Mobile opportunity and options for it

What your phone says about you?

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December 1, 2010

Mobile Applications:Opportunity and OptionsTim McGovern, Director of Online Communications, The Heritage Foundation

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Presentation I gave last December to some New Media folks over at Koch Industries. With some input from Steve, I’ve updated it to share with you.

Trends - GrowthGrowth of overall internet traffic, smartphone market share, internet connected mobile devices

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I have interns who have needed to be coached away from this behavior.

Smartphone % of overall phones

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Trends - GrowthSmartphone Market Share

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45% of smartphone solid in 2nd half 2010 were smartphones. RIM, Apple, Android are all approximately one quarter of active phones. One number that has me concerned about future of the country. WinMo is 14%. I think that’s amazing b/c 1 in 7 people have the same awful taste as Jadon.

Global vs. Local

✤ Global Market ✤ Washington Market

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Difference between global market place and Washington.

Nokia is an afterthought (if that) in US-centric discussions, Symbian while only 3.5% of US Market, is leader globally with 35+% of market share. They have 7 of the 10 most widely used phones globally. Makes the recent MS Phone/Nokia announcement very interesting. No comment on whether the international market discussion was included after our resident Brit offered his comments on the presentation.

Why?

✤ Maybe because there’s so many of these guys in Washington.

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I say this because I’m an iPhone user.

Trends - GrowthGlobal Smartphone Market Share

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Growth from 2009 to 2010, Android and Apple are clear leaders with Android just crushing it. This chart must make Google giddy.

Trends - GrowthMobile Internet Data Growth

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From Smartphone marketshare to mobile traffic patterns.AT&T grew traffic 50x in 3 years -- That’s really astounding and may give you a little more sympathy for the challenges they faced in keeping their service fast + reliable. Although this is of little solace to me when waiting for a connection/something to download. This was clearly driven by the iPhones, but will happen on other mobile platforms as Android devices are gaining market share.

Trends - GrowthMobile Internet Data Growth

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Some jaw dropping numbers from Morgan Stanley. The dark blue charts are from Morgan Stanley’s impressive Mobile Internet Report, published a 12 months ago. All the major resources are available as links in the closing slide.

Trends - GrowthMobile, Internet-connected Devices

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Simple version of a more complicated chart. Overall connectedness is way, way up.

Clever folks will not that only 6b ppl in the world.


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In Q2 2012, on track to have more mobile, internet-connected devices than desktops. Whitebackground with green accents, Luke Wroblewski > credited in last slide.


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Inflection points of smartphones + tablets >>> desktops + notebook/laptops

Next trendCan you guess what it is from the video?

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• Broad trend - the trend is not Windows Phone 7

• What is consistent about the vignettes in the video?

Next trend - play a video and then give you a chance to guess at the next trend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHlN21ebeak

Trends - UbiquityDevices are immediately accessible, wherever we are

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I saw someone doing exactly this biking down East Capitol Street. I was going to take a picture with my iPhone, but I was in the middle of composing a text.

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No comment.

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I plead guilty!

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Been there.

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This is the reason Mike’s been wearing his arm in a sleeve, his Dr. was only half paying attention.

Trends - Ubiquity

• During a typical day:• 84% at home• 80% during misc. times throughout the day• 74% while waiting in lines• 64% at work

• Lots of brief opportunities for interaction• speed is vital

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You can see the stats here on where people access their mobile devices from. The important takeaway is that interactions need to be as quick and painless as possible. We’ll return to the speed question later.

Trends - Capabilities

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• Push: real-time notifications “instant” to user • Location detection• Near Field Communication• Audio: input from a microphone; output to

speaker• Video & image: capture/input from a camera• Application cache for local storage• CSS3 & Canvas for performance optimization

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Mobile browsers don’t have all the backwards support challenges of other browsers. They invest more in upcoming standards.

Katie Harbath at the NSRC wrote an article in December that mentioned that the campaign eventually started using push messages rather than SMS messages for sending alerts to their users.


