent-child relationships too).

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

auto reverse-charging (idea #104)

2006-11-10T10:33:00.000-08:00

In the UK, and lots of other markets, the calling party pays (except when calling a roaming mobile, when the charge is shared). It would be great to set up relationships between callers so that the called party can nominate to pay the charges. This might work well between adults and kids - not necessarily parents and siblings, but any adult-child relationship where the adult is happy to pick up the bill for the call.

As per my last posting, it would be great to control this feature via the "addess book" itself (or whatever we're going to replace it with once we get over the book metaphor) and not some tedious meandering through a portal. Simply applying an attribute to a person in the book means that I get to pay the call charges both ways automatically. The same feature would be useful for paying roaming charges too. Calling a prepay user overseas can rapidly deplete their call credits.

The sharing of payment is a great idea generally and there are a number of variants on the theme. I'm glad to see that some markets allow the trading of minutes between friends, which is especially useful to the youth.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Game boy in the pocket experience (idea #103)

2006-11-09T22:35:00.000-08:00

All my kids have Nintendo DS lite - in all colours (black, white and pink). I watch as they struggle to force them into their trouser pockets. I'm still adamant that garment design isn't keeping up with technological habits. My older brother still pokes fun at my techno "clothing ideas" (remember the socks?) so I felt duly compelled to announce my latest thinking in this untapped fashion arena.

Firstly, trousers need console pockets - this is clear. However, what a console really needs is a top screen too to announce the ongoing progress of "evolving" games, like Nintendog. If a dog needs feeding as it's about to die, this should at the very least cause the console to vibrate, but better still announce a small message on a top screen on the closed device. Consoles need to follow mobiles and have a top screen. This would then require a pocket with a transparent portion to allow top-screen viewing.

Now this leads to my latest thinking in men's apparel. With phones like the Motorola KRZR now reaching very thing, light and slender proportions, they should be easy to "wear" on the sleeve in a tiny outside pocket (I will submit a drawing as soon as I get my new tablet connected). With a landscape view of the top screen, it would be possible to view the screen just like reading a watch. Now, does that mean we need tacky clear-plastic inserts in our sleeves to see the screen? I'm sure that with the right mix of thin (but durable) material and a bright enough display, it would be possible to see right through a veneer of material snuggly wrapped over the device. Paris fashion show beckons!

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Ring tone experience (idea #102)

2006-11-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

I recently sat in a cafe and watched a teenaged boy take his brand new phone out of its box, insert the battery and start "playing" with it. Not surprisingly, before long we could all here an array of ring tunes whistling their merry way across the cafe. Ring tones have come a long way - they weren't nearly so annoying as they might have been, even with a constant switching from one 5 second blast to another (and back again).

Of course, most of us have done this, although usually in the privacy of our own homes - it is a natural part of exploring a new phone. Let's play the ring tones. I still argue that a tune sequencer would be a great feature on any phone, allowing musical loops to be sewn into a unique ring tone, or should that be "tune"? (See my last post.)

In a recent user experience definition I worked on for an MVNO project, the "out of the box" (ootb) experience was a key part of the analysis, as it clearly marks and affects the entry point into the device and the services attached to it. Usually precious little effort is given to the ootb experience and so the initial playing around with the new phone can be a short-lived and quite dull affair. Service discovery is an important part of service design, but often an afterthought, it thought about at all.

In the cafe I observed an ootb experience first hand - the young man became my lab study for a few moments. He fiddled with the ring tones and having exhausted himself of the possibilities (in MTV-speed fashion - i.e. about 1 minute) he duly proceeded to less interesting stuff. I couldn't see what, but it was probably the usual address book boredom, changing a wallpaper and so on.

This was a golden moment to engage him with services. Within the "ring tone application" he could have been offered a number of options that drew him further into the experience and also made the operator some money. The option to download new tones should be built in to the same user interface (UI), not a link somewhere on the operator's WAP portal. Tones should be organised into "play lists" and shareable, reviewable, rate-able, just like an iTunes experience. Moreover, it should be immediately possible to share any of the default tones with another user from within the same UI.

