Handheld Usability

WAP Design Course: London & NYC

2007-11-08T17:59:04Z

I'll be teaching a "WAP Design" full-day course in London and New York this December.

This course is for designers who want to know how to design for today's phones, using today's mobile browsers. It is filled with examples and exercises geared to ready designers for immediate success.

WAP Design includes XHTML, CSS, and .mobi issues in a designer-focused course covering the following topics:

* WAP Overview
* WAP, including XHTML, CSS, and .mobi
* Successful and Unsuccessful WAP Sites
* Requirements Gathering for Design
* Competitive Analysis of Desktop and Mobile Web Sites
* Mobile Design Patterns
* Expert Design Guidelines
* WAP Design Toolbox
* Wireframing
* Paper Prototyping

More Info
Register for London: 3 December, 2007
Register for New York: 11 December, 2007

Nissan Altima Coupe Ad is Fantastic

2007-11-08T17:59:00Z

TBWA\Chiat\Day outdid themselves for Nissan's Altima Coupe ad, featured at left. It's beautiful, fascinating, modern, and makes you want to buy a cellphone that looks like a bunch of little cars! I loved it so much that one of my staff got permission from Nissan for me to use the image here on Handheld Usability. I think it indicates how technology can inspire art--just like art can inspire technology. Bang and Olufsen is the firm that most often comes to mind when one thinks of art-inspired technology.

The artwork in the Altima Coupe ad inspired our graphics for the WAP Design course. Molly Bowman created the logos for London & New York.

What is it about the cell phone that inspires art? Is it that the device keeps us in touch, is ever-present in our pocket or purse, and has so many sense-inspiring features? We feel the devices, see them (and their screens), hear them... We don't taste or smell them thankfully, but they satisfy the other three senses beautifully.

It's interesting that touch screens lack that sense of feel--except those that use Immersion's VibeTonz technology, which makes touch screens "feel" like they've been pressed when buttons are activated.

SK Telecom Idle Screen Madness

2007-10-02T20:41:50Z

At Mobile HCI in Singapore in September, Songyee Yoon from SK Telecom keynoted about digital convergence, and service proliferation. She presented the T Interactive solution that you see above. Apologies for the scratchy pictures, which are from my digital camera from the audience.

T Interactive pushes content to the idle screen, with overnight downloads of content, free of charge. The content is then shown throughout the day without requiring further downloads. One example is Cizle, a movie ticketing service that shows advertising for new movies for which customers can buy tickets.

With search, search results are providing a single result, the nearest, instead of a list of many. Searching for Starbucks in their old design provided 169 results on 19 pages. The new design provides a single result with a map to it, with links to other locations.

The "After" solution looks a whole lot better, though it actually looks as if one of the links in the "Before" image was clicked. I would prefer to see a set of information above the map, with links below it. Above the map, I'd list the address and cross street, business hours, and a short review. Below the map, I'd list the phone number (linked for a call), the directions links, and "More search results for 'Starbucks'".

Designing the Mobile User Experience

2007-08-29T20:23:00Z

"Handheld Usability" was obviously the predecessor to "Designing the Mobile User Experience." The shame of it is that Barbara Ballard and Scott Weiss (your humble blogger) did not collaborate to produce a second edition, sharing both of their insights. Instead, Ballard writes the same book, but in 2007 instead of 2002, with many of the same weaknesses, and many of the same strengths. Readers who liked "Handheld Usability" will enjoy "Designing the Mobile User Experience," but will be frustrated by the lack of detailed WAP design advice. Also missing is detailed advice for FlashLite, UIOne, SVG, tat, Java, and other environments. Ballard is a very strong writer, with very strong opinions. Fortunately, she is very smart and knowledgeable, with extensive experience working at Sprint and since providing services to Sprint. Wiley did her a disservice by printing the book in black and white, and does a crazy disservice to readers by charging so much for the book. However, designers who want to learn about mobile will benefit from this book. Experienced mobile designers will be frustrated, as they were with "Handheld Usability." Even experienced mobile designers should consider purchasing this book, as a reference and as a supplement to their own knowledge.

