Mobile Strategy » User Experience

Freedom In Mobility

Jose HC — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:22:25 +0000

The criticism (more like the complaint) we hear a lot these days has to do with our ‘over-connectedness.’

We are told that people are too connected… That it is interfering with personal lives and affecting our quality of life.

Really?

Is it technology’s fault or is it our inability to say no to technology that is affecting us?

It is like you or I walking into an all-you-can-eat buffet. We have the freedom to eat all we want. But do we? Or do we draw the line somewhere? (I know many don’t).

Connectivity and being connected everywhere (that’s what we call mobility – or better yet freedom) is not ruining our society.

Is it that we are allowing our priorities to get out of whack? Or did that mobile device force you to…?

Mobile technology offers us the freedom to be connected and to choose when to be connected – through that fabulous little feature…the off button.

Isn’t it just like everything else in life?

Mobile Customer Advocates

Jose HC — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:37:10 +0000

Time and time again I see one thing being overlooked in mobile.

Can you venture a guess?

Would you believe that organizations actually forget about the mobile user and the mobile experience somewhere between concept and implementation? This is not done on purpose or through some evil plot from the tethered zombies. It just happens.

Ideally a mobile project stems from a carefully thought out mobile strategy which began (hopefully) by asking relevant questions that revolved around the mobile user. Your mobile strategy is an extension of you, your brand, your products, your image, your reputation and even your people. It reflects you. It represents you. It is you.

But a lot can happen from mobile strategy… to mobile project… to mobile implementation (or mobile strategy execution).

Many times the mobile user is forgotten during those deep dive architecture sessions. As we talk about business requirements and time to market we forget to stop and ask the question: how is this decision going to impact the person we are doing this for? Does this impact the mobile experience? If the answer no… then great! Move on. If the answer is yes… then let’s at least talk about it.

It is almost as if someone should be present at every meeting representing your customer. Your mobile customer. You are doing this for him or her… why not have them integrated into your process? Of course I am not talking about just anyone off the street, but someone who will stubbornly represent the customer for whom you are doing this. Someone with a mobile angle and deep mobile user experience who will ask those sometimes forgotten questions. Let’s call these people (for lack of a better term) – mobile customer advocates.

If you are a small and nimble mobile development shop you don’t have this problem. You don’t have to read this (in fact go away). But if you are a large enterprise executing a mobile strategy make sure you don’t drop the mobile user from the project plan at any point.

But the business represents the customer you say? Yes … and no. Remember that your business units already have a full time role and are busy with their day to day tasks… plus they may be looking at that mobile application as a potential increase in revenue and are focused on that one point. Or maybe you just told them they needed mobile and they are simply complying with your wishes.

It may in fact be an easier process than you think… it may just be about asking the questions…

how do these decisions impact our customers when mobile?
how do these decisions impact the mobile user experience?

Next time you go into a meeting simply put on your Mobile Customer Advocate hat… and ask those questions. You may be surprised at the direction your project takes.

Zoompass Announcement Falls Short of ‘my’ expectations

Jose HC — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:17:11 +0000

I am not sure I get it at times. I know that the technology is limited and that a lot of the talk that sometimes goes around is more dreaming than real possibilities.

Today’s Zoompass announcement however strikes me more as a step backwards than a forward one. This is what happens when the initiative is carrier-lead instead of bank lead. I realize that these comments are not popular among some of my readers (I know where you work) but as a consumer I am still on the side of banks dealing with my money.

There are two things that dampen my excitement about this announcement:

The first thing is the following phrase: “payment is automatically drawn from the user’s Zoompass stored value account.” This means that you and I have to manage yet another account. However easy this may be for you… for me it is a hassle. I want the money to come out of my bank account directly! Otherwise for me it is just as easy to load my Starbucks card… or my Timothy’s card at the counter from my debit card. Am I missing something here?
The other thing is the little sticker… this could almost get me ranting a la Ewan on Foursquare. But I will not. A sticker to me seems like a step backwards. Although they talk about its attractiveness with phrases like “sleek and appealing sticker” … to me it just isn’t.