A portal is a single entry point to several services. It make sense to offer a front-door into a set of related services. However, with a mobile phone it already has a multitude of doors, like "ring tone selector", "address book", "call record" and so on. There's no need to make a user go out of these environments and back through a front-door - they're already in the house! Why not put services within these partitions?

I'd probably argue that the whole partitioning of the experience into ancient functions like "address book" doesn't make sense anyway - most users haven't had an address book for the past 5 years anyway, most likely never at all. Why mimic a book on a phone? There are lots of metaphors that could be used to organise people information. As an exercise, I suggest taking a large sheet of paper and drawing an imaginary set of icons on it to resemble a phone interface. However, the rule is that you're not allowed to use any of the traditional icons and names. For example, try putting an icon called "connect". What might it do? If the only options you can think of are "call" and "text", then you probably shouldn't be in value-added services (if that's what you do already). The ootb experience requires some ootb thinking!

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Collaborative Mobile Musical Composing...(idea #101)

2006-10-30T23:51:00.000-08:00

In my household, we now have a Mac Mini as a "home entertainment" system for the sitting room. We discovered the really exciting Garage Band application for composing/recoding music. Moreover, we hooked it up to our keyboard via the midi port - great for easy composing and the kids are amazed at the conversion of input to a musical score (great for learning music theory).

For even a relative musical novice, it is possible to create enjoyable music using the many musical loops that can be dropped in to a track and moved, stretched, chopped and repeated anywhere along the timeline.

I can well imagine that a mobile version would be fun too, especially on a device with a substantial music synthesis capability. A multi-user version could allow sharing of tracks and collaborative composition. Finished scores could be saved as ringtones, uploaded to blogs (a standard extension to any mobile app - or it ought to be, and remarkably isn't).

Numerous readers of this blog have asked me to continue the "100 Ideas" series, despite still not having released the compiled e-book of the first 100 (I hope coming soon). Therefore, even though I have posted other ideas since the 100th, this is the official 101st idea....and here's looking forward to the 200 mark!

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Personalised caller greetings...

2006-10-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

Ken Brickley from Zeacom told me about his great new service for personalised greetings - I'd love to have this on my phone and I think the youth will love it too! (Which is me of course.)

Here's Ken's intro to the service:

"For the first time, you can have a professional greeting for your clients, a gooey message for your flame and a curt one for your X. In fact, you can record a unique greeting for virtually anyone who calls your cell phone. All other callers receive your regular greeting.

Early ‘GenY’ trial users of YouMail value the ability to express their individuality in creative voice greetings to close friends and family while presenting a more professional greeting to unknown missed calls that are increasingly work related.

An advanced feature of YouMail, coined “Ditchmail” by the female members of an early focus group, which allows users to record a custom greeting that actually hangs up on an unwanted caller immediately after the greeting is played. Available to US-based mobile subscribers on Cingular, Verizon and T-Mobile, YouMail boasts an online unified voice portal where users can access and save messages indefinitely and forward important voicemails via email."

Service is free during the beta. Check it out at www.youmail.com.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Wind-up Mobile phone Charger with flashlight

2006-10-09T07:15:00.000-07:00


Wind-up Mobile phone Charger with flashlight Is this the cutting edge of mobile accessories. Great ad (or is it a wind-up)?

Mobile IM - is it really IM?

2006-10-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

I've been using MIM this past week - an embedded client and a Java client, trying both out for size. It's Wireless Village stuff - OMA IMPS standard for the technical - which means a protocol aimed specifically at wireless devices. The server has a peering connection with Google Talk and I'm just waiting for an MSN client so that I can also use MSN.

