Adaptive Path Blog

Last fall, we did an activity called The Wand in the World aimed at opening up thinking about the potential of mobile devices and services. We had a set of 7 teams take a physical object (aka: a “wand”) on a walkabout in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. Armed with their wand, a diary, cameras, curious minds and intentional observation skills, the teams used the wand as a proxy device to brainstorm new interactions capture new thinking about how to engage with the physical world via a mobile digital device.

The wand objects varied widely, from abstract to oddity: a wooden egg…an oversized plastic magnifying glass…a koosh ball…a paintbrush. The physical form factor made a difference in the assumed affordances of the device, so it turned out that having a wide variety of form factors worked extremely well.

The observations that resulted were rich with presence and context-based learnings, as well as new possibilities for physical interactions. The exercise allowed us to have conversations ‘way beyond the “feature set”; we were able to move the discussion to a larger framework about engaging with the world around us in new and interesting ways.

So whenever I hear about some new use for a digital device, I think about the experience of the wand in the world and how everyday life is on the fast-track to a complete mobile make-over. Which begs the question…how is all this going to really feel?

What will life be like when our mobile devices open our front doors, get us on the train and filled with fast food, let us into public restrooms and even remind us to pray?

Mobile manufacturers and developers have a vested economic interest in creating new ways for mobile devices to fit within our lives, but what are we, as individuals, consumers and participants in a mobile future, doing to prepare for it? What will a fully instrumented future feel like? What will be included in the feature set for a cell phone at the center of the universe? And how will we adapt to it? These are not technology issues, these are social and cultural questions.

I do know this…things that proactively try to engage me irritate me. The TV screens at the gas pump that provide “infotainment” when I gas up? Hate ‘em. The obnoxious PharmAssist kiosk in my local drugstore with the creepy cartoon doctor on it that verbally assails me with a booming “Can I help you!?!?” every time I trip its digital proximity alert? Hate it.

Neither of these are actually bad ideas…I’m sure some people love them or find them helpful. But when I imagine my mobile device doing this kind of thing, prickles run up my spine. How will I react to a device that nags at me or pings me with “great deal opportunities” when I’m strolling down the street? Gah.

How will it feel to find a parking spot with my device? To remember to get my shoes fixed by taking a snapshot for a visual to-do list? To use it to scan products on the shelf so that I don’t buy decaf coffee by mistake?

So I’m doing an experiment in mindful awareness for mobile. For the next week, whenever I’m doing something mundane…I’m going to ask “how can my digital device do this for me/ help me do this / enhance this?” and then to take a moment to think about how that would feel. Was it helpful? Invasive? Fun? Creepy?

You’re invited to join the experiment. Please post comments on your observations!

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In addition to the 2 day conference in London at the end of May, MEX is also conducting a Mobile Design Competition. Entry into the competition is FREE and is intended to be a showcase for the cutting edge of user experience designs in mobile. So if you’re company has been focusing on mobile experience design, check out the competition details. The winners will be honored at an awards reception the first night of the conference. The deadline is this Friday, 2nd May, 23:00 GMT. Remember the timezone difference for those of you not in the UK!

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 I’m heading to Europe for three weeks for 2 must-attend conferences! The first is MEX, Mobile User Experience conference, 27-28 May in London, UK hosted by PMN who shook up the mobile design industry last year with their fabulously astute and thought provoking 10 point Manifesto for enhancing the mobile user experience. Our host, Marek Pawlowski, has created a different kind of conference format, bringing together 100 of the leading thinkers in mobile and challenging us to define the cutting edge of user experience. At the heart of the event is the 10 point Manifesto, highlighting the major issues facing the mobile industry as it strives to become a more customer-focused, design-led business. Now in its 4th year, MEX is attended by pioneers from the carriers, handset manufacturers, platform providers, software developers and UI designers. 