• Device positioning & motion: from an accelerometer• Orientation: direction from a digital compass• Device connections: through Bluetooth between

devices• Proximity: device closeness to physical objects• Ambient Light: light/dark environment

awareness

Trends - Capabilities (cont.)

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• Multi-touch sensors• RFID reader: identify & track objects with

broadcasted identifiers digital compass• Haptic feedback: “feel” different surfaces on a

screen• Biometrics: retinal, fingerprint, etc.

Trends - Capabilities (cont.)

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Capabilities Convergence 25

Convergence of these capabilities. Anybody familiar with Yelp’s Monocle component on iPhone applicationYelp Augmented Reality app Camera, location, detection, accelerometer, input capabilities, orientation, push notifications

✤ iPhone

✤ Android

✤ Blackberry

✤ Palm Web OS

✤ Windows Phone 7

✤ Other: Web, iPad

Platforms

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Other: Web as an alternative, iPad offers a different user experience based on its form factor and you may want to consider a different UI and capabilities for iPad. You also may have different products that make sense on the iPad - ie, Book-type products.

✤ Factors:

✤ Cross-platform plans

✤ Number and complexity of integrations

✤ device-specific integrations, integrations with your own infrastructure, third party integrations

✤ Frameworks

Planning

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Technical considerations

✤ are generally less expensive ✤ can be expensive if you have to extend your server side capabilities✤ tend to be more expensive (especially if you want to design your applications to

degrade gracefully in the event of network unavailability)


✤ Speed

✤ Network access can be costly

✤ HTML5 offers solutions to minimize network access

✤ Reduce requests and file sizes

Application development practices

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You never know when you’ll go from 5 bars to a half bar. Network speeds, while improving are still generally well below desktop speeds and the entire point of the Win Mobile 7 commercial is the time sensitivity that needs to accompany the ubiquitous presence of these devices.

Frequency requests/latency


✤ Touch

✤ Touch target size

✤ Touch gestures

✤ Hover is no longer an option

Application development practices

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Apple has produced HIG to direct size of touch points, distance from one another and a laundry list of other considerations. This is a good place to start in investigating potential design shops. Don’t ask if they follow them, no one will say they don’t. Ask who the person in the org is that’s most familiar with the guidelines and how closely will they be involved with your project.


✤ Packaged and delivered software, not instantly delivered like the web

✤ Cross-version testing is the new cross-browser testing.

✤ Between provisioning and testing, quality assurance is significantly more involved.

Testing and deploying applications

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Thank you

• Tim McGovern• @mcgovern• [email protected]• http://www.linkedin.com/in/timmcgovern

Time for Q&A?

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• Credits• Luke Wroblewski - Mobile First

• http://lukew.com/ff• Morgan Stanley - The Mobile Internet Report

• http://bit.ly/5BqHuj • Stack Overflow - iPhone development costs• http://bit.ly/HHaLb

• The Mobile Device Is Becoming Humankind's Primary Tool (Infographics Feature)• http://bit.ly/eR9rbW

Costs to Develop Professionally

✤ Factors (cont.):

✤ Design

✤ Good application designers who have a strong visual design skills and are well-versed in touch screen interaction design (a relatively new field) are highly valued talent.

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Every organization has differing levels of understanding about the appropriate level of investment in design. There is visual design and there’s application design. Thinking through the on-device capabilities and understanding the ability of these capabilities to help your meet your project goals is a vital part of the design process.


✤ Factors:

✤ Cross-Platform Support and Feature Parity

✤ Feature parity - is the idea that across users can do the software has the same capabilities across platforms.

✤ This is often seen by software purists as a holy grail of sorts, but is not a necessity.

✤ Be prepared for user sensitivities.33

In her presentation on iPhone, Android, and Windows, Oh My! What's a Mobile App Designer To Do?on Google's campus last night, Suzanne Ginsburg (author of Designing the iPhone User Experience) outlined several approaches to designing native mobile applications.

■ In July 2008 Apple released API t build native apps. Mobile Web was all that was available before. Following that, more app stores were released including: Oct 2008 Android, April 2009 Blackberry App World, Oct 2010 Windows Phone.