Now, there are reports around that when users come up against a mobile version of MSN or Yahoo (or other desktop IM services), they rapidly run out of enthusiasm for the venture. Why? Well, suddenly IM becomes not so instant. Moreover, multiple conversations - which youthful users are accustomed to - just don't happen on a mobile (the interface can't do it very well, or at all).

When IM-ing with deskbound buddies, I found the disparity obvious. Fairly long and rapid responses versus my pithy and slowly typed bullet points (and yes - I can use predictive text quite well).

Positioning here is that this is mobile IM and therefore it is IM on the phone, which it clearly isn't - the experience is quite different. However, when it comes to swapping pings with another mobile buddy, it's a different story. It's like texting, but better. There's presence to see if the buddy is online, which texting doesn't have. There's a chat session visible on the screen, which texting also doesn't have (as texting interfaces almost always assume "fire-and-forget", not a session).

Let's see how Three's huge promotion of Mobile MSN Messenger works out - "free for life" (if you pay for a beefy tariff of course).

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

The raw end of mobile retailing...

2006-10-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

People like me sit in offices and dream up "mobile solutions". In the retail outlet shops they sell mobiles. Mostly, these two worlds are poles apart. There is little attempt to sell services to customers. It is almost impossible to experience these services anyway, except, perhaps, in UK Three stores where they have connected phones on display. I did ask the Three rep to show me how to access Gmail on the phone (he said "we support Gmail", which, apparently, they do). After about 20 presses of keys, fumbling around, he uttered something that was intended to bluff me off the topic (him not knowing that I know my stuff in this particular field).

I ventured onto the T-Mobile website to find out more about "Instant Email", which is what I'm looking for. After too many attempts to figure out which devices truly supported push email, I ended up trying to price a Blackberry (which I know supports push email). On one page it talked about 10 per month for email traffic. When trying to put the device in the shopping basket, this amount didn't appear. I wasn't sure if it was included in the bolt-on voice/text tariff or not. Then there was an offer of unlimited internet surfing on another page, which I couldn't find in the shopping basket at all. Not surprisingly, I gave up. There was another page talking about blogging, which I'm interested in, but no mention of how to get it.

A guy walked into a mobile retail outlet and stood next to me (I was making my usual sanity-check visit to the sharp end of mobile - where the consumers go to buy the stuff!) A staff member offered assistance and the shopper replied "well, you know, my contract has ended and I'm trying to decide should I switch supplier, which phone to get - but you know it's hard to figure out what to do". The assistant replied "yes, confusing isn't it".

We seem to have a problem. Operators want all these differentiating services to bump up their revenues, but don't seem to know how to sell them when they get them. Innovation in my dull world of service creation needs to be matched with some innovation in the glitzy end of retailing where all this stuff ends up. The other day I walked into Vision Express, thinking it was a mobile shop. I have trouble now distinguishing between the two - wall to wall sameness and staff who whilst they try to help, can only really offer a smile and take the order once the poor shopper has flipped a coin.

Does mobile retailing have to be this bad?

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Quick update on mishing...

2006-09-27T22:54:00.000-07:00

Phew! - mishing doesn't appear to be a rude word, but it is a group of people. It is also used as a mushy way of say missing - as in "I'm mishing you". I love it - that seems like a good name then for mobile swishing via NFC!

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Swapping and swishing...

2006-09-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

Swapping stuff is ages old. We swap things all the time. There used to be a great kids breakfast show on Saturdays in the UK called Swapshop (The host was Noel Edmonds, who now writes books about self-improvement: definitely not on my swap list, but My Blobby videos are a must have for kids (Blobby himself last seen in myspaces). The nostlagic could always use the theme tune as a ringtone.)