I will be leading a MEX breakout group exploring the controversial notion that “Fashion is a stronger motivator than functionality”, in the mobile handset business. Conference attendees will work together in a number of small teams to look at this issue from all the angles before re-convening for an open debate. I love this format and cannot wait to dive into deeper discussions about the issues that we face everyday as designers. 

If you are looking for some inspiration and thought leadership in the mobile user experience arena, I highly recommend attending MEX this year. Marek has also kindly offered a discount for Friends of Adaptive Path (that’s YOU!), so please take advantage of the 15% discount on attendance by registering online with the referral code AP08 or by calling Marek Pawlowski on +44 (0)7767 622957.  

I head over to Malmö, Sweden the 2nd week of June for inUse’s conference From Business to Buttons hosted at Malmö University. The conference is a mixture of strategy, design and facilitated hands-on workshops offering insights and methods of how to bridge the gap between business goals and user needs. They have Don Norman as the keynote speaker as well as other top industry professionals in user experience design including Adaptive Path’s very own Ryan Freitas and Friend of AP Jonathan Grubb, CEO of Rubyred Labs and Co-founder of Get Satisfaction.  

I will be giving my workshop Process Reboot: Change your process to create experience-driven innovations, which I first presented at DUX07 in November last year and most recently at Adaptive Path’s MX conference. I’m always reworking and improving the content each time I present, so the attendees at From Business to Buttons will be experiencing the latest and greatest. 

As designers we are often brought in to simply design a product, but many times the business strategy needs attention before we can clearly define the product we’re designing. From Business to Buttons is a great conference for helping us all find better ways to bring business strategy into the conversation of designing products. I hope you’ll attend From Business to Buttons 12-13 June for insightful presentations, workshops and discussions around business strategy and design. The folks at inUse and Malmö University have extended a discount too, please use FBTB2008 in the “special requests” section of the registration to receive 15% off the regular price. 

Since I’m in Europe for 3 full weeks, I’ll be available for meetings and would love to connect with folks while I’m there. Email me at kim at adaptivepath dot com otherwise, see you at the conference(s)!

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Nicholas Chen of the University of Maryland presented an interesting talk on navigation techniques for for dual display e-books. Unlike the Kindle, Nicholas and his colleagues wanted to experiment with a form factor that was similar to a book or magazine. So they built a prototype with dual screens. The form factor allowed them to experiment with embodied interactions, like opening and closing the device (he referred to the interaction as “clapping”) or folding the device so that the cover and back are facing and turning it like we do a magazine (he referred to the interaction as “fanning”). They tested the device with users and came up with some interesting pros and cons.

Some of the benefits of a dual display:
Easy to read the content
Better for assessing length of the content
Helpful for finding new articles

Downside of dual displays:
Clunky - he device was heavy so opening and closing the cover was awkward as an interaction
Confusing - the single screen was simplier and less confusing
Restrictive form factor - grip required to hold device was awkward

Nicholas’s conclusion was that dual displays are better for serious reading but one display is more convenient.

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Elaine Huang of Motorola Labs presented my favorite paper at CHI so far — Breaking down the Disposable Technology Paradigm for Sustainable Interaction Design for Mobile Phones. She vividly illustrated the built in life cycle of mobile devices by walking the audience through a scenario where a user bought a new phone whenever their contract with a carrier expired or a new stylish phone was released. One of the research participants from Elaine’s research study said it best, “I didn’t really want a new phone, but I got one anyway.”

Why are we disposing mobile phones so quickly? Elaine pointed out this is a growing sentiment around all personal electronic devices, not just phones. She referenced the work of Mark Weisser, whose research supports the idea that that devices that don’t have a strong sense of ownership get left around.

The result:

A disposable culture around mobile phones
We perceive mobile phones (as well as many personal consumer electronic devices) as disposable and don’t understand the impact of our decisions on the environment.

