Molecular Voices

Posts from Mobile

People are mobile. Our solutions are too.

March 27

In My Opinion - The Biggest Usability Shortcoming of the iPhone

We’ve all been told that we should not use our cell phone while driving. However, much like knowing but ignoring the fact that smoking and drinking is bad for our health, some of us will continue to use phones while behind the wheel. As states continue to pass laws to limit cell phone usage while on the road, usability around using Bluetooth and other hands free dialing features becomes all the more important.

At this point, some of you are probably thinking, “Just don’t use a phone while you drive.” I’m all for using the phone as little as possible when on the road – if you have to, you should definitely use a hands-free system. I’m not advocating dialing and holding your phone while you drive. However, there may be times when you receive an emergency call on the highway and can’t pull over, or times when you simply want or need to make an urgent call. Regardless of what the law is, the overall usability of a phone should be to provide a simplistic experience around how users are actually using the device, as opposed to how they should use the device.

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posted to: Experience Design, Mobile | 2 Comments »

January 21

A New Beginning

by Howard Kogan

Along with many millions of people around the world, I’ve been watching closely the transition of the presidency in the United States. Of course that transition ended yesterday with the formal Inauguration of President Barack Obama. An inuaguration, literally defined as a new beginning, gives us great opportunity to assess the changes around us and think about how many ‘new beginnings’ are actually happening in parallel today.

Professionally, we’ve just completed the first fully Internet-immersive election cycle in the US. From the astounding fundraising statistics where Obama himself raised over half a billion dollars online, to the amazingingly thorough websites, massive social media outreach, and the dawn of a new generation of Twitter users and YouTube videos from the politicians themselves.

Faces In The Crowd

Personally, I was blessed to have the opportunity to be in Washington for the inauguration. Over a million joined me on the National Mall and some small percentage busily Twitter’d and Facebook’d their every emotion in real-time. It would have been fabulous to also have some real-time location based services on my mobile to find friends and scout optimum locations. At the same time the true digital impact yesterday is still being fully measured. Akamai, Adweek, and many others have chronicled record levels of combined online and offline traffic including more than 7 million simultaneous data streams most carrying live video. The informal endorsement the Obama family has provided to J Crew has resulted in extraordinary publicity, as well as equal levels of traffic to their website which have at times overwhelmed their ability to keep up.

More important than all these digital events, it was the energy and enthusiasm of every person I met that struck me as the most profound ‘new beginning’ that yesterday held for us. From the 85 year-old woman next to me on the mall, to the fellow CEOs at a TechNet reception, to the Iranian-born cab driver on my way to the airport at the end of the day. Universally they were all excited about the possibilities for our country and how each and every one of us can make meaningful contribution to a better future. Whether you use an iPhone app, social media, or an old-fashioned helping hand and a smile.

Parade Reviewing Stand and White House

posted to: Data & Analytics, Digital Marketing, Industry Trends, Mobile, Molecular News, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

January 14

Location Based Services to All

by Yuval Zukerman

The holy grail of marketing on mobile devices for at least the latter half of this decade revolved around the promise of location based services, or LBS. LBS mean that the network will share its knowledge of your whereabouts with an application, which in turn can react to it. For example, detecting that you are walking next to a McDonald’s location, your mobile device can suddenly pop a message on its screen telling you that you just got a coupon for a free Diet Coke if you buy a Big Mac. Built-in GPS would be the simple avenue to obtaining location data. Still, as Google Maps users on older Blackberry devices know, using cell tower information can give you a pretty decent idea where you are as well.
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posted to: Digital Marketing, Mobile, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

November 17

Mobilizing with the Mobile Web

by Christine Fiske

We’re all hearing it – the forsaken R word, the markets in disarray, you get the idea. Marketers are focused increasingly on digital, but as any good marketer should, they are likely questioning just how to reach their audience with a digital strategy that embraces emerging mediums including social media, mobile, and more traditional digital media such as online advertising. Mobile is one of the oldest of the “new” emerging technologies, and while 2009 was long poised to be a big year for mobile, it is worth taking a step back to reevaluate whether now is the right now time to be investing marketing dollars in mobile. As marketers, we’re always looking for relevant and valuable ways to connect our brands with customers, and mobile is perhaps the most measurable, relevant, and personalized means of meeting that need. Until recently, mobile has not been a very lucrative means of connecting with customers mainly because of low data-usage rates, clunky handset experiences with data, and slow network speeds. With the emergence of 3G networks, affordable data-plans, and brilliant new smart-phones (hut hum, namely the iPhone), customer data usage is rapidly climbing, making marketing to customers on mobile increasingly relevant, and increasingly popular.

