If Mobile is the remote, what does it control?

Published
by
Darren Twiss
on August 16, 2008
in emerging technology, mobile context and wireless sensor networks
. 0 Comments

There is always much talk about the humble mobile as “The remote control to our lives”. Well that’s a bit ambiguous, exactly what is it the remote control for? Well here is a bit of a glimpse into the future.

MIT’s Technology Review has just published a list of the 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008, [thanks to About Mobility for the heads-up].

“Reality Mining”, as you might expect for an Emerging Technology is a broad field. The basic idea is that as we go about our daily lives we leave/have available bits of information which can be used (through techniques like data mining) to determine various relationships about what we are doing, who we are and/or contribute to a better understanding or measurement of the world around us.

In mobile design the idea of Mobile Context is probably a subset of Reality Mining.

The MIT article gives a couple of interesting examples from suggesting things to do or new people to meet, automatically determining privacy settings, determining a better understanding of the spread of diseases or even using built in accelerometers to detect the onset of Parkinson’s disease. The possibilities are really exciting and is really only made possible by the ubiquity of mobile device technology.

My view is that the mobile handset is the “Front End” or “User Interface” for a data-rich or augmented world. I think the “Back End” is going to be a the various pieces of computing intelligence embedded within our environment (like Wireless Sensor Networks, i.e ZigBee) that collect and process data and communicate it back to the “Front End”. The applications for which will be a mix or personal, commercial and environmental factors.

Exciting Stuff.

[Updated: Links to more ideas or exmaples ]

Why Mobile Context Is The Key Design Parameter

Published
by
Darren Twiss
on August 7, 2008
in mobile context and mobile web
. 5 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mobile Context having recently been involved in designing various mobile products and applications.

So what is context? Well a definition I like is:

“the relevant constraints and unique opportunity of the communicative situation”.

Basically,

  • Where, When, Why and How will my mobile application be used and by Who?
  • What constraints does this place on the design?
  • What opportunity does this context provide and how can I use this to my advantage?

Regardless of the mobile application, be it Mobile Web, a Handset Application, Messaging or devices that interact with mobiles,  I believe context will emerge as the most important design parameter. Traditional software and web-design hasn’t yet required this kind of consideration as the context of the user is generally known (i.e the user is normally seated, has a full screen and keyboard and uses a mouse for navigation).

Context and The Mobile Web

An example of Mobile Web Context is a airnz.mobi, the newly launched mobile website for Air New Zealand. Recently, I needed to find arrival details for my Wife’s flight so I could pick her up at the airport. I used my desktop browser to try and find these details and logged onto the full airnewzealand.co.nz website. I searched around (in a hurry) but couldn’t find them. I switched to my mobile as I left the house and visited their mobile site. The front page has a menu of which “Arrivals and Departures” is the first option. In fact the entire site only contains a subset of content, arranged in a way that is useful for people who are mobile or traveling. That is context in action.

Another great way of thinking about mobile context and user experience on the mobile web is Google’s Mobile User Experience Strategy (full article at Information Week)

Google breaks down mobile web users into 3 categories:

  1. “Repetitive now”
  2. “Bored now”
  3. “Urgent now”

The “repetitive now” user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.

The “bored now” are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don’t offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.

The “urgent now” is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries.

My airport example fits in to “Urgent Now” category. The “urgent now” description also touches on the role of Location in context. That is something that I hope to share some thoughts on soon. (in the meantime checkout Musings of a mobile marketer’s thought on the topic of “Location Based Services - Are they all missing the point?”)

To conclude,  Context is a major design parameter. Designers must give consideration to Where, When, Why and How their application will be used and by who. For Mobile Web in particular, the site design and the content must give consideration to the user’s context. Simply miniaturizing a full desktop website without any thought to the purpose of a mobile site is in my opinion, a waste of time.

Mobile 101 - Mobile Internet

Published
by
Darren Twiss
on June 27, 2008
in mobile 101 and mobile web
. 2 Comments

I’ve been making a bit of an effort lately to make sure I am personally using all the technology that I work with and talk about. I actually just found a post on Walking the Talk at a blog called London Calling. The post is specifically about mobile content and advertising but the idea is the same. Walk the Talk - Make sure you use what you talk about and/or sell.

My first step in this was migrating to a mid-range mobile device for my everyday use. I chose a Nokia 6121 classic. I believe this device is a good indicator for what the majority of users will experience on their current devices or at least on their next upgrade. My thinking is that rocking around with a high-end device makes you think that everyone has a GPS/Touchscreen/Mobile Web device when that is not the case for the average user. At least not this year.

So, what I have decided to do is document my experiences using technologies that are or will become mainstream in the very, very near future. While I can get highly ‘techy’ and talk tech with the best of them I have decided to write a little series here that is called Mobile 101.

In this first post I will be looking at the Mobile Internet.

This blog - mobile specific versionMobile Internet, Mobile Web and WAP are all the same thing and are the same thing as the normal Internet you use on your PC. They used to be somewhat separate in the early days but they are now the same thing. The major difference is that many web pages that are designed specifically for use on a mobile revolve around achieving a particular task quickly rather than just general browsing. This is what I call “mobile context”, but that is a whole other topic.

To browse the Internet on your mobile, there are things you should consider first. Most important is the cost of mobile data charged by your provider. These costs are coming down but can still be high. As an example, casual data rates here are around $0.10 per 10 kilobytes. Although Vodafone NZ is moving to a casual rate of $1.00 per day for up to 10MB and the $1.00 for every MB over that. What this means is you do have to be aware of how much data you are downloading at a time. Many mobile browsers will show you how much they are downloading for each session. You should get a feel for how much data you use doing tasks that you will start to do regularly from your phone. If you need more data for less money, you can move onto a data plan.