We don’t know how to dispose of mobile phones
We know what to do with a car when we are done with it (sell it), but we don’t know what to do with a mobile device. Most of the participants in Elaine’s study kept their old phones — some with as many as five.

426,000 mobile phones are decommissioned daily in the United States, which is a truly astonishing number. Elaine shared some interesting design ideas for both helping users understand how to dispose of their phones and designing phones to be more reconfigurable so that users would keep their mobile devices longer.

Elaine added that mobile business models reinforce this disposable perception.

The real challenge is business reform. Volume allows mobile handset manufacturers and carriers to remain profitable. While horrible for the environment, the built-in replacement life cycle drives handset sales. Although almost all handset manufacturers are making moves to be more reliant on software and services for profit, whether or not those strategies will lead to profitability remains to be seen.

Elaine believes there is a market for high-quality phones that will last exists, and I certainly think that markets like India reinforce her idea. However, it is clear that business reform and the creation of new business models will be necessary to help solve this problem.

In the meantime, if you are like me and have 1, 2, or even five “decommissioned” mobile phones lying around in drawers at home, here are some ways you can dispose of them:

Contact the Manufacturer
Nokia
Motorola
Samsung
LG
Palm

Re-sell on eBay or Craiglist

Donate
Collective Good
Charity Guide for Donating Mobile phones

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I’m attending CHI 2008 , the international HCI conference this week in Florence, Italy.

On Thursday morning, I will be presenting a case study I wrote with Mirjana Spasojevic, of the Nokia Research Lab and Pekka Isomursu of Nokia Design, They call it Surfing for a Reason: Identifying mobile Internet needs through PC Internet deprivation.

If you are attending the conference, please drop me a line at hinman at adaptivepath dot com.

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On the evening of April 9, we’re hosting a presentation by Jan Chipchase (who spoke at UX Week 2007) and Duncan Burns from Nokia Design. The description:

Street Hacks: From Design Research to Prototype to

How long have you been using your current cell phone? And what happened to your previous model? If you live in a country like India, China or Ghana the answer is likely to involve the vibrant used phone market and, somewhere along the line the informal repair cultures - guys on the street who appear able to fix pretty much anything using little more than a flat surface a screwdriver and knowledge.

This presentation will highlight the mobile phone hacking skills available on the streets of cities from Accra and beyond, the sophisticated ecosystem of reverse engineered repair manuals and highlight how it challenges our thinking about what it means to make, distribute our products. The presentation will introduce Remade - a phone made from upcycled and recycled products.

Brandon will offer up a preview of his forthcoming IA Summit 2008 presentation:

The Long Wow

Customer loyalty — the idea that a customer will return to you repeatedly — is a hot topic these days. It’s been in the spotlight ever since business author Frederick Riechfield introduced the “Net Promoter Score,” a simple calculation used to measure the loyalty of your customers.

Although it’s become easier to measure customer loyalty, it’s just not that simple to create it. Rewards cards, frequent-whatever-programs, and other artificial attempts at customer loyalty just get in the way. Instead, engaging customers in more meaningful relationships over time is what builds true loyalty. And that is where well-planned, notably great experiences can play a big role in business.

This presentation lays out an experience-centric approach to fostering and creating loyalty by systematically impressing your customers again and again. The Long Wow challenges creators of customer experiences to plan across channels, time, and disciplines to identify a progression of seduceable moments.

Doors open at 6pm, Brandon speaks at 6:30, Jan and Duncan at 7:15.

Adaptive Path is at 363 Brannan Street in San Francisco.

Please let us know you’re coming by marking us “Attending” or “Watching” on the event page on Upcoming.

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This week I had the opportunity to talk with Adaptive Path’s old friend Matt Jones, Co-founder and Designer of Dopplr. He’s one of our featured speakers at next month’s MX conference. Some excerpts from our conversation over instant messenger follow, and the whole interview can be found over at my own blog, the Second Verse. Matt and I share a mutual love for some very particular (peculiar?) subjects, so the interview explores some unpredictable territory: the Situationists, Jack Kirby inventions, Grant Morrison, movement in hyperspace, and what the success of the iPhone means to the rest of the mobile device industry. Matt was kind enough to share a ton of information about his perspective and his influences - I hope you enjoy reading the interview.