Swapping mobile content needs to be made easier. The obvious one is contacts, but I suspect that many youths will want to swap photos - "here's my gig last night!" or "me with Mr Cool" - and let's hope not trophies from happy slapping. We need NFC! No. Not Nirvana Fan Club, but Near-field Communication: chips in our mobiles that can speak to each other when placed within mutual proximity (about 4 cm). A quick swish and we could swap stuff in a jiffy. No doubt, swishing will become mishing or mashing or moshing, or some other slang word - let's hope I coin them all and claim the credit. (I still say I invented the term mobilist, not that it's important - it didn't make me any money!)

Mishing (I hope that's not a rude word) would be a great way to do the social network tagging I mentioned in a recent post. A quick mish and I have your Linkedin or myspaces links safely tucked away in my mobile, automatically sychronised of course to a list of faves in Firefox (or Flock probably).

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Sony Mylo is where we're headed...

2006-09-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

Sony's Mylo is a really interesting device. I believe that these larger format keyboard-based devices are the future (the present!). It's a no-brainer really, especially if you're already a DS or PSP user. I remember working on early wireless PDA solutions and there was always this debate about size - does anyone really want to carry a large device? The issue is framing again. Adults thinking about mobile phones, size is important - slim, smaller, sleeker. PDAs seem like bricks. But for kids who carry a DS - which they do - then the comparison isn't with mobiles anymore, nor about size - it's all about what can this thing do and how "cool" it does it. Mylo brings all those increasingly can't-do-without Internet services into the "carry with me" space, NOT the mobile phone space.

I like the Mylo's What's Up screen - shows who's online. The interface looks great. I've been waiting for someone to take the UI out of its mundane "must be like a phone" design. The UI on the DS is simply fantastic, as one would expect from a company concerned solely with graphics. It simply makes the thing a joy to use - why can't a mobile be like that? I was expecting Apple to be there, but that remains a now boring speculation.

My two eldest kids use a DS and they also are starting to use mobiles - they borrow one of my many (they like the Razr). However, I was thinking that what I really ought to get them as their "first mobile" is something more like a Blackberry as it opens up messaging, including email. Problem is it isn't kid friendly - the only game is brick and even I can play that! However, it occurs to me that going straight to mobile for email is a possibility for a lot of kids in the future - simply never bother with a PC. Why not? Devices designed like a Mylo tend to suggest this isn't such a fantastical idea as I first thought.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Ajit's news book...

2006-09-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

Just got my copy of Ajit's new book - Mobile Web 2.0. Will post a review soon...
Thanks Ajit for the copy.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Fourth places?

2006-09-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

Howard Schultz, of Starbucks fame, didn't come up with the phrase "Third Place" - he just gave us a lot of them to hang out in. Ray Oldenburg wrote about this topic and its importance in civic life. A short overview is on Wikipedia . Personally, I would be tempted to talk of cyberspace meeting points, like Second Life, as a fourth place because it has a very different time-space dynamic than a physical third place, especially when taking into account the possibility of perpetual access via mobile. I haven't seen Starbucks turn up yet in Second Life, but probably will soon. At least when travelling in cyberspace, location-based services will work with hyper-accuracy. I wonder if there should be a cross-over though - if I post a message about Starbucks lousy chai tea latte (it seems the most inconsistently made drink they offer) in the virtual store, will it make its way to the physical one?

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

WiFi enabled car...

2006-09-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

Contrary to my previous post about car kits for mobile music (including ipods), I realised a simpler solution, at least it seems simpler. Why not allow the car radio to sync with my music library via WiFi? Every night it could "wake-up" and download any new tracks from my PC via WiFi, then I don't have to mess around with any devices.

Of course, DRM protection of the music is a potential problem, but not an insurmountable one. Not sure about other houses, but certainly my car on my drive is within the WiFi hotspot around my home.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Social Networking with a Mobile...

2006-09-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

With all the various networking tools (e.g. Linked In) and other ways to interact with each other via the Web, it seems an obvious idea to extend this to the mobile. It would be great to allow swapping of "business cards" via Bluetooth, which is already possible, but to allow Web services to tag themselves on to the card. For example, if I'm in Linked In, then by swapping a business card with another Linked In user, the Linked In service would be able to detect this swap and make a link. An app on the phone could detect business cards and pass this up to a network service which does the necessary "registration" with Linked In.

