Mobile user interfaces – its time for a new paradigm

Olof and Mike from our UK office just published an article in the 3G portal on the need for a new paradigm on the design of mobile user interfaces

A list of interesting Mobile services

Springwise and Trendwatcher published some time go this list.

-AskMeNow | Cell phone users who can't get online, can have still their questions answered by leaving a voice message with AskMeNow. Questions like "Why is the sky blue?" or "What is Zork?" are answered by text message within minutes, for a fee of USD 0.49 per question. The long-distance info search is taken care of by English-speaking operators in the Philippines.

• Shazam and Gracenote's MusicID | Consumers who hear a song they don't know the name of, call a number and hold their cell phone to the music. Moments later, they receive a message with the name of the song and artist, as well as the option of buying the song or ringtone.

• WeatherBug Mobile Weather | Live streaming local weather data, severe weather alerts, detailed forecasts, local radar, live weather cameras, photos and more.

• ScanZoom | Using ScanZoom software downloaded to their cameraphones, shoppers can snap a picture of a product's bar code and get direct access to PriceGrabber's or Amazon's information for that product, from product descriptions and customer ratings to e-tailer prices. If the e-tailer's price is right, the produt can immediately be bought online. Next could be a service that would tell users which other real-world stores within one or two miles offer the same product at a lower price.

• PriceNoia Mobile | Using Pricenoia's downloadable price comparison tool for cell phones, a consumer can enter a book's ISBN and instantly view reviews and price comparison for international Amazon.com stores.

• Mobile SeatGuru | Mobile version of SeatGuru popluar website, that gives users information on the best (and worst) seats on a plane. Which allows consumers to have all the info needed to ask for a better seat at check-in, or to know which in-flight services will be available on their flight while there's still time to stack up on mags and DVDs.

• SMS Een Huis, Real Estate Depot, Text Wow | These services provide potential home buyers with instant text information on their cell phones, based on unique SMS codes displayed on physical 'for rent' and 'for sale' signs. Asking price, floor plan, square footage and more, all delivered to the cell phone of a prospective client then and there.

The Fifth Dimension

Wired Magazine in the April 2006 issue has an article from Steven Johnson about when virtual worlds collide. He envisions a virtual parallel virtual universe where you can seamlessly move from universe to universe. He also rises the problems and needed steps for this to happen. At the moment this virtual worlds are many times property, built in different platforms. My idea of the parallel universes overcomes the problem of having to converge all the worlds. In practice why Hommer Simpson would need to be compatible with the Sims. I am not saying that I would limit that, I am just saying that you could have them separated if you want as the owners or creators initially intended, and then if they allow so, they could merge.

Today quantum theory supports the logic framework for a setting of parallel realities simultaneously happening. I can be here witting this while my virtual me number 1 is living a good time in Everquest fighting Orcs. So once you acknowledge this the only thing that you need is to shape it and organize this worlds, give them coordinates so people can know where they are. Imagine how many people play the same scenario or level in a multiplayer game. All of them happening at some specific time in the same place. Those are virtual parallel universes, restricted to only those playing that game.

Google Universes

But now think for a moment in something else. What would happen if someone, like Google, would offer a very simple-to-use tool like SketUp, that enables users to generate their own virtual universes, populate them etc. Yes, there are already quite many virtual universes like Everquest. However in my view any content could be transformed into a virtual universe, specially fictional content. There are lots of people that consume and dream on escaping into those fictional universes. After all what we call entertainment tries in many ways to offer that fictional alternative to the common reality to people, Hollywood, literature, the travel industry, games... For instance the Disney corporation has been pretty good at trying to generate a fictional world populated with characters. Most of these universes of content are protected and can be manipulated or accessed only under licensed agreements or controlled access. However fans and the general public can be a huge engine for creating content, just think in fanzines, dicussion forums around new hollywood releases, or in more advanced examples the skins created by developers around games or applications.

So how do I envision this. Well in practice you need first to get organized. You need something like a Google search engine that let's you search for these universes. These universes of course are at least four dimensional. It means that you could move in the typical 3D space but also scroll in time. Then you need a 5th dimension to jump from universe to universe. If you have planet earth coordinates xyz (Though here we should apply more universal and extraterrestial coordinates) at 1st of May 2006 11.30am (GMT+2) There is only one reality taking place at that specific place and time.

SketchUp - something else that the new Google tool

Google's new toy is a toold to create 3D objects that you can then upload to Google Earth. It is a smart strategy from Google to offer this type of tool to get the users to generate content and populate the Google's universe of content. They already do the same in the other extensions of their business. They offer blogger for free to get bloggers to blog and generate content. Can you see Google's strategy? Imagine, soon you will be able to search in Google earth for something near your location, then you will be able to see something more than just a label, you will see an image that will realistically represent the physical location where you can find what you are looking ofr, lets say a car wash or a restaurant. Then that same information you will be able to get it into your car's GPS or into your mobile. Then one day with Augmented reality hardware you will be able to integrate both the Google's digital virtual universe with the real environment. Will it be Google the main promotor of AR? Is Google the company to bet for? As it seems now they could be.

Read more at sketchup.google.com/

XXXL touch screen from Fjord

At Fjord Helsinki we just finished this installation for the Nokia VIP visitors centre. It is a huge touch screen that invites the audience to interact and find relevant information. The design of the interaction and the concept requires the consideration of the specific characteristics of the installation. We are currently working on a new version of interaction concepts that take further the potential of this type of screens.

The evolution game is here

Some time ago I wrote about a rumor that a very cool game was under development. Now it seems that a similar one is ready and about to be launched. Apparently the idea is that you can desing the key parameters and features that will charazterize your organism. The organism will then interact with the environment and succeed, fail, and eventually adapt or eveolve. A pretty complex game that tries to model the natural process. I am looking forward to see it.

The story behind Flash Mobs

A very interesting set of articles from the creator of the flash mobs that explains their origin. Funny enough it all tarted as a joke.

Cutomer analytics next generation

Today I attended the b2c marketing summit in Helsinki. I was participating in a round table with one of our clients, Xtract. They have understood the power of social networks for data mining and they have some of the most advanced products in the market. Their idea is that if they can identify in the databases of operators and other who are the early adapters, they can also find who of those are the first ones to share with their network their findings. They call this users Alpha users. And the user "contaminated" by the apha users are the Beta users. With Xtract technologies you can target directly Beta users and shave time and money.

Today however they shw me something that it would be the dream of any marketer or sales director. They mapped user behavior data on google maps. You could see in their demo in the map from your users which ones were more likely to churn based on location. Imagine for instance how practical it could be for a bank, supermarket chains etc, in order to identify low service performace branches.

Spanish Expats

Spaniards is a very nice idea of a site for Spanish expats living abroad where we can share experiences. There is also a very nice feature with Google maps to locate every member of the community. I am already in...

Sling Media Player

Demián has recommended me to look into the Sling media player. I think that the idea is not new but the implementation sounds realy good. You place the box at your home next to your digi-box or DVR and Sling streams you wherever you are the channels from your home over the internet. Great, now I only need to buy one for my parents so I can watch Spanish Tv channels up here in Finland :-)

RSS basics

You might know this by now. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The idea is that you subscribe to certain source of content, and automatically delivers to you any update. It sounds simple but took me several months from when I first heard about it till I managed to get all the components, configure it and successfully use it. Then what happened is that everyday I would get hundreds of headers, because I subscribed to far too many sources of info, making it useless because I could never read everything.

So how does it work? You need first of all a RSS reader. I use http://www.bloglines.com/. When you first open it you don’t get what it is or how it works. But the only thing that you need to do is to install the applications that enable you to subscribe, and the notification application, The subscriber works integrated in your explorer. So what you would do is when you are in a website that like your friend’s announces at the bottom that offers RSS, you could then click in that icon and then a new page with only text will open. You would then right click your mouse and in the menu will show that you can subscribe to that feed. Then the Bloglines browser will open and it will ask you under what category you want to save it. So in practice you can have your feeds organized by topics, sources etc. Many websites offer RSS some of them they have already the subscription link integrated, a bit like MyYahoo subscribe link. This links do all the work, so if you find a bloglines link by clicking you avoid the right click I mentioned before.

The alert notification application is just an icon on your desktopbar part of the start up menu. So you might not like it when you subscribe to many feeds because it will slow your computer. The way it works is that everytime ie BBC launches a new you would get an alert, then you would clik on the icon and would open the bloglines browser.

As a summary I think is a brillian idea and now most of the big newspapers, use RSS. In my opinion the real value of this is when you can subscribe per topic to sources where experts in certain areas post continuously news or articles. There is a site called del.icio.us That is a place where people share links. So if I find something really cool about internet Tv and I want to share it I would post it there, or I wrote something about it on my blog, I would send the link there. Because you can ad tags that define the topics, people interested about certain subjects can subscribe via bloglines to the topic, and then get anything that anyone talks or writes about the topic. So there you have it the perfect assistant to get always the latest info on the cutting edge subjects. Again it sounds better that the reality since the other side of the coin is the overflow of information.

Conclusion I switched off my bloglines before the summer and I have not switched it on ever since. Though I am tempted to turn it on every now and then.

Another Digital Signage Company

Today I bumped into a local digital signage player, MyTv. It is clear that more and more we can expect to see printed media moving to digital signage. The city of Helsinki has more and more cases, the new Kampin keskus and Sello have large displays. However the content is not yet completely optimized for those environments. The screens are not yet in the right locations and positions, and I doubt that they have the impact that they calim to have.

P2P Tv and Tv 2.0

PPLive
Originally uploaded by Inaki.

Wired had last month a few articles on what they call Tv 2.0. Well it is already happening. For many years living abroad, I have been asking around, why I can not watch my homecountry's channels here. There are obvious reasons mostly related to copyright laws and the geographical restrictions that the studios impose. However there have been always some channels operating in the grey area and broadcasting over the internet such as Telemadrid. Now witht he P2P technology everyone can be a broadcaster, just check the Chinese PPLive. The best is that the more people watch the better the speed and quality (or so they told me). What is next? Well IP Tv with dedicated content such as the so much announced mobile Tv of course, though it will fill a small gap within the user's needs. To me the next thing to come is RSS Tv programs. I guess the EPG could be something like that, but what happens when you can have access to any program or content from all over the world? Well the Internet is close to that isn't it? In the meantime some players such as JumpTv are agregating content and channels and who knows maybe soon they will compete with satellite and cable, and finally I will get to watch Madrid-Barcelona in Finland.

Scoopt

Scoopt
Originally uploaded by Inaki.

Power to the people! I just registered to Scoopt, a very clever idea. Now your phone is your paparazzi's tool. The BBC has already procalimed the importance of user generated content. As a media channel, user generated content represents the same level of revolution that the reality shows brought to TV.

A9 Amazon's answer to Google-maps

A9 Hotel Roosevelt
Originally uploaded by Inaki.

Amazon has launched A9. At the moment works only with a few cities in the US. But th eidea is cool. You can do a virtual walk at street level iin Manhttan and pass by that restaurant where you had dinner last time you visited the place.

A good example of a how you can use multiple screens to create a unique dynamic digital signage solution that is integrated within the physical context. In this case the solution helps to attract the attention over the window of the fancy jewellery in mid-town Manhattan. The interior of the shop had similar multiple screen solutions that where arranged in different directions, but I could not get a clear shot. 

Last week in Manhattan I saw a good example of the potential of Digital Signage applied to outdoor media. However the screen on the picture was down and you could see the funny message. The digital signage media makes sense only if you can trust that your screens are up and running and monitored all the time. Obviously this requires a basic infrastructure, a network and a technical platform optimized for this type of media. The cost or investment required is not yest well understood among those that own media spaces and channels, but can you afford to invest in replacing your outdoor or indoor media with expensive screens and then have screens down like the one on the picture? 

Future Magazine Cover

Interesting excercise on how the future magazine covers will look like. There could have been sometimes more imaginative, but they have some interesting thoughts.

Sims creator takes on evolution

Imagine a game where you can decide the evolution of new species, well now it seems that Sims creator is aiming that high . Later on I will develop a bit furhter the idea around this and its extensions.