Bottom line this does not spell convenience to me.

Managing yet another account and plastering a sticker to the back of my phone.Similar Posts:

How you view your employees and their knowledge will determine the success of your implementation…

Jose HC — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:42:49 +0000

‘Economists, said John Maynard Keynes, should think of themselves as humble specialists, on a par with dentists. But his advice has gone unheeded. Over the past 50 years, economics and its jargon have penetrated every corner of human life. Decisions to marry and inject heroin alike are explained in terms of utility maximisation. Doctors, priests and scientists are lumped together as service providers or rent seekers. Schoolteachers are urged to “add value” to their pupils. The pig philosophy, as Thomas Carlyle called it, has become all-embracing.

Of the many harms inflicted by economics on the English language, “human capital” is the most grievous. Coined by Chicago economists Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker in the 1960s, it refers to the stock of personal skills and qualities that constitutes a worker’s economic value. Such skills and qualities are often costly to acquire and yield returns only over a long period of time, so are readily thought of as a kind of capital. Mincer and Becker’s work has provided the intellectual rationale for the huge expansion of higher education in recent decades. In an economy dominated by the knowledge and service industries, with personality and expertise at a premium, “investment in human capital” is the name of the game.

The phrase “human capital” is now so thoroughly naturalised that we seldom pause to ponder its implications. What is capital anyway? Capital is not a particular kind of good, but any good viewed in relation to certain interests. A donkey is capital to the wood-carrier. A derelict church is capital to the restaurant entrepreneur. Capital, in short, is wealth viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to more wealth. The phrase “human capital” insinuates that human beings too are to be viewed in this light—as instruments of the productive process. We have all of us attained the status which Aristotle reserved for slaves, that of living tools. What a triumph for the dismal science! Keynes naively supposed that economic growth was for the sake of personal cultivation. His modern successors have put him right: personal cultivation is for the sake of economic growth.’

Brilliant. ‘Human capital’ shall not pass my lips again.

via oxfamblogs.org

Neither will it cross my lips (I hope).

So are your employees assets? Capital? Furniture?
Are they only a means to an end? That end being making a profit for your shareholders… for you?

How you view your employees will determine how well they perform for you and how difficult a new implementation will be. If they feel valued and taken into account they will take ownership of the work and the new tools you are providing for them. If it is mobile technology… how will it help them? Will it improve their workflow? Their work-life balance?

If we see them as assets they will only perform to their stated specifications. If we see them as collaborators in our success they will give more… much more.

Posted via web from Mobile Strategy

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Of Context and Content

Jose HC — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:04:51 +0000

Here is an obvious statement for you to think about:

In mobile, context and content are inseperable.

Or at least they should be considered inseparable.

Context will affect the way you relate to the content available to you. At times content may affect the way you relate to your context and even force you to change your context. However, if I were to choose the stronger one of the two I would have to say that context will win most of the time.

This is where the lifeflows and workflows idea may come in handy.

Do you have any examples where this is true? How has this affected the design of you mobile applications?Similar Posts:

Mobile Application Development And Consumers – Going From Workflows to Lifeflows

Jose HC — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:34:43 +0000

Much has been written on how innovative ideas are born, evolved and tested first on consumers before they make their way into the enterprise. We have seen it with Web 2.0 and social media and social networking. This is absolutely true and the consumer market proves to be a wonderful and invaluable living lab for the enterprise. In most cases the enterprise doesn’t have a choice since after the consumer market tests and likes something they take it to work!

Becoming A Better Mobile Application Developer for Consumers

Today I am going to propose something that will go the other way instead. It goes backwards (so to speak) from the enterprise to the common folk out there. If you learn this small and valuable lesson you will become a better developer of mobile consumer applications. You may not become a rock star in the App Store overnight but your hard work will pay off in the end way after the rock star’s have faded. Your applications will be more relevant, meaningful and useful to the end user.