Buy Ballard's Book

Study Reveals How Advertising and Voice Improve Mobile Search Experience

2007-08-22T16:34:11Z

New York, NY – August 21, 2007 – Usable Products Company recently completed an independent user experience benchmark on Mobile Search. Eighty participants evaluated three text-based and one voice-enabled mobile search solution resulting in several unexpected insights about the preferences of today’s mobile search users. Researchers were surprised that 79% of participants favored advertising-supported mobile search, and 37% felt that banner ads actually enhanced the mobile search user experience. Paid and sponsored text based ads proved most detrimental to user experience.

Also unexpected was that participants initially predicted voice search would be the most difficult to use but after an hour of usage gave it higher ratings than text search. According to Scott Weiss, president of Usable Products, “Users predicted voice search would be the worst of the four search products, but in final usability, it performed better than expected. We were surprised that participants enjoyed voice search, and how much more they liked it than searching via phone keypad.”

“Mobile search is in its early stages, with many opportunities for improvement. While participants averaged an impressive 88 percent success rate in submitting mobile search queries, only 53 percent found relevant results. Participants who found what they were looking for averaged 143 seconds to submit queries and find answers,” said Weiss. “None of the four search solutions was a clear winner. Our researchers have developed 25 Best Practices, which if followed, are likely to dramatically increase user satisfaction in mobile phone searches.”

The four mobile search solutions benchmarked were: InfoSpace WAP, JumpTap Java (Alltel Axcess Search), Nuance Voice Control, and Yahoo! Go. Participants each used a single mobile search product to check a horoscope, weather, a stock quote, find a restaurant, check a sports score, and find a ring tone. Success, time to complete, and user perceptions were tracked. 20 one-hour usability interviews were conducted for each search product.

“Mobile Search User Experience Benchmark” spans 179 pages and is delivered in print and on CD ROM, with 25 best practices, 76 charts, 32 demonstration videos of mobile search in action, 34 usability video clips, and hundreds of high resolution photographs. It is available for immediate sale from http://usableproducts.com.

Celltop Usability Worse Than WAP

2007-07-12T18:19:16Z

Usable Products Company’s recently-completed report, Celltop Usability, found that Celltop was harder to use than WAP. Alltel’s Celltop is a mobile widget solution, which Usable Products studied alongside Axcess Web, a WAP portal, on LG’s AX8600 mobile telephone.

Mobile widgets are ‘Web 2.0’ for phones. Mobile widgets are highly interactive, Internet-aware applications. Celltop is a mobile widget solution launched by Alltel in January 2007, with the promise of increased usability. A case study from the designers of Celltop states that “Celltop … was created specifically to communicate the Alltel brand attributes of reliability, simplicity, and service.”

Unfortunately, Celltop is less usable than WAP. Only 7 out of 10 usability test participants were able to successfully check the weather in Miami, Florida using Celltop, while all 10 were successful using Axcess Web, a WAP portal. Furthermore, of those who succeeded, Celltop took 36 seconds (27%) longer than WAP. Half of the participants started with Celltop; the other half started with Axcess Web.

Participants checked the phone’s call log using Celltop and the phone’s native user interface, with similar results: 70% were successful using Celltop, while 100% were successful using the phone’s native user interface (UI). Celltop required 161% more time to check the call log than the phone’s native UI. Participants needed a full minute to check the call log with Celltop, and only 23 seconds using the native UI.

Celltop is visually appealing, but its ease of use is inferior to LG’s native UI. Despite poor usability, participants preferred Celltop overall, 6 to 4. However, not for checking the weather or the call log—in those cases, participants favored WAP and the phone’s native user interface 7 to 3 over Celltop. Usability tasks included finding and launching Celltop, checking the weather, sports scores, stock quotes, the call log, adding the News cell, and reordering cells. 10 one-hour usability interviews were conducted in Spring, 2007.

The report, Celltop Usability, delivered in print and on CD ROM, is available for immediate sale from http://usableproducts.com. It spans 50 pages, starting with background on 7 mobile widget solutions. The report contains 17 charts, dozens of high resolution photographs, 10 demonstration videos of Celltop in action, and 15 usability video clips.

