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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
 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'".
 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.
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 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.
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 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...
Continue reading "IMS/MMD 2006" »
 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.
 I spent a few days in San Diego for the Informa World Handset Forum conference, a great opportunity to learn about what's happening in the world of mobile technology.
The first day's chair was Mark Steele, Chairman of the CommNexus trade group in San Diego, as well as VP of OEM for Symbol Technoogies (acquired by Motorola). He spoke about cooperation between carriers, manufacturers, and service providers. He used a brick and mortar analogy, referencing the Egyptian pyramids. They used no mortar, and are standing thousands of years later, while other building technologies that use a lot of mortar relative to “bricks” are less durable. OK, what about the newest building concepts, such as concrete reinforced by rebar? In this building method, the mortar is the brick. IMS and MMD services are closer to this model, enabling direct access to the consumer through IP technologies, without the complex relationships required between services. Maybe IMS and MMD are the rebar?
David Owens, Sprint’s Director of Product Marketing, Devices and Applications spoke about “Understanding Carrier Strategy for Today’s US Handset Market.” Sprint considers the “total customer brand.” He stated that Sprint’s proprietary research indicates coverage and call quality/reliability as the most important consideration. Pricing comes in second, and third is the price of the phone. Low on the list is the selection of phones, prior experience, and last was wireless data. He spoke about Sprint’s having more than 2,000 legacy rate plans still being serviced—he said the “total brand” matters, but what about the “total user experience”?
Sprint will launch 19 devices in the fourth quarter of 2006. He reported Telephia’s Q2 research, the top 3 prioritization of why people bought their current handset: price was 60%, size/weight was 35%, and 34% was Design/style, but Ease of use was 31%, and brand/previous experience hit at 24%. Since storage capacity hit at 3% and MP3 hit 3% also, it’s no wonder that phones are coming out that have these capabilities, but they SUCK and memory chips aren’t even included on many phones.
David spoke a lot about brand. He indicated that Sprint’s phones going forward are all going to have iconic names, chasing the promise of the RAZR brand. He took pot shots at Mobile ESPN, blaming their weakness at branding, as they’re not a service provider (Hello! What about Virgin Mobile?), but also due to their lack of handset diversity.
 Christy Wyatt, VP of Ecosystem and Market Development at Motorola, spoke about 2007: The year of Mobile Linux. Christy was articulate, intelligent, and yet her talk didn’t inspire me. Was Motorola sending a message to Symbian, Microsoft, and other OS vendors, saying “We don’t need you”? She talked about creating an “ecosystem” for developers. What kind of line is that—how can developers get their content onto Motorola phones, when the carriers control the point of entry? It was a curious presentation.
Erick Eidus of MobilEidus hypothesized that operators will trade location for presence. The idea is that the operators make money on communication, so by offering presence, they’re creating an incentive to customers to communicate more, in more ways. If someone’s online, the sender can use Push To Talk, IM, etc. If they’re off-line, the sender can send voicemail, email, or an SMS. An interesting debate ensued, with all the speakers disagreeing with him. It appears that the predominant model is simply revenue share: presence and location spark communication services, and the IM vendors (Microsoft, Yahoo, OZ) simply provide the means to make that communication happen—so they get some of the communication revenue back. Good deal.
Attend the Mobile 2.0 event in San Francisco on 6 November 2006 to learn about the future of mobile. It's only $45 to attend, and features the following speakers:
* Steve Bratt - CEO of W3C
* Judy Breck - Goldenswamp.com
* Tony Fish - Author of Mobile Web 2.0
* Kelly Goto - Principal, gotomedia LLC
* Aron Holzman - Windows Live Mobile
* Rhys Lewis - Chief Scientist at Volantis
* Charles McCathieNevile - Opera Software
* Hetal Patel - Web 2.0 Evangelist at Symbian
* Arun Ranganathan - AOL
* Oliver Starr - Blogger at MobileCrunch.com
* Andy Tiller - CTO of Cognima
With additional speakers from Google, Mozilla.org, Sun and Widsets.
And featuring Mobile Launch Pad by Peter Vesterbacka, showcasing cutting edge start-ups in the mobile space.
