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From mobile apps to experience platforms

I love it when I come away from a conference inspired of thinking about doing new things or doing things differently. This was definitely the case at The Big M mobile conference in Bath.

Two presentations made the point that the next generation of features on mobiles - called the experience platform by Paul Golding - will enable users to get things done easily and quickly on mobile handsets.The platform will sit on top of apps and make the whole user experience of getting things done a whole lot easier.

When I say 'things' it could be anything - a transaction, organising ourselves and others online, finding where a bus stops on its journey - the things we do on mobiles that currently are clunky or not even achievable - unless you are a tech wizard with lots of time on your hands.

This is the slide from Paul Golding's presentation that describes the shift to experience platforms. And below is a slide from Ewan Macleod which describes how such a platform would benefit the user.

This slide was one of many slides Ewan Macleod used in his presentation to describe how he would like to be able to use his mobile to give him a seemless experience. This slide shows what could happen when you pay for a meal at a business meeting in a hotel.

What he describes is an intuitive transaction that does all the things he requires it to - quick and easy. Currently this is a complex process that would require different systems to be talking to each other. But it is not an impossible ask. The phone links you to your bank, to the hotel systems, they talk to each other.

Powerful stuff from a user experience perspective and I guess this is why we might start to talk about 'experience' platforms. Using your mobile to intuitively and seemlessly and usefully do the things you need to do on the move.

So, while we are all still looking to develop apps it would be as well to think about the user context and what would really be helpful. Paul Golding went on to talk about some of the services that are emerging that will power these platforms so we are not far away from this becoming a reality.

It's an interesting area . . .

 

The Big M mobile conference 2011 - round-up of posts and links

 

The Big M mobile conference took place in Komedia, Bath on Mon 21 March 2011. I attended and did some live blogging and tweeting. There has been lots of great content produced from the event which I have been curating here.

Posts

Vodafone Developer's post on The Big M - The Big M - event update

Doodles from the event by Chris day (aka wordbeard) plus the entire set

Nina Volstad provides her review in Norwegian and here is the Google translation into English

David Simpson's review of the event - The Big M conference in Bath

Adam Bird provides his review - The Big M went bold and got it so right

My posts:

UX at the Big M mobile conference

Paul Golding's keynote on future trends in mobile

Raam Thakrar on app distribution and monetisation

Open data discussion at the Big M

Edited tweet stream of Bruce Lawson talking HTML 5

Aral Balkan on 'Beyond usability on mobile'

Kelvin Gan reviews the event talks - The Big M conference - the talks

Kelvin reviews the event - The Big M conference - a review

Blue Via's event review - Event report: the Big M

Gicela Morales provides her thoughts - the Big M - #bigmconf

Jack Franklin on why no wi-fi was a good thing - The Big M conference - who needs wifi?

Audio boos

Ewen Macleod on mobile networks and innovation

Raam Thakrar on apps and monetisation

 

Presentations

Ewan Macleaod - Please, Mr Operator

Bruce Lawson - Web anywhere: Mobile Optimisation with HTML 5 CSS 3, Javascript

Raam Thakrar - App distribution and monetisation - the only things more important than the lines of code

Paul Golding - Future mobile innovations

 

Aggreagted and curated content

Summary of tweets from the conference

Links to content, speakers, attendees, presentations and more on the event Lanyard page

Topysy aggregation of the event

The Big M's aggregation of content - All done . . .

 

Images

Aggreagted pictures from the event on Flickr

Pictures from the Big M conference 2011

UX at The Big M mobile conference

User experience has been a big theme at The Big M - and when I say user experience I mean the process of identifying what the user requires, the business case and the execution in a simple and, to quote Aral Balkan, delightful way. 

All the talks touched on this in some way - from HTML 5 to open data to innovation of mobile networks. Ultimately the development process is all about delivering a product/service/app etc that is intuitive, scalable and makes money.