Usability Testing with Children

2007-07-06T16:02:26Z

I was wrong! In recent User Experience Benchmarking training sessions in New York and San Francisco, I explained Usable Products Company's strategy on conducting research using under-18 participants. I stated definitively that as long as they were legal to work, parent permission was not required. Technically, that statement is true; however, “legal to work” means that work papers for children aged 14 – 17 have been signed by parents.

Our Mobile Search User Experience Benchmark study includes four under-18s out of each suite of 20 interviews. I was curious, so I looked up the information at the New York State Department of Labor web site. We also looked at market research web sites, which were less helpful. Rather than ask under-18 respondents to see work papers, we decided to stay on the safe side and get parent permission.

We created a fast, easy, electronic strategy to gather and nearly guaranty credible parental approval, in seven easy steps:

1. Filter our existing panel for respondents aged 35 – 55.
2. Prepare an Under-18 survey, with the first entry fields requiring the parent’s full name, email, and telephone number.
3. Ask panelists with children aged 14 – 17 to forward the survey link to their children.
4. After harvesting data from the Under-18 survey, cross-reference and verify Under-18 parent information with the 35 – 55 panel.
5. Email verified respondents’ parents a PDF permission form.
6. Require parents to fax or mail the signed permission form.
7. Schedule Under-18s by calling the parent.

We went a few steps further: The parent permission form included fill-in fields that enabled the parent to permit his or her child to attend alone or only with parent in tow. If the signed form was faxed, the original was required when the child arrived for research, if the parent did not require their own presence. When parents are present, we allow them to watch interviews from the observer side of the one-way mirror.

We prepared a background with "Under 18" in large type that we use during interviews with children. Why? Child privacy laws! Rather than ask the parents to permit our use of the still images and video, we decided to omit Under 18 videos and stills from our studies, instead using icons to represent the child respondents with quotes. The background is there in case we accidentally harvest a child’s video, so that the analyst pulling the video clip doesn’t accidentally include a video clip of a child in the report. Note: the image used in this blog entry comes from a study for which we did receive parental permission to use the child's likeness.

Once I realized my error, I decided that a thorough process for parental approval made the most sense. With electronic surveys, email, and the fax machine, even the seven steps above don't take too much time or effort, and the fax and original form paper trail provides us with ample tracking information to protect the safety of our under-18 respondents.

Mobile Widgets

2007-06-07T18:47:43Z

Widgets are small, single-purpose, highly graphical and interactive Internet-enabled applications. Apple's Dashboard for OS X was the commercial pioneer of the widget phenomenon, though MIT's Project Athena was the actual inventor, back in the 1980s. (See the Wikipedia entry on GUI_Widget for more information.)

Widget engines are the technology platforms on which widgets are deployed, the most well-known of which is Widsets, a well-funded Nokia spin-off with no monetization model in sight. While Widsets is available for free download, it only works on the latest smart phones. Furthermore, Widsets requires download and installation procedures likely to baffle most mobile phone users, and which could be costly for mobile phone users without all-you-can-eat data plans.

The one operator-deployed widget solution is Celltop from Alltel, a regional US operator. The left softkey label on the idle screen is "Celltop," which launches the widget engine, reputed to be UI One from Qualcomm. The engine starts with a branded animation and sound effect, lasting several seconds. Celltop emerges, with two side-by-side applications, each laid atop a subtly three-dimensional gradient bubble See http://mycelltop.com for a sexed-up demo of the experience, though you should know that though Celltop looks like the demo, it's not nearly as responsive.

Each Celltop widget is a single data application. Several "cells" ship with a new Celltop handset, including Inbox, Call List, Weather, and different sports, including Rodeo. Celltop has two modes, Navigation, and Application. In Navigation mode, one can slide the display left and right between the subscribed widgets, with an associated "whoosh" sound effect. Pressing the center select button enters Application mode, where the selected widget expands to take up the entire display. Widgets update automatically in either mode, though in Application mode, more data is obviously visible. In an as-yet unreleased Usable Products Company study of Celltop, updates were sluggish, and the data was sometimes stale. The Search cell is not yet available.