Lesson 1: Understand the costs for mobile data.

Once you have understood and started using the Internet from your mobile, the first thing you will realize is that the browsing experience is (in many cases) pretty poor. Many sites and browsers will deliver you the information you wanted but it’s not that compelling.

But before you give up and move back to your laptop you should try out a new mobile browser. The browser can have a big effect on the overall experience. Everything from the page navigation, layout, fonts, intuitiveness and speed is basically determined by the browser itself. I find that the browser is the single biggest factor that will make or break the mobile Internet experience for you. In many cases the standard phone browser leaves a lot to be desired.

Thankfully there are alternatives. A great browser is OperaMini which you can download and install for free. I have been using mini for about 6 months and I love it. I find it actually provides the best browsing experience of any browser i use (including desktops). Opera mini renders pages nicely and navigates them smoothly and intuitively using the keys of the phone. It also has some slick visual effects when moving forward and back through pages.

Best of all Opera uses a nice method for shrinking the download size of the webpage. This means that you can use a lot less data, making ot cheaper. As an example, a news site I regularly view involve downloading 500kB on my desktop. OperaMini can deliver me the same page in about 14kB (or 8kB with images turned off). Assuming $0.10/10kB that is $5.00 vs $0.14 for the same information.

Lesson 2: The Out-of-the-box mobile browsing experience is poor, but you can easily fix that.

With all your browsing on your mobile you should also consider what might happen if the unthinkable happens - You lose your phone or it is stolen. As with your PC, keeping passwords safe and secure is important. Give a thought to what might happen if someone gets access to your phone that you have been using for online auctions, social networking or even worse online banking. Simply make sure you log out of any sites once you are finished.

Lesson 3: Protect your online stuff. Log out of any sites you use on your mobile, in case you and your phone become separated.

Finally, keep your ears and eyes open. There are many new services being launched all the time that are available on, or are specifically targetted at mobiles. For example, Air NZ (our largest airline in New Zealand) has just lauched a mobile site that allows you to do mobile-relevant functions such as check departures and arrivals or get information about special offers.

Alternatively, if you are a business owner, marketer or decision maker, now is the time to be thinking about securing a mobile presence. Your customers are moving to mobile so you should be there too. At the moment  there is still plenty of opportunity to be create some competitive advantage over your competitors. If you want to talk more about this then get in touch with me directly.

Lesson 4: Things in the mobile space are evolving at rapid pace. Be on the look out for new services and opportunities on the mobile Internet.

That’s it for the first Mobile 101. Hope it is a useful starter. If you have any further comments or questions then please feel free to leave a comment. For now you might like to try out the mobile version on this site which can be found at darrentwiss.com/blog . This site should recognize that you are on a mobile and give you a mobile version. If you try opera mini then you can compare the experience (turn off mobile view in mini’s settings to get the full page).

Opera Mini pressures the walled garden approach to mobile web?

Published
by
Darren Twiss
on June 24, 2008
in mobile web
. 3 Comments

First up, I just want to say that Opera Mini is my favorite bit of software right now. This little, Java-based browser for mobiles is a slick package, making the mobile web faster, cheaper and an overall better experience.

I think ‘mini’ has begun to address many of the problems that I believe have slowed use of the mobile web (particularly here in New Zealand where mobile data rates are high).

But has Opera Mini’s success (Used by more than 44 million people - operamini.com) forced a change in thinking of the operator’s mobile web portals often referred to as the ‘walled gardens’. These portals such as Vodafone’s Live! were the first mobile web sites and portals which did and mostly still do live on the mobile operators network rather than in the all-access Internet. Thus, allowing the mobile operators to control the price for browsing, downloading content and using services.

But has Opera Mini forced a rapid change in this ‘walled garden’ model? I think so, but to fully explain why, we need to look at how Opera Mini surfs the mobile web because this is different to your PC browser and is the reason for Opera’s speed and ability to keep data to a minimum.

This is taken from the Opera Mini website:

Opera’s mobile software uses a remote server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to your phone.

Web content is compressed to reduce the size of data transfers, enabling fast browsing experience at low costs even on simpler phones.

Put simply, the page you get in Opera Mini has been served via Opera’s servers rather than direct from the website server address you keyed into the address bar.

So what changing and what does this mean? Well we can only assume that Opera Mini’s success will translate into it being the pre-loaded browser on shipped handsets in the near future. This leaves some telco’s with a bit of a problem in that Opera Mini will not be able to be used with the existing portals that are not available on the open Internet (I did a few experiments to confirm my thinking last night).

The problem is that Opera Mini starts retrieving your page by asking the Opera server to get it, work it’s magic to reduce the size and then send it back to you in ‘mini’ form. If Opera’s server can’t access the page, then it can’t serve it up to you and this is exactly what happens in the case of a walled garden/portal that can only be accessed on the phone network.

So last weeks announcement by Vodafone NZ of a casual data rate ($1/day for up to 10MB) and that all data on Vodafone Live! will be charged at normal data rates rather than a free to browse - pay for services approach can be read that the portal is shifting to becoming a web portal on the Internet rather than being kept inside the network.

I just wonder whether the rising significance of Opera Mini and it’s method of fetching and pre-processing pages has been a key factor in this change of thinking?