From the web site: A One-Day Event on November 6th, 2006 Focusing on the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation.
I'll be moderating a panel entitled "Novel Input Shootout" at Mobile HCI this year. Mobile HCI is the 8th international conference on human computer interaction with mobile devices and services, 12 - 15 September, 2006 in Espoo, Finland.
This panel is meant to promote mobile phone alpha character input technologies that are not yet widely deployed, and that are ready for commercialization. Four speakers have been recruited to this panel, each a recognized innovator.
Howard Gutowitz, Eatoni’s EQ3
The EQ3 keyboard was designed for email-oriented mobile phones, with the intent to converge a QWERTY keyboard with a telephone keypad. EQ3 uses the familiar QWERTY layout, adapted to a mobile phone keypad. EQ3 claims that its predictions are much more accurate than standard predictive text. The EQx series is engineered and patented by Eatoni Ergonomics, Inc. Eatoni designs integrated hardware/software systems for predictive text. It has been in business for more than six years, and includes Siemens, Philips, and Panasonic among its customers.
David Levy, Digit Wireless’ Fastap
Fastap is a patented new approach to keypad design that allows up to three times as many easy-to-use keys to fit into a standard sized mobile phone. The result is an evolution of the 50-year-old 12-button keypad. David Levy, Founder and CTO of Digit Wireless, leads invention and development of new technologies and interfaces. Prior to starting Digit Wireless, David spent time as the Director of Invention Development at Arthur D. Little, taught design at MIT, and ran TH, Inc., a one-person invention development and licensing company. David also headed Portable Device Ergonomics at Apple Computer for five years. David has been profiled in Fortune Magazine and The New Yorker, and was named as one off the 50 “fastest” people by Fast Company Magazine. He holds undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees from MIT in Mechanical Engineering.
Michael Longé, XT9 Mobile Interface
Michael is a Program Director at AOL's Wireless division. Working at Tegic Communications since nearly its founding, he was instrumental in the design and evolution of T9 Text Input for wireless phones and hand-held computers. He repeated that success in the design and specification of the first Instant Messaging applications for mobile phones. In addition to managing the division's UI/Usability team for a number of years, he is responsible for co-inventing and patenting key elements of Tegic's next-generation technology as embodied in its XT9 Mobile Interface. Mr. Longé is also President and Founder of Designer Software, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in custom software design and prototyping.
Wayne Rasanen, IN10DID
Wayne is a TV Director and Editor with more than 20 years of experience. He is the President of the Tampa Bay Inventors Council and inventor of the IN10DID input system. He discovered an interesting relationship between 26 letters and 10 fingers. To produce the alphabet, all that was required was a single tap of each finger for the first ten letters, one thumb shifted for the next eight letters, and the other thumb shifted for the last eight letters. This discovery led him to include all other input onto the ten keys in a logical way, to provide a complete input system without complex chording. IN10DID can thus be deployed inside gloves with a switch in each fingertip, in a standard cell phone, or any device with 10 buttons that allow any two to be engaged.
Van Toffler, President of MTV Networks’ Music/Films/Logo group was full of surprises. He spoke about the new programming coming down the pike from MTV Wireless. They’re planning to (first surprise) develop original audience-generated content. They are getting back to their “ADD roots” by deploying shorts in the five to fifteen second time slice, similar to the original MTV “art breaks”. MTV’s third pillar of content is music—another big surprise. MTV channel on the handsets will break bands—another surprise. MTV was once a pioneer, and they still refer to themselves that way.
 BET (Black Entertainment Television)’s Debra Lee, Chairman and CEO, spoke about the artist D4L launching four million ring tones and achieving success through ring tones purchases by their audience. Hip hop is a recurring theme at CTIA; I remember hearing P. Diddy speaking at CTIA in Atlanta a couple of years ago. The hip hop audience is full of wireless early adopters.
  Amp’d Mobile and Verizon, mobile video purveyors, were notably absent from CTIA, though each had announcements. Amp’d plans to launch its own original television content. I suspect they’re getting it for free, as a means to launch indie artists. It’s a great gig for both parties.
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