I made the following point a few days ago:

…if we want to talk specifically about mobile workers the conversation cannot revolve around any one of the above points. Instead it needs to focus on one thing:

the mobile worker as part of a process that adds value to your organization

I was trying to drive the point that you you need to focus on the user and their process if you are going to build a mobile application that will add value to an organization. Don’t mobilize for the sake of mobilizing! Do so because it adds value.

From Workflow to Lifeflow

If you are developing in the enterprise you do (or you should) a careful process analysis of those roles you are going to mobilize. You study the workflow – the steps involved to produce that product or deliver that service…

Crude and Simple Workflow

I have seen a lack of rigour and structure among far too many mobile application developers. The App Store has not helped matters since now everyone wants to develop for that shiny object in the room. A shiny, distracting object!

If we look at the consumer the same way we look at a field worker, a sales person or any other type of mobile worker I believe we would have better, more user-friendly and truly relevant mobile consumer applications. You can’t really study someone’s life to the extent that you study a process … but you can certainly take the context and given situations, study and analyze those. I could almost bet that the best consumer applications out there were either done by studying lifeflows or by folks with a deep understanding and first hand experience of how those flows go (because they lived them).

Crude ... but definitely not simple Lifeflow!

Even though I can write for hours about this subject I am not going to… Today I will drop this on you and if there is some interest out there in helping me explore some use cases then maybe we will continue this topic. If not I will just take my little flow and go home.

(What I would really like to do is start a repository of Lifeflows so others can use these for development purposes… I know it is a stretch… anyone?)

Not All Mobile Applications Are Created Equal

Jose HC — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 19:17:45 +0000

And therefore do not require the same metrics. Of course if you are developer for-fun as opposed to a for-profit one you may note be too concerned about this. However you will never know where and how to improve something unless you measure it. If you measure there is a better chance of understanding how your applications is being used…

A lot of times there is a mad rush to put something out there and then we simply forget about it… and worry only about installations and nothing beyond that. But you should worry about it especially if we consider our recent post on media convergence and mobility.

I can’t say much more about this right now but come back (subscribe at the top right) and you will see this topic blossom into a full-fledged discussion.Similar Posts:

Media Convergence and Mobility

Jose HC — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:53:28 +0000

Over at The Economist Media Covergence site you will find this neat little video announcing their Media Convergence Forum later this month (October 20-21, 2009 in NYC). The video which, provided for you below, is about the pace of change…

The surge of new technologies and social media innovations in today’s environment is significantly altering the future media landscape for marketers. Consumer behaviour is changing and the way marketers reach their audience must also change. Marketers are searching for new ways to not only reach their customers, but to understand them, to peer inside their minds. As the level of consumer understanding increases, so can the knowledge of how best to reach them. However the plethora of tools at a marketers disposal is not easy to navigate and real learning comes from a real understanding of the future of media convergence.

What is amazing about this convergence (and of interest to us) is that much of it will happen on your mobile devices – smartphones, cell phones, iPods or whatever is portable enough to be with you and has the ability to connect you. By virtue of it always being with you, the mobile phone is the most personal (dare I say intimate?) of devices. Let us look at a few questions:

How many of you have personal pictures on your mobile? (It holds your precious treasures)
How many of you keep your personal appointments or reminders on your mobile? (Like a personal assistant)
Is your mobile phone your alarm? (You go to bed and wake up with it)
Does your mobile phone serve as your GPS? (Gives you directions – helps you get to where you need to go)
Oh, and lest we forget … it is also our phone. Giving us quick and easy access to anyone.

There are many uses and most importantly many personal uses.

And because you are busy, always running around either for work or for home the mobile device has grown in importance to you and continues to do so. Marketers know this (and so does everyone else in the world) . They want to interact with you as close to that moment of want as possible. That moment when you see something and you want it! Or even better for them … they want to have a hand in creating that moment for you. Marketers, merchandisers and everyone else wants to interact with you as much as possible and wherever you find yourself. The mobile phone allows the message (whatever that may be) to reach you wherever you find yourself. For many of you … where they find your mobile phone they will most likely find you! That’s why media convergence is taking place at the mobile phone. Not because of the phone. But because of you.