Celltop sets a low standard, being the first deployed solution. However, there are non-deployed solutions from several providers, including Nokia's Widsets, Mobidgets, BluePulse, Openwave's MIDAS, Opera Widgets, and the just announced Microsoft spin-off, Zen Zui. All have received some amount of hype.

Come to MAPOS in San Francisco 26 – 28 June, 2007 to learn more about mobile widgets, and attend a very special workshop devoted to widgets that I will be moderating. This workshop is an exciting full-day strategy session that starts by teaching the background, advantages, and challenges of each of the major platforms. It continues with group design sessions for widgets on today's—and tomorrow's phones. It wraps up with a round table discussion on policies and pricing: what should widgets cost, and also their use on a regular basis. The brightest minds in mobility will be there, so please join us! Email me to receive a 25% discount from Informa on the MAPOS US event.

New Yorkers Value Mobile Ease Of Use 3 To 2 over Appearance

2007-04-19T23:32:54Z

19 April 2007: This week, more than 800 New York metropolitan area survey respondents were asked about the importance of several factors when considering the purchase of a new phone. 70% rated Ease of Use Very Important as compared to 46% rating Appearance Very Important. This finding is astounding, because it shatters the commonly-held belief that appearance is more important to consumers than usability.

Included in the survey were Internet Access, Mobile Television Features, and MP3 Player Capabilities. Only 9% rated Mobile Television Features Very Important, and 14% rated MP3 Player Capabilities Very Important… The highest percentage of respondents (33%) rated Mobile Television Features and MP3 Player Capabilities as Neither Important nor Unimportant in their mobile phone purchase decisions. Internet Access was rated Very Important by 34% of respondents.

Mobile usability is hard to gauge in stores, but impossible to miss once the phone is purchased. According to WDS Global's 2006 survey in the UK, one in seven mobile phones is returned within the first year of purchase by subscribers as faulty, but 63% of the devices being returned are found to be without fault, costing the mobile industry $4.5 Billion per year. Usability is a big deal.

Bill Clinton & George H. Bush, Live at CTIA

2007-04-02T03:08:44Z

CTIA's day 3 keynote featured Bill Clinton & George H. Bush. The 41st President of the United States, George H. Bush (1989-1993) started with some funny jokes about gay marriage and right and left-wing politics. He even called the speaking opp "white collar crime," where "I go out, speak, get paid, and go home." He said that he's hooked to his Blackberry, and is a "blackbelt wireless emailer." He even took a cute pot shot at Al Gore, saying that he was using email before Al Gore made his "contribution to connectivity." He said that "there are things greater and more important than individual politics." His best one-liner: "Even after 14 years, people will still remember that you threw up on the Prime Minister of Japan." He has turned into a comedian.

Then came Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, with a lot of fascinating statistics and a hot pink tie. He received a long standing ovation. (George Bush received a short standing ovation.) Clinton spoke of the telecommunications act that opened up cable and wireless to more modern competition, though he expressed regret for the "antiquated language" in the act. Clinton said that median incomes rose in the second half of the 1990's due to information technology, which accounted for 7% of US employment, but 28% of US economic growth from 1996 to 2000, with economic growth of 4%, with IT growing 21%. Inflation was 3%, but in IT it was 1%. Jobs paid twice as much as foreign affiliates in the same industries and 25% more than average jobs in the US. Median wages rose due to IT.

In Rwanda, Clinton is working to put together a healthcare network, relying on cell phones and solar power. Penetration of cell phones in Africa is over 12%. Every increase of cell phone penetration of 10% increases GDP 1/6 of 1%, increasing access to markets through their mobile phones. Haiti, afflicted by bad governments and oppression, has a new job class where people sell minutes of use on a mobile phone. The fastest category for micro loans in Bangladesh is to women so that they can buy cell phones. 60% of loan takers use this money to lift themselves above the poverty line. Clinton urged us to make micro loans to people all over the emerging world to enable those below the poverty line to rise above it through the use of mobile technology.