Mobile is inherently unique in that it is portable, extremely personal, and now more than ever, highly measurable. Marketing for mobile, whether via messaging, advertising, mobile apps, or a mobile web presence; leverages all of these inherent unique properties of the channel. Marketers can reach users when and where information is most relevant, since the user is always connected to her mobile device. Mobile provides location-based services (LBS), provides a vehicle for instantaneous transaction and brand experience, and serves up relevant content to users leveraging demographics, handset device information, and other preferences gathered through increasingly accurate mobile usage data. Given the measurability of mobile down to the individual user, targeted and relevant content is not only possible, but in addition, enables us to glean valuable data on click-through, participation in campaigns, time and location relevancy.

Now, navigating through the mobile ecosphere is not always easy. Where does one start? For many marketers, the mobile web is the most natural starting point, as it is not really that much different from the traditional online site as it exists today. In simple terms, an optimized mobile web site is a streamlined version of an online site, which provides not all, but rather the most relevant content for individuals on the go, formatted for mobile, from the company’s traditional online site. For years folks have been asking if the traffic and popularity of the mobile web (or WAP, as some call it) can sustain building a site optimized for mobile. This should be less questionable in most recent months given the statistics being thrown around about trends of incredible upward usage of the mobile web. Consider this - ABI Research sees mobile web growth continuing over the next five years, with highly capable Internet browsers on smart-phones expanding from 130 million in 2008 to 530 million by 2013! Simply incredible when you consider the opportunity to connect with so many millions of users on a device they deem so personal. Mobile is no longer seen as a ‘nice to have’, but is rather a channel marketers are taking seriously and beginning to plan for not only in the short term, but in their longer term strategies as well. In many ways, having a mobile presence is akin to having a website in 2000. It is expected by consumers, will drive an increasing slice of the pie of your customers’ brand experience, and if smartly executed, is a huge opportunity to add value to your customers in pertinent and meaningful ways. Don’t wait too long; it’s time to mobilize.

posted to: Mobile | 1 Comment »

October 9

iPhone app review: iDiagram and mobile wireframing

by Skip Allums

Have you ever been hit by inspiration while away from your computer, or even a pen and paper? Have you ever felt the urge to sketch wireframes, information architectures, user flows, etc. while walking to work, or riding the bus? iDiagram allows you to capture those brilliant ideas on the go.

I’ve actually been hunting for a good app for mobile wireframing, and until this point my options were limited to the various and sundry “paint, draw, doodle” apps that were basically glorified versions of MS Paint. iDiagram has many of the features I’ve been looking for: customizable shapes and text blocks, a line tool, an export option, landscape mode, plus a grid system that shapes will align to automatically!

Here’s a quick sketch I made of a landing page for a mobile provider:

There are limitations of course. Shapes cannot be filled with colors or textures. Sadly, there is no Undo command either, because at times it can be tricky when trying to manipulate shapes (especially if your fingers are not exactly… dainty). But for what iDiagram lacks in finesse, in makes up for in sheer utility. You can:

Bring an object to the front or back of other objects
Re-size and re-edit shapes by double-tapping
Turn the grid on and off
Save diagrams as JPEGs to your photo album (which you can then email wherever you like)
Organize diagrams by creating search-able sets and folders

iDiagram was released on September 28, and is a product of Nexar Software Studios, who seem to specialize in apps for the Productivity category such as iNote, iCalc, and iSheet (also very useful). iDiagram is available in the App Store for $4.99.

Please feel free to comment with any other fun apps that could be used for experience design!

posted to: Experience Design, Mobile | 2 Comments »