The idea need not be limited to swapping via Bluetooth. Users who connect via any means, such as IM, could swap cards.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

100 ideas e-book coming soon...

2006-09-14T01:42:00.000-07:00

Apologies to those still waiting for the e-book of the 100 ideas. It's in the pipeline. I want to add notes to the original postings in light of any developments in the industry or further reflections, so it isn't just a cut-and-paste from my blog. I anticipate finishing this by end of October.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Mobiles and Car Radios

2006-09-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

I recently bought a Harman Kardon - Drive+Play (HKDP) ipod adaptor for my car radio. It works with factory-fitted radios via a wired RF injection, the auxiliary input or via a CD changer interface, if one exists and is compatible. The HKDP has its own user interface, including a thumbwheel that works in a similar fashion to one on the ipod. There's also an external LCD display that can be conveniently located on the dashboard to enabler easier and safer operation. The ipod itself sits on a cable in the glovebox (or nearby wherever the main HKDP "brains unit" is fitted).

It struck me that there don't appear to be any similar adaptors to enable music-capable mobiles to play through the car stereo. In fact, given the fiddly nature of many mobile phones, trying to play music in the car would be a challenge without something like a HKPD with its auxiliary display and thumbwheel.

There needs to be a standard interface to hook up mobile phones with car radios to enable:

1. Music playthrough
2. Easy hands-free operation
3. Use of auxiliary controls (e.g. steering wheel audio controls)
4. Trickle charging

Given the mobile's historical connections with car radios, this seems to be a neglected part of the story in recent years. Perhaps Motorola need to go back to making car radios to show us how it's done - an integrated user experience with the mobile would be nice thanks!

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Orchestrated user experience...

2006-09-05T03:08:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of time for Barbara Ballard. She understands UI issues well. I couldn't agree more with her recent lament about disjointed mobile user experiences:

"And Sprint does not do particularly well, as written by many bloggers recently, in no small part because Sprint’s decisions are frequently dominated by which potential provider makes the best promises. The user experience team is brought in after the supplier relationship and requirements have been finalized. Device manufacturers are not much better. Decisions are made on cost and speed of implementation, and not full user experience."

I don't agree with "requirements have been finalized", although I guess it's a matter of definition. For some, merely expressing the need in a slide for a service is a complete statement of requirements.

An orchestrated user experience seems to be bottom of the list in most mobile services projects. What is seldom appreciated is how critical orchestration is to service adoption, usage and therefore revenue. It's like saying we need a speedometer and a fuel guage to build a car and then sticking the fuel guage in the boot (trunk) because it's easier to put it near the fuel tank. Of course it works, but it's damn inconvenient and frustrating. This example sounds so stupid, right? Believe me - this kind of dissonance exists in many mobile services teams.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book

Don't think of an Elephant

2006-08-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

I agree with some of Ajit Joaker's blogging about Mobile Web 2.0. Let me declare that in my rounds of visiting operators and running workshops for them on behalf of a major mobile vendor, I have been promoting "2.0" ideas for the past year. However, the slant I take is more about the transition from the current mobile experience ("1.0") which is all about "dialling to talk" to a relatively new mobile experience, which is "clicking to do" ("2.0"). However, the vehicle for this transition is not the Web, which is why I don't talk about Mobile Web 2.0. The pivot is the buddy list and presence.

"Don't think of an Elephant" is the title of an interesting book by George Lakoff. It's all about framing. The words we use affect how we think about things. Truth is, no one can really define Web 2.0 - it seems to mean all things to all people (with some very strange explanations). In Businessweek it's means those new cool websites programmed by twenty-somethings that cost very little to build and do some kind of aggregation stuff, build communities and - if you're really lucky - sell for a large sum. In the technosphere, or whatever it's called today, Web 2.0 means a cool use of "Ajax-ian" stuff built in 2 weeks in some cool framework (Ruby Rails?) and perpetually in "beta" (which is itself and old frame that doesn't fit the always-upgradeable web world).