Samsung Upstages CTIA 2007

2007-04-01T21:03:49Z

Samsung upstaged everyone at CTIA 2007. Not just with the Sprint Upstage pictured at left, but with the Verizon u740 below. The Upstage was the most innovative product at CTIA, with an MP3 player on one side and a phone on the other. Switching from one side to the other required pressing a "Flip" button on the side of the unit, which was card-thin.

The Upstage was just one of a whole line of Ultra phones, the craziest of which was the SGH-F510, below. Samsung didn't have any US announcements for the SGH-F510, which not only flips, but has an embedded hinge, inside of which hides an aerial, used for television reception. It seemed pretty fragile.

The u740 is a dual-hinged flip phone with a QWERTY keypad. It looked pretty tricky to use in vertical orientation, but the horizontal orientation looked terrific. The button feel wasn't perfect, but the unit was thin.

Zeetoo: Cool New Bluetooth Tech

2007-03-29T19:16:25Z

I met with Beth Marcus, Zeetoo's CEO. Zeetoo is a platform technology for Bluetooth-connected, battery-operated smart peripherals. Beth showed me a key fob and several game controllers. At first I was skeptical, but both were super compelling. The key fob (pictured at left) works with a GPS-enabled mobile phone to mark the spot where you park your car, simply by locking the car with the key fob. When the driver returns from an errand, he or she simply presses the unlock button to launch a mapping application on the phone that directs the driver to the car. There are obviously some use case problems with the solution, such as when the driver doesn't want to launch the application, but the concept is brilliant. I'll post some design revisions in a future blog entry. Email me your suggestions. I saw RFID-based object finding technologies at Mobile HCI last year, but this tech is much nicer. There's a fun video on Zeetoo's site that illustrates the concept.

The Zeemote device duplicates navigation and other button functions of the handset. Zeetoo plans joystick, trackball, and Wii type control with accelerometers. The two areas of Zeetoo's initial focus are games and Location-Based Services (LBS). Pairing seemed trivial, and Zeetoo's target is under 30 seconds.

Zeemotes will be available in small numbers in the Fall, and in mass in 2008. Street prices are expected to start at $29.95, which could include a game or game demos, up to $49.95. Including an SD slot on the unit would increase price, but would tremendously expand the applications possible. Zeetoo's technology has been fully tested on 44 different phones so far. They expect the technology to work on all newer Nokia and Motorola phones, numbering in the hundreds of models. So far, Zeetoo has targeted Java and Windows Mobile, with hope for BREW soon. If I were them, I'd target all the fun phones that Helio supports, and try to get an exclusive to build the brand. I bet Zeetoo devices will increase mobile gaming sales—that would be a fun correlational story.

The Zeetoo pairing process installs software that sets up the controller--a seamless installation without any need for further customization. Each controller has a unique ID, so crosstalk won't be a problem. New game ideas could utilize multiple Zeemotes for the same phone. This technology could be used for console gaming when enough controllers are not available. I can imagine cinematic gaming in a movie theater where dozens or even hundreds of people are playing at the same time, taking interactive entertainment to the next level.

Upcoming Mobile UE Conferences

2007-03-23T00:45:25Z

Usable Products' User Experience Benchmarking Training
12 April, 2007: New York, NY, USA
8 May, 2007: San Francisco, CA, USA
Usable Products teaches private tutorials. User Experience Benchmarking is a quantitative way to compare user interfaces, either the same UI over time or UIs from competing products. Benchmarking allows one to rank product usability through user preferences, time-to-complete, and success rates. Usable Products Company has produced both commissioned (private) and syndicated user experience benchmarks for the past four years, and this course teaches our methods through lecture, anecdotes, and hands-on group exercises. Delegates from Google and Cisco have attended this course, so you'd be in excellent company!