What made the conference exciting was that there were a large number of developers in attendance and that the message was all about the basics of building successful services. All the talks were well received.

I spoke to a delegate who was a developer and he said that he felt developers don't tend to think about these issues (normally someone else deals with the client on such issues, for exmple) so the conference focus had been good for getting developers thinking about the wider implications of what they are doing and why.

This is exciting - design and content are being pushed further towards the developer community and that community has to respond with products that deliver great UX.

Today it felt as if this was a shared agenda.

The Big M - Paul Golding's keynote on future trends in mobile

 

Paul Golding ended the day with a look at future trends in mobile. He framed it in terms of future opportunities for developers working in mobile. Judging by the fact Golding's children are Android developers at the age of 11 and 13 - there is already very stiff competition from the next generation of developer!

Golding started off by quoting William Gibson (author who coined the term 'cyberspace') . . . The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.

Golding expalined that Gibson means we have what we need to build the next generation technology - it's just a case of configuring correctly what we currently have.

This was a key theme running through the session - that innovation does not necessarily mean reinventing the wheel. Far from it - successful innovation  comes from improving what's already there - look at Google, Apple etc.

Golding then rattled through some top tips for developers:

1 Myth of first mover advantage - it is often a bad idea.
Be the first to win, not the first to market.
Copy what others are doing but do it better. People are guilty of trying to hard to innovate.

2 If you don't experiment you will never find out whether it works.
Golding uses the example of crossing the chasm as outlined in Geoffery Moore's book Dealing with Darwin) in which the real problem for innovators is jumping from 10,000 users to 100,000 or 500,000 - the point at which you really scale up.The chasm in the growth curve is where failure happens. When users don't adopt the technology in large numbers.

Trick: code towards customers (not users) so that you can identify how a  line of code benefits the customer.

3 Code for adoption and a viable business model.
Reduce your operational friction. Golding mentioned books by Steve Blank, Eric Ries, Dave Bclure, Osterwalder - see presentation below for names!

4 Don't code the future into the product. Build the future into the process.

5 Innovate where it matters.
Undersatnd where in the development process you get traction with your innovation.

6 Master the whole apps journey.
Idea, choose platforms, develop product, deliver product, engage market

7 Know when you are really a platform

8 Know a biz model vs innovation

The key shift over the coming years will be that cloud services will dominate infrastructure. Operating systems will be delivered as web services and users will be choosing 'experience platforms' where elements we like will be abstracted from their core service - the platform will curate the services we want - more on this concept later.

A final piece of advice for entrepreneurial developers: leverage the start-up eco system. Get a mentor or join an incubator.

Here is Paul's excellent presentation

Big M Conference - Future Mobile Innovations

View more presentations from Paul Golding

Raam Thakrar on app distribution and monetisation

Raam Thakrar kicks off The Big M conference with a talk on monetisation. It is quite provocative on distribution and how to make apps scale ie if it won't scale it won't make money (so why bother?).

His key message was make sure you sort out the product proposition, find distribution channels that will really scale and watch the money roll in. 

Thakrar was at pains to point out that developers should be earning big bucks (£65,000 with 5 years' experience) - and that they are the real rockstars. But he warned that to become rockstars developers needed to ditch the hobbiest mentality.

This is about ruling the world, he says, which means building apps that will scale. Software, he says, is one of the key inluencing factors on phones and this is where developers can differentiate.

I liked his example of building apps that could help both help distributors and users. His own company - Touchnote - helps people print cards from their pictures. This adds value to camera handsets - it enhances the use of the camera, which phone operators will like - and users like to print images.

• Here is a summary of his main points and below an Audioboo interview
• Identify big picture trends - but timing and execution of your strategy is key
• Distribution is everything 
• The app has to look better than it works - users can be forgiving
• Develop an app consumers love - that influences how they sped their money
• Get in the way of the money
• Develop an app that makes a phone look awesome
• Build an app that sorts out a problem
• You need help of a distributor - OEM and operator
• Know your customers 
• If you can't smell money then find someone who does.