Also, be sure to remember to register by March 31st for MX - On April 1st, the price goes up. MX is on April 20-22 in San Francisco, the price right now is $1,495. After March 31st, the price jumps to $1,595. (You also get a free iPod Shuffle when you register for MX by March 31st). So register today!

(more…)

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Michael Mace, a former VP at Palm, recently proclaimed the death of the mobile application. His position is summarises thusly:

“The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices. The problems are so bad that the mobile web, despite its many technical drawbacks, is now a better way to deliver new functionality to mobiles. I think this will drive a rapid rise in mobile web development, largely replacing the mobile app business. This has huge implications for mobile operators, handset companies, developers, and users.”

Mace provides a history of the mobile application space as he sees it from his time with Palm. He describes the rush of developers to the Palm platform 10 years ago and how interest in the creation of native apps for the platform has waned. He also quotes a colleague who left the mobile app game because he couldn’t run a profitable business there.

Sorry, but it’s simplistic to assume that native mobile apps are now dead in favor of web mobile apps. Mobile is just seeing the same tension that we see on the desktop between native and web apps. On both mobile and desktop, neither is a clear winner and there are many working to increase the functionally of their application “stack”. Just this week, Adobe launched 1.0 of their AIR platform that further blurs the line on the desktop. It is catching the attention of desktop application developers and I would not be surprised if we see a mobile version of AIR sometime this year.

Does a developer care if their application web or native? I’d argue no, they care about what functionality their chosen framework provides. Look at what Opera is doing with their mobile browser. They are turning it into an application framework as much as a great browsing tool, even giving developers the ability to “widgetize” an app. If there’s something on your mobile that has the hooks you need to build an app, does it matter if the API’s come from a browser or from the operating system? As Webkit builds out it’s offline storage mechanism, your mobile web apps can run seamlessly alongside native apps even when on an airplane.

As the stack currently exists in any mobile OS, native APIs for mobile allow access deeper into the device. This includes the ability to read and write to a user’s contacts, calendar, tasks, photos, videos, SMS, email, camera, GPS and voice. Web browsers lack this functionality. The richness of experience that these features provide provide a ‘wow’ that’s pretty tough to match in a browser.

Browser app or native app aside, the more important change that we are seeing is the opening of the mobile platform. In the article, the certification and requirement to work with carriers was noted as an unnecessary hurdle and I agree. Carriers have a history of stifling innovation in order to milk as much cash out of their pipes as possible.

Apple’s iPhone is an attempt to break that strangle hold by offering a device designed without carrier limitations. This week they release their SDK and if Apple does so with no limitations, then it will be successful. Developers should be able to create an app, upload it to the iTunes store and pick their desired monetization scheme. If Apple puts anything in the way of the interchange between users and developers, then the SDK will fail, just as Michael Mace predicts.

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Microsoft’s acquisition of Danger received scant notice compared to its attempts to acquire Yahoo! But I find the news more interesting. Microsoft, intentionally or not, is moving to establish itself across a range of platforms and form factors… They’re moving more strongly into the “ubiquitous computing” space than any other major company.

They are active in:

• desktop PCs
• laptop PCs
• tablet PCs
• mobile phones (Windows Mobile before, and now the hardware, too)
• portable media devices (Zune)
• wall/table computers (Microsoft Surface)

And Microsoft has a big pile of cash it’s sitting on, which will give it plenty of opportunity to figure out how to make these pieces work together. And allows for plenty of mistakes (SPOT watches, etc….)

It’s so easy to dismiss Microsoft as the lumbering has-been of technology, but no one else is engaging in such a range of connected technologies…

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