MEX: 2 – 3 May, 2007, London, UK
MEX is Marek Pawlowski's annual Mobile User Experience conference, held in London (http://pmn.co.uk/mex). This year it's on the 2nd/3rd of May. It is a two-day strategy forum for "leading minds in mobile telecoms." I have spoken at and attended the last two MEX events, which I found inspiring. This year I will be one of the facilitators, who will each lead discussions within a group of approximately ten delegates throughout the two-day conference. Readers of this list are entitled to a £100 savings. Email me to receive this discount on your MEX registration.

MAPOS USA: 26 – 28 June, 2007, San Francisco, CA, USA MAPOS USA is Informa's annual forum for Mobile Applications and Operating Systems. This year is the first that it will be held in the US. It is the most interesting mobile technology conference for UI designers, marketers, and solution providers. I will be chairing a panel on "Widgets: Mobile’s Door to a PC-Like Experience and Development Ecosystem… or simply Marketing Spin?" I will also run a full-day workshop after the conference for delegates interested in "Widget Frameworks and the Mobile User Interface: How to Succeed, Today & Tomorrow." Readers of this list are entitled to a 25% discount on MAPOS USA registration. Please email me for the conference brochure and also to register with the 25% discount.

Mobile HCI: 11 – 14 September, 2007, Singapore
Mobile HCI (http://mobilehci.org) is the annual academic conference for Mobile Human Computer Interaction. I have submitted two tutorials and an industrial case study, and plan to submit a panel for consideration by reviewers. This event is the only academic conference devoted to HCI for mobile devices. With keynotes by Songyee Yoon, VP Communication Intelligence at SK Telecom, Donghoon Chang, VP of Mobile User Experience Design at Samsung Electronics, and Prof. Masaaki Fukomoto of NTT DoCoMo's Frontier Technology Research Group, this event should draw UI designers, developers, marketers, and executives from all over the world. It is comprised of papers from students, professors, and industry participants. Papers are of varying quality, but the tutorials and workshops are truly forward-thinking.

IMS/MMD 2006

2006-11-13T23:21:40Z

IMS is the Internet protocol Multimedia Subsystem, which is for GSM. For CDMA, the analogous system is MMD. This conference, unlike the World Handset Forum, was about what’s coming—not what’s “now” or what’s “new.”

IMS phones will be Internet appliances, for which voice will be a single application. Other applications could be live television, instant messaging, or a shopping tool for new music downloads. The conference was about infrastructure, technology, user experience, and getting to know the players, both the vendors and the buyers.

IMS has several UE considerations:
1. Pricing of application services, data, and voice
2. Cost conveyance to the consumer
3. Policy management: digital rights, pathways (SMS vs. email vs. IM…), moving identity from a personal device to another device, either another personal device or a shared public device (like from a mobile to a TV, either in the home or in a hotel).

There's a lot more after the break...

]]> Roberto Gavazzi, Client Area Manager, Innovation and engineering from Telecom Italia spoke about “IMS-like services,” since no IMS deployments exist today. Telecom Italia has sold or leased one million fixed video handsets. Uptake has been poor; Gavazzi’s assessment was that one million is not enough. He stated that the user experience was good, so that was apparently not the barrier. My take is that video calling, for whatever reason, is a complete turnoff for most people. Why spend more for someone to see your face?

Terrence Wong, Manager Technology Strategy, CTO Office, Telus Mobility in Canada spoke about the carrier perspective for IMS services. Telus has seen a jump in revenue percentage for data from 10% of $5.7B in Q2 2000 to 19% of $8.2B in Q1 2006. Voice dropped from 49% to 29%, and wireless jumped from 18% to 41%. Long distance, as one might expect, dropped considerably. He stated that having a seamless user experience between the different networks (wireless, wire line) provides not just the consumer, but the carrier with benefits. Having a multi-play strategy with a consistent UE enables single training for the support staff. Network security, client update & management, and service & billing were the key applications that Wong considered. Does that mean that my wire line phone gets configured the same way I configure the Wi-Fi on my laptop? I’m frightened by that idea.

