In case you’ve not had time to follow the backchannel chatter, we’ve gathered some of the mobile user experience articles from the last few days that caught our eye. Here’s some quick recommending reading that describes our changing digital lifestyles, mobile trends, future tech considerations, and there’s even a good robot story thrown in for good measure.
If you’ve come across a great mobile user experience story in the last few days, let us know! Post it in comments or find me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/benson/
Trends
MWC’09 Trends by John Strand
http://www.mocom2020.com/2009/03/key-trends-mobile-word-congress/
Vision Mobile’s Mobile Megatrends 2009
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2009/02/mobile-megatrends-2009/
Design Exploration
New Tab Page: Proposed design principles and prototype (Mozilla Labs)
http://labs.mozilla.com/2009/03/new-tab-page-proposed-design-principles-and-prototype/
iPhone prototype caught on video
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/10/iphone-prototype-caught-on-video
IPTV
The future of TV lies on the net
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7932278.stm
Digital Media newsletter (PDF)
http://www.digital-media.net.au/Common/ContentManagement/digital-media/newsletter/20090309.pdf
Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) is coming, cable companies better adopt to changing times
http://controlaltdelete.tv/2009/03/08/internet-protocol-tv-iptv-is-coming-cable-companies-better-adopt-to-changing-times/
ZillionTV
http://www.zilliontv.tv/
Mobile TV Popular In Korea, Not Making Any Money
http://www.youth-marketing-statistics.com/2008/12/mobile-tv-popular-in-korea-not-making.html
Emerging Technology
Charging mobile devices wirelessly: eZone by Qualcomm
http://www.mocom2020.com/2009/03/the-ease-of-charging-your-mobile-devices/
Wintek to supply touch panels for Apple netbook, says paper
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090309PB204.html
Philips: OLED windows in a few years
http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/philips-oled-windows-in-a-few-years-570698
Japanese gadget controls iPod in blink of an eye
http://www.physorg.com/news155728914.html
Robot Programmed to Love Goes too Far
http://www.muckflash.com/?p=200
Experimental Multitouch UI for Nokia S60
http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/009/03/experimental_multitouc_interface_for_5800.htm
Social Networking
Social Networking More Popular Than Email, More Profitable Than…Er…Um
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20090309/social-networking-more-popular-than-e-mail-more-profitable-than-er-um/?mod=ATD_rss
When Everyone’s a Friend, Is Anything Private?
http://voices.allthingsd.com/20090309/when-everyone%E2%80%99s-a-friend-is-anything-private/
General News
Internet, Mobile Phones Named Most Important Inventions
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/business/08count.html?_r=1
Chinese political advisor urges innovation to tackle downturn, emphasis on creative
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/6608793.html
Charlie Rose: A conversation with Marissa Mayer, V.P. of Search Product and User Experience, Google
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10129
Recession Forcing Automakers To Think About Mobile
http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/recession-forcing-automakers-to-think-about-mobile/
Why we’ve reached the end of the camera megapixel race
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/03/why-weve-reached-the-end-of-the-camera-megapixel-race.ars
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At last week’s BREW conference I participated in a panel on mobile advertising (the panel’s title shares the same name as this post). Being primarily a developer conference the other panelists, and the audience to a degree, were largely interested in current and near-term opportunities. The discussion focused heavily on on-deck advertising. Frustratingly so.
The experience highlighted the current reality that as much as things are opening up there is an existing ecosystem that has to find its way. On-deck advertising for on-deck content is where the ad dollars are; simply because it’s also where most of the users are right now. This is not a surprise. What surprised me is the hesitation of discussing what the mobile web is bringing and that being where the users are in the currently emerging future means looking outside the walled garden.
If you’re an ad network, your challenge is not to demonstrate the value of mobile advertising. That’s easy. The CPMs and the CTRs back it up. The challenge is to attract mainstream credibility to mobile advertising by getting well-known brands (via their agencies) on board. This is a catch-22: companies and their agencies still have siloed approaches to mobile advertising and will until it becomes mainstream. Worse than that, even, is that deploying a campaign for the fragmented mobile landscape (carriers, ad networks, devices) is a major burden. Continue Reading »
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Hulu (http://www.hulu.com), the web tv brand launched a month ago by NBC Universal is set to let users pick which ad to watch.
Maybe you’ve had the experience, trying to catch up to an episode of Lost that your Tivo somehow missed… You go online and are required to watch a few ads — in some cases the same ad repeated throughout the episode. This is the web. Shouldn’t it be smarter than this?
Giving the users a choice of which ad to watch is obvious. Below is a sketch of a concept we’ve put in front of some of our mobile and handheld device clients who are trying to align the gap between users and ad-subsidized content. I’ve contrasted that with what Wired describes as Hulu’s approach.
Continue Reading »
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Mobile marketers have a few kinks to iron out before they reach the delicate symbiosis between the marketer and the marketplace.
Burger King has announced a new mobile game. Users can play for a monthly fee of $2.99 — about the price of fries and a Coke.
So, there are two sides to put the mayo in dissecting Burger King’s rationale here.
First, let’s say the target user is a Burger King fan. She likes the kitschy enamel King from the TV ads as much as she likes BK’s juicy flame-broiled taste. But, is she enough of a fan to pay $2.99 a month to play the Burger King game on her handset?
From another angle, let’s say the target user is just a really avid casual gamer. But, of the games she could select, is she attracted to branded games of this nature; games where you have to “remember how to make a Whopper” and have to “squirt ketchup through the air while navigating through a BK restaurant?”
The jury is out on this one for me. I know we’ll continue to see experimentation with co-branded marketing campaigns, banner ads, branded content, “pay walls”, etc. I just wasn’t prepared for someone to suggest that users would like to pay recurring monthly fees for branded experiences; especially coming out of the fast food category.
Read the Press Release
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MEX CONFERENCE, LONDON — Antti Ohrling, co-founder of Blyk kicked off the second day of the MEX conference with his views on understanding the importance of user experience in delivering mobile advertising. Ohrling’s core belief is that mobile advertising is successful only if it is relevant and contextual: the consumer must see it as a benefit, rather than a distraction.
Ohrling used his presentation to discredit 3 commonly held myths about advertising in the mobile context, based on his experience with Blyk and on customer surveys Blyk has recently conducted. First he pointed out that the target audience for mobile advertising is a 19-year-old male, 80% of whom are paying their own monthly mobile phone bill.
Myth #1: Content is King
By this Ohrling means the use of content as a platform to delivery advertising. A January 2007 survey of 619 mobile phone users aged 16 to 24 year-old asked them what they do most with their mobile phones:
- Voice
- Text
- Alarm clock
73% do not use mobile data services. 2/3 said they use mobile data services once a month or less, which in essence means that they don’t use it at all. Tying a mobile advertising campaign to WAP-based content that requires the consumer to access via the browser on their device is thus not a sound decision.
Continue Reading »
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