 

Open data discussion at The Big M

Really interesting discussion on open data at The Big M. Missed getting down all the names of those taking aprt in the panel discussion. Some great points being made.

• Open data enables non-tech people to access data and use it
• The Doomsday book was written in an open data format ie Latin
• Following on from the last point - we will all die one day so we need to leave a usable - and non-proprietary - legacy
• Importance of standards in open data - we are all working in the same way
• Useful public sector data becoming available
• Public data = new business opportunities - £6bn mentioned (from a Cambridge University report)
• Transparency and accountability in public sector through open data
• Linkedgov is cleaning data - using many people to help wider society
• Technology is a key blocker to using data
• Institutional lethargy in opening up data to developers a real block too
• Data is seen as a 'techy thing' - somebody else's problem
• Need to shift organisation's view of who can help with this data - other orgs around the world, academic institutions etc
• But orgs do have to make a cultural shift regarding releasing data
• Lawyers are a huge problem - copyright, contracts, licenses for data use etc
• Its easier to ask forgiveness than it is for pernission regarding using content
• Fix my Street mentioned as a good example of opening up data
• BBC Backstage - very successful but has been shut down - its work had become embedded in the organisation
• Need a Creative Commons style of licensing for data

Edited tweet stream of Bruce Lawson talking HTML

Update: Here is Bruce's presentation . . .

Web Anywhere: Mobile Optimisation With HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript

View more presentations from brucelawson

First try with Storify - here are tweets pulled out from Bruce Lawson's talk on HTML 5 at the Big M conference.

Aral Balkan on 'Beyond Usability on Mobile'

Presentation two at The Big M is on user experience.

Opening quote: 'We are now making the new everyday things.'  Aral Balkan tells the audience that app development is all about the making of new everyday things.

I like UX talks because they use great examples - in everyday life - that do not work.  Balkan kicks off his talk with some great examples.

He then goes on to talk about interaction design.

Graphic design, motion design and information architecture make up interaction design, but the key thing about interaction design is interaction. That is the problem, Balkan says.

For example, how many times have you misunderstood someone else? And that is with every cue available to us - voice, gesture etc. On the phone, the physical gestures are removed. Texting and IM is even easier for users to misunderstand each other.

We are losing humanity in the way we communicate, Balkan says, but we try to make up for this bu using devices such as emoticons - that is about the best we can do on text, for sure!

So, if you replace a person with a computer you have lost humanity - the visual and aural clues. Now we try and understand humans using psychology, linguistics, social psychology etc, and these elements are now becoming key in design.

So computing is commoditised. But the question is: why are we prepared to pay a bit more for some commodities? Balkan talks about the growth of Apple here. The differentiator in commoditised markets is user experience ie we pay more for something that looks and feels good.

But what is that? Hard to identify. But we know what a bad UX is.

At the very least we could design apps that don't drive people crazy. Key point: worry about the right thing and that is your users' needs not your needs. Think outside in design NOT inside out design.

User experience cuts across the whole business, says Balkan. Not just the job for one person - but it usually is - or a team. bUT, how much influence do they have?

Design perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away. Focus on simplicity.

Usable = edible. This slikde was used to talk about how we describe going for a meal. We expect the meal to be edible and we actually talk about where we want to go, type of surroundings etc. We do not go for a meal to eat edible food, we go out to somewhere nice.

Balkan talks about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - and building beyond edible - we can build something that is delightful. We must build things that are magical - his words noy mine but the sentiment is good - we need to add layers of delight to our apps.

He warns that commonsense is the most dangerous myth in what we do and makes the point that assumption of what is common sense just leads to confusion.

As we shift from an age of 'Features' to an age of 'experience' it will be the little things that make a big difference - a final and spot on thought from Balkan.