Network policy is a consideration of IMS and MMD services, such as how to route calls. If a single number is utilized, when should the call go to home, work, mobile, or VOIP. My answer is that the policy should be transparent to the consumer. Have it go to all of those places, and have the call terminus be centralized to the network. In other words, ring everywhere, but take messages only at one place. Setting policy is a user interface that is cumbersome, hard to override, and difficult to support.

Service levels for VOIP promise to be varied and complicated to monitor. IMS treats voice as just another application, but for most telephony users, voice is the most important application. Guaranteeing levels of service implies more than providing credit for crappy, blocked, and dropped calls: it means providing a quality connection that doesn’t jitter or disconnect prematurely. It means providing comparable or higher quality than today’s cellular. However, the first years of IMS are likely to see voice degradation, a scary prospect: more expensive handsets that are bigger, crashy, and with poor battery life that also have low quality voice connections? Sounds like a train wreck: it can be seen from a long way away, but it can’t be stopped.

Moshe Fireman, Associate VP & Chief Architect of Comverse USA spoke about converged messaging. He spoke about the opportunity for improved usability. I think the unified mailbox is fantastic for reading messages. It breaks down when one creates messages: How does the consumer decide which channel to use for outbound content? It’s a usability logjam, since there are some constraints: SMS allows for 160 characters (unless compound SMS messages are sent). Emails can be any length, but they can be either plain text or HTML. Instant messages (IM) can be any length and they’re instant, but only if the recipient is online. MMS messages compete with email. Voice messaging competes with Push to Talk. In “competes” I mean that there are gray areas where more than one technology is appropriate, but the costs are different. My gut is that the right strategy is to have the user create the message and send using the most efficient protocol, but that strategy can lead to cost confusion, the bane of IMS services. Should replies use the same protocol, or should the handset or network optimize the delivery mechanism?

Moshe used personas to illustrate multi-modal communication. Patrick sends a message to Ann, who replies in a “conversation” mode, but then Patrick gets it as an SMS. He replies, and Ann sees it after she arrives at work on her computer. Sending video was of course included as an example. The IMS promise is all about technology enablement with usability challenges—the tech is much easier than the UI. Moshe spoke about the user being able to set his or her preferences for how messages get sent—policies again. I think the whole concept of policy setting by the consumer is Pandora’s Box.

In the Q&A I asked Moshe what the send strategy would be; he said that the user shouldn’t care and that the network should decide. I followed with the cost opacity issue: the network might automatically decide on the most expensive means! Moshe suggested a single-cost structure based on message size. I like that idea, as long as the messaging application indicates the total message size before it gets sent, much like SMS counters work today. Even better would be a cost counter.

Marc LeClerc, Manager, Global IMS Developer Support Expert Centre, Ericsson, Canada showed a video envisioning future IMS services in the car, and in the home. A family of mobile-addicted people used their mobiles and their TVs with IMS services, headphones, and interaction with each other and other devices through mobile communication. He showed a son requesting access to parental-protected content. He showed the same parent checking and sending messages while driving (!), and he showed the other parent using a touch screen television to check and send messages. All these technologies were actually quite humorous to me. This four-person traditional family was so tuned in to technology, having spent a considerable sum per person on equipment and service.

What were the advantages of IMS enablement?
1. The teenager was able to watch/listen to music videos on her handset, and then move the content to the big screen in the living room.
2. Mom was able to text message while on the road. This choice was curious… Dangerous and a strange use case, though increasingly popular.
3. Dad was cooking and using the kitchen TV as a messaging terminal.

Here were use cases:
- Mobile phone used as a DLNA home network device
- IMS enabled services on home network devices
- Remote access to home network content and media

What’s the UI to move music from the handset to another device?

Chris Steck, Director of Technology Strategy at RealNetworks USA spoke about IMS as the future entertainment platform. He spoke about the carriers’ concern that IMS breaks the walled garden—that’s a nice irony, since he was able to reassure them that IMS enables the monetization of every service separately. Really evil carriers will bill for time, data quantity, AND services, the triple dip! But seriously, let’s hope that individual services will be billed, and data minutes and data quantity will be billing history. He spoke about rights management.