I don't think the current fascination with "mobilising" the Web 2.0 thing is going to be all that productive, but still worth exploring and I'll leave Ajit's new book to inform us about his ideas, which are wider than I'm painting here. Certainly, using some of the technical approaches will yield some interesting service possibilities. Opera Platform is an interesting technology and some cool things can be done with it. If there is a "new way of doing things" ("2.0") transition of the mobile experience, then it is presence and buddy lists that should be grabbing our attention. Don't think of a Web 2.0! Think of IM 2.0. Think of building your online life around an IM-type client that can do IM, voice, PTT, video, blogging, chat, etc. Presence is a powerful paradigm that has not been explored enough (in fact, most operators seek to surpress this element of IM in order to lower bandwidth requirements for what they deem as "signalling" stuff - old frame again).

The fact is that the mobile experience is extremely limited. This point seems to go repeatedly unnoticed by many would-be mobile entrepreneurs (the 99/100 that fail). Right now, you are most likely reading this blog in a web browser, but no doubt you have multiple tabs and apps all over the place. You can switch context easily. A lot of effort has gone into making browsing a really neat experience, which is why we have a "2.0" - people want to build services on the Web, not just publish documents. By contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to the IM interface, as we simply don't think of it as an entry point for many services (although desktop IM clients are clearly headed in this direction). Nor do we really think of the desktop as being something that hinges around a buddylist (or contacts/address book). A mobile is hugely buddy-centric.

As a brainstorming exercise, if you take time out to think of all the interesting things you might do with an IM-type interface, you might be surprised about how many services could be delivered via the buddy paradigm (and buddies don't have to be human - they can be bots). Is a conversational paradigm more useful than a hyperlinked one?

That said, Web does have a role to play and there is a lot to be done here. Firstly, as mobile networks begin to move towards an all IP existence (SIP etc.), the possibility for mash-ups becomes very interesting. The must-have-an-API trend in "2.0" world makes for all kinds of exciting possibilities and this is an area that I encourage operators to consider. Of course, they are challenged to do this, but the huge gravity of certain types of community on the Web - and the ability for these to form and re-form at lightning speed - is not something an operator can hope to mimic, nor can they continue to ignore. However, they could exploit it. They need to go there in the end, for a number of important reasons (we can discuss later).

Web should be intimately linked to mobile but isn't. Today these are two very separate worlds for a typical operator customer. A typical user has a mobile experience, but not in any way connected to an accompanying web experience - I mean on The Web, not on the handset. There's no real continuity between the mobile experience and the operator's portal (and then beyond via affiliation and mash-ups). Again, think of the buddy paradigm. Once I get my buddies on my mobile and on the net, I can think of all kinds of interesting things to do with presence, like connecting real-time with visitors to my blog, my myspaces and so on.

Way back in 1998, when I designed the Zingo wireless portal for Lucent Technologies, a major theme was fluidity of data and experience across the mobile and desktop/Web. This needs revisiting in the "2.0" world now replete with WiFi and other "seamless mobility" technologies. New devices are coming out that can give developers the access to mobile goodies that they need to make this happen. I do believe that a migration towards larger format devices with tiny Qwerty keyboards is going to happen, but the fuel for the tipping point is hard to tell. As I suggested in an earlier blog, it might be as simple as making these devices cool - I think the Motorola Q is headed in the right direction, but when we put our thinking caps on, there's a lot further we can go to make larger devices truly irrestible. Do we need a "2.0" in device design? I think so.

Buy my book (Amazon US/UK)
Join my email list
Subscribe to my "100 Mobile Product Ideas" free e-book