More and more (and this is nothing new I realize that) you will see your brands with you at all times and you will see the competition for a share of you increase. A share of your time, a share of your mind … which ultimately leads to a share of your heart. When your heart is in it – that speaks of brand loyalty.

I could go on but since I feel little cheese in those last words let’s jump to the video now. We will pick this up later (maybe).

I found the video at the Social Mobilist, a place where you will find some of my writings from time to time.

Collection of tiny mobile apps for your iPhone (or my Personalized Enterprise Gateway)

Jose HC — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:57:59 +0000

New to me … but probably old to you (remember I don’t use an iPhone in everyday life). It took me back to some of the projects I have worked on before and the ever present need of providing relevant information to our mobile users/workers.

So today I bumped into Leaflets -

Leaflets are small, mobile web-based applications you access from Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch. And since Leaflets are designed to run fast over EDGE networks, you can use them anywhere: no wi-fi or 3G required.

The seeds for Leaflets were planted when we learned that the mobile web would be the primary way to deliver applications to iPhone. We knew what kind of apps we wanted on our own iPhones, so we built those. Then we found a few that other folks had built. Then we put them all together at getleaflets.com. From photos to feeds, Leaflets puts the best iPhone apps at your fingertips.

Interesting little concept which may already be outdated (for these purposes) because of what the iPhone/App Store combo can already do on its own. Although their blog does state that…

The primary goal of Leaflets is to provide relevant public and personal information in the mobile context. This project is meant to upgrade the core product to version 2.0, bringing it up to date with modern convention.

This gives the impression they may still be working on it. However, it looks unlikely since the last blog post is from January 19 of this year.

More to why I find it interesting. Leaflet to me is a simple concept: a gateway to the mobile web. Someone does the initial filtering work for me thus saving me time and effort. I know what you are thinking… as a consumer you want the choice and you want to be the one that navigates, researches and ultimately chooses what you want on your device. Absolutely… as a consumer more freedom and more choice to you! You have spent your hard earned money and helped stimulate the economy with your spending. You should choose your own applications.

But just for fun let’s turn our sites on the enterprise. Let’s not talk about you as an individual but you as an individual in an enteerprise (or other large organization).

I am sure something already exists out there but I would like to see this gateway (actually more like my personalized enterprise dashboard) provide me with quick access to what I need for my job and for managing my device. These of course will already be pre-approved apps or links (behind the icons) which have gone through all the necessary enterprise rigour necessary to get them through your doors (security, c0mpliance, blah, blah).

Thus providing mobile users with quick, safe and approved access to ‘corporate, public and personal information in their mobile context.’

Somethings to provide your users:

Self-management options through an internal portal (web or on device).
- Submit and review tickets
- Report problems
- Provide suggestions
- Change passwords
- Live chat with your enterprise service desk
- Request approval for new applications
- Load new applications

Work related applications
- Whatever is needed for your role… SFA, FSA, etc

Administrative related applications
- Time and expenses
- Flight requests and approvals

Collaboration and productivity applications
- Email, contacts and calendaring
- Instant Messaging
- Other interesting Enterprise 2.0 apps

Reference and knowledge based applications
Reporting and Dashboards
What else?

There is a lot of integration speak out there… but we haven’t made it so for our valuable resources – our mobile workers.

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Mobile Banking Overview

Jose HC — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:42:45 +0000

We have not been around for a while but wanted to take a brief moment to point you to a report by the Mobile Marketing Association on Mobile Banking Overview which is described as …

an educational resource designed to provide analysis of the unique marketing opportunities and attributes that the mobile channel represents for the financial sector. Key subjects include market size, consumer-focused mobile banking products and services, and the mobile media channels available to banks and other financial institutions. It also provides considerations for optimizing mobile banking communications and campaign effectiveness within each channel.

Head over there and download the free paper.Similar Posts: