What drives our desire for the new?

This years model. The latest version. New and improved. Technology improves at a rapid pace and with it come ever shortening product cycles. New models of mobile phones, higher and higher resolutions of TVs, lighter, thinner and more capable tablets, new product sectors such as wearables and home automation. They all pour out of companies for our consumption.

The global economy is reliant on us all seeking the newest, the latest and dutifully paying the money down. A year later the purchase is positioned as so antediluvian we cannot understand how we can live with our selves if we don't upgrade.

As a child I was always interested in how a product you were perfectly happy with, could in the blink of an eye become old. The new model of BMW3 series may only differ in subtle visual ways, tiny clues as it its modernity. It may have some technical advances hidden under the skin. But on first sight it makes the previous version seem so inferior, bland or disgustingly old. How can this be, how are we turned so easily?

What makes something new and appealing? It comes down to several elements. One is its pristine nature. A brand new car is different from a merely new car. The brand new vehicle has the showroom shine, the quality of untarnished perfection. A quality the new owner tries to hang on to but over time spends less and less effort in maintaining and the product slips from pristine, brand new, to new, to current, to old.

How the item is packaged is an indication of the level of prestineness(?) of the product within. When buying a formal shirt we may open the packaging to feel the product and take a better look, but we will place the opened item back on the shelf and buy the unopened one. What was pristine a moment earlier is not as attractive even though we were the ones to change its state.

In nature we are drawn to the pristine fruit the perfect, vegetable because it is a sign of freshness, of lack of disease or pestilence. It is a safety issues. Pristine food is less likely to make us ill and more likely to be full of nutrients and be good for us.

A second element is the newness to me. Ownership of a product which is new to me means it has changed my state from being without the item to a new state where it is mine. The ownership has changed me and I value this brand new quality, brand new to me. This can even extend to a second hand item. Collectors get the same buzz from becoming the owners of an old item, which may lack the pristine quality, but is new to them, it is in their possession. The same is true for buyers of second hand (or vintage as they are now called) clothing, or cars, or ebay purchases. The newness, value and appeal is recharged by its passage from one owner to another.

Being the first to use an item is also one of the appeals of newness. To remove an iphone form its packaging, the various layers of protection and undressing that are required, before you get to switch it on for the first time. People relish this so much they post millions of unpackaging videos. Those lusting after or waiting for the delivery of their new purchase watch and imaging what pleasure they will experience when they go through the same experience. Maybe this is the fabled mirror neurons which makes these videos so appealing.

Another factor is status anxiety. The low background fear of being seen as less capable, lower status, less knowledgeable, poorer than a desired position in society as a whole, or within a peer group. Status anxiety is fueled by an awareness of newer products than those you already possess. There is social value in newness. However when speaking to others I have found a gender divide in this. Of course this is highly unscientific, but when talking to women this notion of the need to have the newest due to social pressure seems to be less evident. Maybe it part of hard to disguise macho heritage.

One example to drive this home was when my mother was looking to buy a new car. She sought advice and was told this year's Nissan Micra was a good economical city car. So off she went to the Nissan dealer and on entering the dealership she saw a Micra on her left. As an elderly woman it took time before a salesman bothered to approach her. She asked about the car and confirmed it was a Micra and that she wanted to buy it. Which she did, without a test drive, but she was perfectly happy with her purchase.

That afternoon she told me about her purchase of a new car. Some days later when I visited I saw a 2 year old Micra outside her house. By selecting a car from her left, she had purchased from their used car stock. If she had looked to the right she would have seen the new stock including this year's Micra. From her perspective the older model fitted her needs and she had no desire for the newest one. This is partially down to her age, the fact she was just following the advice she was given. But also she had no notion of the new model being better or more desirable in her world view.

Going back to the BMW of my youth. None of this adequately totally explain how a new car, without any marketing, social, heritage or external factors, can make last year's model seem so inadequate. I am still at a loss. Any thoughts?

In praise of Random

When I was at school studying for my school leaving exams we got time off to revise in the city library. In my case the Central Library on George the IV bridge in Edinburgh. A wonderful Carnegie funded edifice. In the upstairs reading room shelves and shelves of knowledge surrounded you. In reality it was a tiny slice of knowledge, not as comprehensive as what is available to us all today at any time and any place, but the experience of the library was far more impressive and humbling than typing into Google.

The librarians took pains to make sure all books were cataloged correctly and always in their right place. What I found interesting was not the subject I was meant to be studying, but the other stuff. Even when I sought out a book for my studies I was always drawn to the boundaries where one subject abutted with another. Here I could stray into new but often related worlds. Even more exciting were the miss-placed books which had escaped the librarian’s labours. Happenstance, serendipity, random, call it what you may, but these chance encounters held more interest and had the power to freshen my mind far more than the subject under study.

Teenage boredom was partly at the root of this, but in subsequent years it has been the mixing of disparate disciplines or association of separate concepts that I have found the most profitable for the generation of new ideas.   

Today I very, very rarely visit a library. Occasionally a book store and I catch glimpses of this distant excitement. Now I research and find my knowledge in the digital world. Most of our digital tools are designed to filter out what we are not interested in. We search and expect to be delivered the most relevant and informative content based on our query. We follow like minded people and they feed us articles which match our interests. Despite the internet being full of incredibly diverse information we tend to stick in one or several very small areas of interest.  Serendipity has no place in tools designed for efficiency and accuracy. Which, I think is a loss.

That is why I love a new app from Finish developers, Futureful . Its called Random and is currently available for IOS. It has been called an irrational browsing experience. The experience is unlike other news feeds or aggregated content delivery systems. Okay it is not completely random. But it is sometimes hard to see why subject X is with Y. The set of subjects and sub subjects you can choose from are all related, but in a more loosely and tangential way than most news feeds. I cannot tell but I think the strength of associations is built up through my and other users use of the system. I hope the evolving associations do not become too strong and it looses its diversity.

I also like the way the links are represented with just a single or couple of words. There is no indication of the source or additional information. Your interest is triggered by the words and you follow a path, the spine of the book not a preview of the content. If it is not what you are interested in you backtrack. But when you do so the link selection is refreshed with new content and a new journey opens up.

Using Random I have discovered content I would not have sought out but which I found interesting and thought provoking. Give it a go.

Great article on birth pains of the iPhone

Live tech demos are always a nightmare, but with all the pressure and potential pitfalls riding on this one, it must have been unbearable. Read all about it in this nail biting article on the New York Times site.

RyanAir - how not to do UX

Last night my friends, I failed. I had to book a flight and the only airline that flies the route I wanted, is Ryanair.

Last time I booked with them I vowed never to go through the experience again. But as must be the case with thousands of others I had no option. May the gods of UX look down upon me with pity.

If ever there was a site which was created to evoke the most vitriol from its users it was Ryanair. Meeting the business objectives of a company and maximising profits is one thing, but Ryanair take this mantra to a whole other level.

The booking process is designed to attempt to wrong foot users at every step by forcing them to accept additional chargeable items. You have to work very hard to avoid falling into the many traps. And when you do manage to deselect travel insurance or, priority booking, or text alerts etc your route is blocked by grave warnings of the dire consequences of your actions. It takes a brave soul to stand up to the barrage of objections and to hold your nerve. Many a user will fall into the various boobytraps.

To add insult to injury when you do finally reach then end you are charged £6 credit card handling charge for every ticket you buy.

As I went through the process the stress levels rose, the shouting and swearing at the screen increased and the enter key was pounded harder and harder. I went to bed in a furious mood. In the morning I was still cross and sought out the "Ryanair are complete b**tards" support group. In my searching I came across this design exercise.  

Now even if this is not perfect, many simple UX improvements would help change people's perspective of the brand. I cannot be alone in finding the whole booking process an insult and a shock to my belief that on the whole the internet is a force for good.

Ah well at least I have the flight to look forward to....

Predictions for 2013

Windows 8

Windows 8 will be seen as a failed digital mashup. The Jeckle and Hyde nature of attempting to combine two UI paradimes does not resonate with users. Those that upgrade find they live in either one UI or the other, but rarely switch between the two. The old school Windows users find it does not significantly improve Windows 7 and removing the start menu frustrates many. Microsoft eventually relent and launch a campaign telling users how to reinstate the start menu. Those that looked forward to the bright new world of touch are equally disappointed by the limited functionality of the core apps, and the low number of 1st rate apps available in the app store. The effort required to learn the charms metaphor or hidden functionality proves too annoying a hurdle for those used to the iPad's on screen approach. The minimalist design attracts while the minimal functionality confuses.

As a result PC sales continue their decline. Hundreds of millions of copies will be sold via OEM sales and a trickle of expensive touch enabled laptop hybrids will cater to the business market. Despite Microsoft's best efforts Windows 8 and Surface and the undelivered promise of Courier will further hasten the decline from what was once global dominance.

Second Screen

Sports will fuel the second screen revolution. The use of the second screen as an integrated supplement to TV broadcasts has started to arrive in the US but has yet to make significant inroads in the UK. 2013 will be the year when it goes mainstream. Data rich events such as sports events are the ideal content  for the dual screen approach.  Sky will continue to lead the charge. They will extend the functionality of their second screen enabled iPad apps to include data on a wider range of sports. There will be a closer integration with social media, and the ability to share realtime self commentary with your social circle. More and more people will augment their viewing experience of live sports events both at home and in the stadium by using a second screen. Making sense of all this data and deciding what stats to display and the level of information required by different user types will prove a significant UX challenge.

3D rights

Staples are set to launch a 3D printing services in two European cities with plans to roll the service out over the course of the year. But in order to print people need models. 3D modeling is still a specialist skill, even tools such as Google Sketchup require a significant effort to become adept at producing complex printable models. The 3D clip art market will expand as witll portable scanners. 3D smartphone based scanning apps such as 123D Catch, will proliferate. Now with a  smartphone and an app anyone can create a facsimile of a 3D object. Admittedly the intial offerings will be low fidelity but 2^nd and 3^rd generation apps will make significant increases in quality. The mainstream press will latch onto the dire concequences of such a capability. Stories will abound about who owns the rights 3d rights to objects. Museums will have to consider if they allow visitors to scan their artifacts. Brands will try to protect the 3d rights of their products, as a whole and in component form.   Celebrities will charge for 3d files of their bodies. Questions will be raised in the house.

Bot Menus

Tesco and other data rich retailers will employ more proactive and intelligent shopping bots. Regular grocery shopping will automatically take into account calendar events, school holidays, festive periods, birthdays. Weather predictions will inform alternative choices based on personal and aggregate and regional tastes. Users will be able to specify how the shopping bot can assist them. Any shopping list can be analyised to deliver, cheaper, healthier, and ethical or celebration alternatives. Users will be incentivized to employ the bots by preferential prices on staple goods. Brands will have to pay the supermarket chain to be part of the schemes and to feature their products in the initiative. Some will go as far as to offer "surprise me" features for new menu selections.

Eyes in the sky

Low cost aerial drones fitted with video cameras will be the top geek presents for Christmas 2013. Just as remote helicopters have moved from the domain of hobbyist to the general public so will quad copter. In 2013 these four and six motor devices which range from the cheap and cheerful with a low power video camera to robust versions capable of carrying the owner’s own camera will find a mass market. As these will be designed for non commercial purposes they will escape the existing legislation. Even so privacy issues will be raised and the public will be wary of these toy eyes in the sky. Digital services will spring up to allow users to geotag their movies as we all get up close and aerial with our, and our neighbor’s world. Police and security forces will employ them in a more Orwellian fashion. In 2013 it will be the norm for strikes, public demonstrations and even small scale public events to be monitored from the skies.

Windows 8 review

Over the course of the last couple of years my view of Microsoft has changed. They have seemed to be on a roll. First with the original surface – those bespoke multi touch tables, then Kinect and its promise of coming to the desktop, and recently with Metro, the new Surface and Windows 8. Microsoft seemed to me to be on the up. They were the guys who were innovating, who were not content with the exiting paradigms. With Metro, I had my concerns about the design approach of mixing two UI approaches in one OS, but hey the design was refreshing and far away from the skeuomorphic tendencies of the Apple mobile offerings. What’s more they proudly boasted “Windows 8 is the most widely used and tested pre-release product we’ve ever delivered,”. Bring it on.

So, it was with great anticipation that, on the day of its release I installed Windows 8. Admittedly my laptop was ancient, I bought it when Vista had just been launched, but one of the great things with Windows 8 is that it will still run on this old hardware. Sure it would be better to have a touch screen machine, but money is tight. I did look at getting a new machine, and was tempted by all the new laptops pre installed with the new OS. Some of which looked very affordable. But these are the non touch screen models. The cheapest touch screen Dell I could find was £879.

So I was stuck with my old PC, and I suspect I am in the same boat as the bulk of Windows 8 users, either upgrading or using a cheap machine and no touch UI. So what is it like?

Metro a promise unfulfilled

It is fast to load. But although it was the launch day, it still required updating – as it does on an annoyingly frequent basis. On first impressions it looks slick and tight. The tiles look good and bright, the Metro, (or whatever it is now called) UI is attractively simple looking. But, oh how quickly a dream can be destroyed.

Once you start to use the touch UI it starts to fall apart. The simplicity and cleanliness of the UI is partly down to its distinct lack of functionality. The core apps such as IE, calendar, maps seem so paired down that their functionality is compromised. Surely what has been learnt form the IOS App revolution is that touch screen does not have to mean lack of functionality. Surely even the most basic calendar would make it easy to switch between day, week, month and even year views? But in Windows 8 these options are hidden in the bottom task bar. It seems impossible to move an event from one day to another by dragging, or any other method except going in and changing the event parameters. Could be my lack of touch, but come on get this right.

The issue of off screen controls is surely one which must have raised some issues during the testing. A central tenant of a WYSIWYG interface is the notion that functions are laid out in front of the user, or represented by visual labels or icons. With Metro functionality is hidden at the side, top and bottom. As a new user I found this very hard to get to grips with. What can I do here was never clear. Design concept  over function.

The whole design of Metro seems to be an antidote to the increasing skeuomorthism of Apple’s recent designs. Skeuomorphism is the practice of making a design appear to look like its real world counterpart. So the Apple calendar has a stitched leather header and torn paper embellishments. The design establishment has heavily criticized the approach. Interestingly it does not seem to be a turn off with the general public, or maybe that even in this day of social media they are yet to voice an opinion. It is seen as rather tacky and over ornate. It is against the modernist aesthetic of simplicity and form follows function where the UI is a highly functional element of the design and almost fades into the background. Rather than attempt to draw attention to itself.

The UI is so slimed down it fails to contain sufficient content. Edward Tufte has long crusaded for higher information density. 

"Match the information density in your presentation to the highest resolution newspapers [The Wall Street Journal has the highest resolution of all]" Tufte

While this may be extreme, Metro seems to be taking the PowerPoint school of UI design and putting as little content as possible into its screens. Metro is not alone this delusional view of communication is rife in the marketing and design community. It is taken to its extreme in apps like Haiku Deck where you are advised to only use minimum words to explain a concept. At least in a presentation the presenter will expand upon the limited message. On a device you are alone and want to consume, not simply admire the design.

And then there is the idea that you do not need to see more than one browser window at once. Surely there is a way of implementing tabs or some other solution. The general lack of multiple windows in the Metro UI is odd for a laptop or PC UI. Granted it is a common limitation of mobile and tablet OS – the notable exception being the defunct WebOS – but once you are on a laptop it should be supported. Microsoft’s answer to this is to make Metro only one half of the OS. (Update, I found the multiple windows – off the top of the screen )

Metro takes minimal design to the extreme. The basic button, is a building block of UI design since the days of the Xerox Star. In Metro it has been stripped down to a level where it is merely a symbolic image with or without a label. Sometime the symbol has no enclosing boundary and the text looks the same as other on screen text. The act of rolling over (which is nonsense on a  touch screen) is  sometimes the only way of knowing that the area is interactive. This is following trends in web design, where visual design and the expected sophistication of the end user negates the need for clear, or what is perceived as excessive visual clues. As someone with a background in design and fine art the design of Metro was alluring. But time and again in web UI evaluation we find that users do need clues. They are not as sophisticated or as quick to grasp what to do or how to do it as we would like. Websites are fashion victims. Of course there is a bedrock of usability design, but the visual design and design tricks evolve and follow trends. Often short term trends. This is not what one wants for an interface which has to last for years. It is a core element and should rid itself of the notion of fashion. I feel Metro is a UI of today, but it is already failing because of its design stance.

Desktop and the demise of the start button

If you want to do real work and forget about touch then you launch the desktop. So now instead of having to learn one way of interacting users have to learn two. Is this a good idea? I expect not, it is a comprimse of a legacy system combined with the need to keep up with new forms of interaction.

The desktop is an evolution of the Windows of the past, but it does have at least one fundamental change which make it harder for old hands to transition. That is the removal of the start button.  I can understand that the start button may not easily sit at the bottom right hand corner anymore because you could have your desktop beside a Metro app. Then it would be easier to miss a hotspot in the corner of that “window”. But its complete removal is a bit extreme.

Once you have managed to get to the desktop, a single click on the Metro start page, but not a global element of the off screen Metro functions – then you instinctively reach for the location of the old start button to run a program. If you click the spot where start was you are thrown back into Metro. To actually open an app without starting from a file you need to:

·      switch back to Metro,

·      access the all apps button from the off screen bottom taskbar,

·      right click on an application and then the bottom taskbar will appear and give you the option to pin to the taskbar.

You are not pinning to this taskbar you will not see any visual indication that you have achieved your task or any confirmation. You are not pinning to the Metro taskbar but the desktop taskbar.

I can’t think of a worse way to introduce people to the new desktop. There is no intuitive way of doing this. There does not seem to be a way of doing it within the desktop environment. I want to change the desktop so I have to go into Metro? If you use the desktop help and search for “start button” you don’t find anything useful. Because the start button does not exist, so there is no help relating to this feature. Try “pin applications to taskbar”, nope no joy. This is bad.

I may be missing something, but I approached Windows 8 as a novice user, I did not watch the introduction videos till after I had struggled for a while, and even then they were of little help. I am an experienced design and usability professional who has worked in UI for 24 years, used more operating systems and their various incarnations than I care to remember. But in the end I had to reach for Google to find an answer to this basic, basic task.

I will battle on with Windows 8 to find its hidden depths. Admittedly within Metro there are some nice features, but I see these problems as fundamental issues. Microsoft may innovate and test to the nth degree, but they still don’t get it user interface or experience design.

Long Pages Rock

Since my last posting I have been made aware of this ringing celebrity endorsement of long pages from none other than "The Hoff" AKA David Hasselhoff. The Hoff just loves the new Lexus design. 

I think this settles my case. Thanks to Bes Bujupi and the Lexus team.

A web designer walks into a pub and the bartender asks “Why the long pages?”

Long pages are something of a current design trend within sites. They are increasingly being used but any search of usability or design sites for rationales or motivation for long pages is hard to find.

This is the story of why we used long pages in a recent project. Our client was ToyotaEurope and the project was a structural redesign of their main web site which is used as a template across over 30 markets across Europe and the middle east.  We have worked with Toyota over many years and through many iterations of the site. But this project entailed the largest and most detailed period of research and evaluation of user behaviour and usage of the existing site. It also entailed research into user goals and desires of an automotive site and into related aspects of user psychology and behavioral economics.

The idea was to a take a fresh look at how to design an automotive site, but with the constraint of retaining the existing visual design and reuse of existing content. Of course there were other business requirements but these do not related to this story. One of the things you notice when looking at automotive sites is the homogeneous nature of their designs. At the time if one looked at  home pages it was hard to tell them apart. Things have changed slightly but the norm is still a main focus window 3 or four sub promotions all presented above the fold.  The home page is a front door and serves the primary purpose of presenting the latest promotion or model launch and little else.

As you move into the sites the designs offered some variability but the navigation and structure of conent follows similar group think rules. From our user testing of the existing Toyota site we discovered some key insights, the two that were the most influential were what we called anchoring and the emotional rational mix.  Firstly anchoring.

As designers or owners of a site we occupy a rare position. We know what is available within the site. We have a “god’s eye” view of the site and its offerings. End user’s behavior often seems odd and illogical. Often in user testing we wonder why the users’ miss whole sections or fail to notice, or know that there are tools and functions which would help the user. The poor end user has a very limited view of the site and has to interpret the clues afforded by the navigation, the links and images. They have to infer the site’s potential content and build mental models of what is on offer. You might say that this is what information architecture is all about. But information architecture only goes so far to map out the site. It does so in terms of content not usually in terms of functionality, or in terms of the uses of functions.

This results in users relying on what they have already found. We saw users foraging and dropping anchor on specific sections of the site. They did not explore widely as they found sufficient information within the few areas they knew. Even when there were much better sources of information or more applicable tools in other sections. This is similar to the behaviour of hunter gatherer tribes or foraging animals. On finding a source of nourishment they will continue feeding from that area as it requires less effort than expending energy in the search for other potential sources of food. Even when there may be richer sources available. Only once the level of nourishment falls below a critical level will they move on and seek another area.  Users were behaving in a similar way. If we think of information as nourishment then they would use tools and sections of the site that they had previously found to provide some nourishment, even when the areas or tools were not best suited to the task.

It was clear that signposting and the user’s initial reaction to the page are critical. Users need to know where they are, what’s on offer and what they can achieve there. But in addition users need to know that there are other options available on the site which will meet their needs. This foraging and dropping anchor were key behaviors we needed to address.

The second major challenge was the need to bind the emotional and rational content within the site into a more cohesive whole. The traditional model is to engage the user with emotional content, image and video galleries, and then allow access to more detailed and rational content, specs and equipment,  either through a layers content approach or via sections and sub sections. This emotive/rational mix fits with Don Normans three forms of design – visceral, behavioral and reflective. Where the images are aimed at inducing a visceral reaction and the specs and equipment meets the behavioral requirement. The reflective is met through the nature of delivery and the brand values associated with the product.

However when we think of a car we flip flop between the emotional and the rational. During the purchase process the two sides are very closely related and the final decision, while we like to think is a predominantly rational action it is often highly influenced by the emotional response to the car.

Anchoring behavior showed that many users would get stuck in either the rational or the emotional content and not get the complete picture of the car. They would seek out the specs and stay there. Some of this behavior reflected where the user was in the buying process, or the task that was set. But for many they would tend to keep returning to a type of content and miss whole other sections.

To resolve these problems we made two fundamental changes. We simplified the main navigation to have just two sections, car and everything else. We knew that the huge bulk of the users came to find out information about cars and so we made this the primary focus of the navigation. Secondly we removed sub sections from the car pages. In the past each car was given what was termed a car chapter, which included the usual sub sections of gallery, specs, equipment, grades etc. These silos of content were one of the main causes of anchoring and of splitting the rational and emotional content.

By removing the sub sections we placed all the content on a single long page. A page made of content components. In the design process we tested many iterations of this approach and looked at using a navigation structure to link to sections within the long page. We looked at locking navigation to the top of the page and other approaches. In the end we opted for no navigation within the long page, primarily because we believed that such an approach may cause users to just jump to the components and continue to miss other content.

At the time, early summer 2010 the notion of a single long page was unheard of in automotive sites. For years the mantra has been to try and keep everything above the fold. Blogs, news sites and social media sites were changing users experiences. They were becoming more used to scrolling and encountering lengthy and long content items.

We also looked to other sectors for examples of long pages. The best advocate we could find was Amazon. Each product has a single page. In the case of the Kindle, its products page at the time was 17244 pixels long. So Amazon clearly did not have a problem with using long pages to sell its best selling product. The length of our proposed longest page came in at a mere 7400 pixels. The actual pages in the final sites were often well short of this length.

So our rational for long pages was to break down the silos of content and to try and ensure users are exposed to a blended mix of emotional and rational content.

The question is did it work. Simple answer is yes. While not all people scroll all the way down the long pages, 46% of users see the majority of the content. In the past the typical user was only saw 18% of the content of the car chapter.  Did we remove anchoring, yes and no. Users still hone in on the areas of the page they have used in the past, even when other components may be better suited to their task, but the number who did this is far smaller than previously.

The structure and design of the site templates are undergoing an ongoing process of testing and improvement and we are looking to continually improve aspects of the site. But the fundamental rational for long pages still remain at the core of the design and have influenced how we approach the design of other sites, most notably the new Lexus GB site.

Examples of the Toyota site: Toyota Spain, Toyota Germany In the German site the market elected to go with a more traditional primary navigation with 6 subsections.

Mobile is not an island

Forrester predicts the mobile wave will engulf us all. One billion smartphones by 2016. As smartphones increase in numbers so does their effect. Who betide the company that does not make ready for the coming deluge.

The mobile user is not a specific type of user, a distinct breed form the “standard” PC user. In many cases the mobile user is the user. They will only engage with you via their phone. For many the principle form of engagement will increasingly become via mobile. The principle analyst at Forrester, Ted Schadler makes the point perfectly:

“Mobile is the new face of engagement,” Mr. Schadler said. “Businesses should stop thinking about it as a small Web site on a tiny computer, and start thinking about mobile as being deeply embedded systems of engagement. That turns out to have huge implications.”

It is no longer enough, or even right, to think of the mobile user as only requiring a subset of the functionality and content of your standard digital offering. If the only way someone will interact with you is via a mobile device then that does not mean we should limit what’s on offer.

The mobile user does have hurdles to overcome, the UI has to accommodate the restrictions of smaller screens, in the case of IOS they cannot access Flash content, which while it may be in its death throws it is still a common delivery medium. The smartphone user has distinct needs and usage patterns. We need to accommodate their on the move mentality.

But the mobile user gives us so much more than their desk bound counterparts. We need to reward the knowledge they give us about their location and time of interaction. We need to deliver meaningful and useful services. In some ways they are a super set of the traditional user. We should deliver the full web site package and then some.

We should see mobile as part of the complete interaction spectrum. A spectrum which reaches from the actual engagement with the brand product, through the social consideration and interpretation of the brand through all forms of digital interaction. So while the mobile experience should not be the poor partner of the PC experience, neither should it exist in isolation from it. Interaction is a continuum where the historic engagements play their part in current and future actions and reactions. The digital offering which is not only cognisent of this history but adaptive to it is far more powerful than an island of interaction.

When developing today’s mobile strategy it should weave its way through all parts of the digital strategy and indeed, the complete marketing and sales strategy. Assigning responsibility for the mobile deluge to one department will not work.  As Karl Heiselman the author of a his report "Game Changers" puts it in a recent Fact Company article:

"Companies are only valuable if they prove themselves useful, time and again. Viewed with that lens, most companies come up short. "What’s interesting is that, on the client side, it’s never anybody’s job to own the customer experience," says Heiselman. "Some people think about pieces of it, but it’s nobody’s job to think about it in any kind of joined-up way."

Joined up thinking is such a tired expression, but from a user's experience they are dealing with one entity through many touch points and medium. They do not see or expect a mobile interaction to differ in quality and value from a marketing engagement or a sales experience or an after sales encounter. They increasingly expect the company or brand to know them and know about them and previous encounters. As mobile is taking a leading role we have to rethink our digital priorities and no longer consign it to a niche activity but make it a prime element in the spectrum of engagement. Make ready to take advantage and ride the wave, or else get soaked. 

Investments ideas for 2012

On Facebook I posted a couple of updates about things which I jokingly said were likely to be this year's big thing. It made me think, what would I invest in if I had any cash? Here are some ideas, a mix of realistic and, shall we say optimistic.


Social search
Google are doing it with Google+ which is a step in the right direction but Facebook is the social gold mine that would be the one to crack. Given that this is not likely to be open to outsiders, I still think there is money to be made in search engines which specialize in tapping into social communities. No idea how the deals would work out but someone will start doing this and making money from it.


Wearable sensors
Jawbone Up and other sensor devices are starting to appear. These will become more common and the uses for the data will expand. For example why does your TV and PC and tablet each have to have the separate ability  to respond to touch less gestures or voice commands? Why not wear a single motion sensor which uses a  common set of gestures to talk to all of them. Do a unique gesture to address the TV, and then a sideways flick of the head to page through channel listings, a nod to select and another to confirm. Could be a necklace or earring, or a bracelet. One ring to rule them all.


Anything to do with Graphene

The next wonder material, it used to be bucky balls and carbon nanotubes, but now Graphene is the new king. It holds great promise in many fields, electronics, solar energy, antibacterial applications, replacement for silicon in ICs. Of course there will be many dead ends, and some applications will take longer to come to market, but it looks good. And it was first generated as single atomic planes by the researchers at Manchester University, who also won a nobel prize for their troubles.


Art by John Clark

Lets review

John produces fantastic images inspired by the tensions of everyday life. Especially office group gatherings and cultures. You see them and you know the moments they portray. I dont know anyone else who has this as their subject mater or who portrays it so well. A mix of Goya and at times Hieronymus Bosch. They are the modern potato pickers, the labourers of the information industries of the 21st century. Brilliant. I would buy them all up if I could. 


Software to make 3D design mass market
3D printing has moved from research and industry to home geeks. Its next step will be mainstream, but in order to get there and become useful to the masses we need to improve the way 3D design is done. Google Sketchup is the best there currently is, but things need to go further. With motion sensors and much faster graphic chips it would seem possible to make 3d modeling packages which did not have to rely solely on mice or on 2D screens to represent the object. Alternatively the companies which already have huge 3D clip art libraries need to start generating models of useful items. 3D printing will be used to print spare parts to fix a broken product and to make unique objects. 


Synthetic hair follicles
Not for those like myself who are folically challenged, but as a way to produce clothing which can dynamically changes its thermal properties. When animals, use included, get cold their fur stands up and traps more air to make an insulating layer. Imagine a coat which was sleek and whose "fur" hung close to the backing membrane when the weather was hot, it could even undulate to create waves of ait to flow over the surface to cool you down. Then when the temperature rose it would fluff up its individual "hairs". Each hair may be hollow and expand to trap air within their core. 


80's shit stuff

We have had the 70's and are due for an 80's revival. Some 80's hit song will form the backdrop to an advert and the band will rise form the dead. 80's design and memorabilia will rise in price, clothes will embarrass us once more and the decade that gave us post modern will become the plaything of the thirty somethings. Buy up original Sony Walkmen, invest in Memphis lights and start flogging replica RaRa skirts. I must admit I have always loved Memphis design and think it was much more influential than it is often given credit for.