■ Do you need to design apps more than once to account for all these app stores?Do You Need a Native App?■ Figure out if you need a native app first. Web apps can be a viable solutions in many cases.

■ Unless your solution requires access to OpenGL, hardware access, or device content –you might not need a native app. Web apps can store data offline, access GPS info and more enhancements are coming.

■ People assume Web app wonʼt be found but there are over 300,000 apps on Appleʼs store. It's not that easy to stand out there.

■ Does your application require multi-tasking support? If you want things to run in the background while the user does other tasks –you'll need a native app.

■ What is your monetization strategy? If you are planning on using subscriptions or one-time payments, you may find it more profitable to use a native app.

■ Device access, multi-tasking, and micropayments are the primary reasons to go with a native app.Three Options for Native Apps■ If you do need a native app, there's three approaches to consider: One Trick Pony, OK Corral, or Trojan Horse

■ One trick pony: build for one native platform if your user base is mostly on that platform or your must-have features are only on that platform.

■ • OK Corral: design your app for 2-3 flagship platforms. Use this approach if your users are on a few platforms and you want the best experience possible on each. If you follow this approach make your first sketches device agnostic then compare differences across devices and OSs to see how they impact user experience.

■ Potential differences include: display size & resolution, device integration with display, supported gestures, UI controls, animations, and landscape vs. portrait. On iPhone, you need to add a horizontal mode. On Android itʼs turned on by default.

■ The navigation differences between single hardware and multiple hardware control devices can lead to usability issues.

■ Look at what is similar between devices vs. whatʼs different –itʼs a lot more consistent than not. iPhone uses switches for on/off checkboxes, Android & Windows Phone has checkboxes and switches. Core gestures are pretty similar across core platforms.

■ Trojan Horse: you create Web apps with native app capabilities by wrapping Web apps within native application code.

■ Device/OS customization depends on App genre and capabilities. If you are designing a game it could be consistent across platforms. Some features might need to be turned off on some platforms.

■ Trojan tools: Phone Gap, Titanium, Rhomobile provide the promise of cross-platform support. They provide a bridge for Web developers moving to mobile apps.In All Cases■ Learn the UI guidelines & deviceʼs technical specs. Windows Phone has great documentation on design guidelines.

■ Explore related apps in depth

■ Sketch, prototype, and test a lot! Donʼt download templates right away –they may limit your ideas.

■ Sketching is pretty consistent across platforms but prototyping between platforms requires different tools. You can use paper, HTML, or presentation software like Keynote & PowerPoint to do rapid prototypes across platforms.

■ Microsoft Expression Blend is a prototyping tool for Windows Phone that can evolve to running code. Apple prototyping tools include: Review and Briefs. Android: Android App Creator is in Google AppsThe Fourth Approach■ Make a Web app!

■ Web app tools: Sencha Touch and jQuery Mobile


✤ Factors (cont.):

✤ Frameworks

✤ AppMaker

✤ TapLynx

✤ PhoneGap, Titanium

✤ Sencha Touch

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Online service, Xcode plugin, Cross-platform services, Web as Platform

Frameworks like AppMaker and TapLynx have limited interactions models, based on reuse, but have done the heavy lifting of interaction design for those models.

Heritage’s experience

✤ 90% of product developed internally, testing and bug fixes were outsourced.

✤ First two weeks saw over 2,500 application downloads

✤ Downloads dropped off from there as promotion ended.

✤ Currently working on upgrade to collect in-application analytics

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■ People assume Web app wonʼt be found but there are over 300,000 apps on Appleʼs store. It's not that easy to stand out there.

What we’ve learned

✤ Have specific user goals for your smartphone application

✤ Make your decisions based on the goals you have set

✤ Set success metrics for application downloads and in-application actions (eg, article views, social sharing, etc.)

✤ Get high level buy-in to your approach to building applications on multiple platforms (or not) and communicate that approach broadly within your organization.

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As with everything, goals should be tied to broader organization wide strategy. George Scoville of Cato wrote a great article on The Next Right that makes this point well. I recommend reading it and sharing it with higher ups if you’re making decisions about mobile apps in your organization.

Documents

Mobile opportunity and options for it