	Threat	Opportunity
Peer to peer	Bandwidth/QoS Revene leakage through privacy and super-distribution	Least cost routing Personal media access Monetizing viral media
Direct connections to the Internet	Competitors get a free ride on the network and access to users	Transform walled garden into a “garden market” of personalized service bundles
Off-deck	Loss of control over content distribution	Low overhead pass-through model brokering content across three screens

Chris’ presentation ultimately positioned RealNetworks as the arbiter of digital rights. Since Qualcomm, Microsoft, and the others weren’t talking about rights management, he deserves plaudits. He brought up peer to peer (P2P) as a use case. IMS enables the tech, but it’ll be up to the carriers to control access. Carriers will need a digital rights management partner to assist with the policies and UE. Real has a “share the love” credits concept that encourages media sharing, but the shared media is encased in an advertising wrapper. Enough sharing gives the sender the rights to watch the content without ads. His concept was that popular media generates more ad serving revenue than unpopular content.

The IMS technical problems are considerable, but the overall user experience is the true challenge: pricing, marketing, billing.

Mobile TV at World Handset Forum 2006, San Diego

2006-10-27T18:35:16Z

Snow will be the new screen candy on mobile phones, since there are few options for broadcasting content to phones: place shifting, one-to-one, one-to-many, and RF broadcast. RF broadcast, good old TV without cable, appears to be the most likely distribution mechanism, since with the digital broadcast, only a few simultaneous streams per cell can be transmitted. And with such a tiny device, there's not much of an antenna. Ergo, snow. Presentations from Informa Telecoms, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments informed this entry.

Mark Burk, a Research Analyst at Informa Telecoms, suggested that handsets for mobile TV will cost $150 more than existing 3G handsets. He said that 43% of the cost to consumers for mobile TV will be the handset for the 18-month period of the typical contract. He also said that consumers were willing to spend $10-15 per month for these services. I ask, what’s Mark been smoking?

Place shifting is the technical name for video podcasting, as users would choose what programs to watch and simply download them to their phones. This choice is a bandwidth constraint that will ultimately fail, unless it’s done through a USB cable or Bluetooth/WiFi to the home or work broadband connection.

One-to-one and one-to-many are cellular transmission of mobile content. This strategy could fail, since cellular sites can at most handle three or four simultaneous broadcasts, even with EVDO Rev. A and HSDPA deployments.

Broadcast using radio frequency (RF) technology will turn mobile phones into television receivers, giving them two radios. This concept makes the most sense, as it doesn’t impact the cellular network in any way. The challenge here is broadcast quality and spectrum allocation, both of which will be tremendous issues. The program guide and other content will stream via the cellular network. I see snow on screens in the future—isn’t that a step backward?

The program guide can also combine the three broadcast methods, not necessarily even indicating which is in use. The biggest usability challenge stated by all of the speakers is the channel change time, which is longer than three seconds.

Paul Scanlan, COO & Co-Founder of MobiTV spoke about the future of mobile TV.

2004: <1 FPS with MJPEG, then 5-7 FPS with MJPEG, GPRS & 1X-RTT
2005: 12-17 FPS, MPEG, GPRS/EDGE/EVDO
2006: 15-30 FPS, MPEG, UMTS/EVDO

I’m looking forward to 2007. MobiTV has a new, sexy program guide (EPG), which has up-sell area above the programming content, which they showed on the Sprint service. While watching content, they scroll up-sell opportunities for ring tones, voting (using premium SMS), and what appears to be sponsorship banner ads.

MobiTV monitors the broadcast traffic, down to each cell site. The Michael Jackson verdict was the most popular day in their history.

MobiTV believes in WiMAX as the future.

Cost Implications of Mobile TV & Video
David Carey, President and CTO of Portelligent gave a fascinating presentation about the cost implications of mobile TV and video on handsets. It seems to be about $60 for the Bill of Materials, though Mark Burk earlier said $150 to the end user. Portelligent creates "tear down" studies of handsets, where they "kill them gently," taking them apart and lovingly photographing every aspect of the design. The biggest costs didn't appear to be the chips, but the complicated double hinging mechanisms for the displays.