All posts tagged as "faq"

Dear Dr. Inventor,

You do have an interesting concept, and we might be interested in working with you. Keep in mind, however, that I have literally seen 20 innovative hardware input mechanisms invented; most of which have not made it to market.

Indeed, the only one not invented by the manufacturer that I know of is Fastap, a company who started business development for this in 1999. In fact, it was the inventor trying to sell the idea to Sprint’s Usability group, of which I was a member, that introduced it to me. From 1999 to 2008, 10 years, Fastap has only launched on a small number of phones for small operators. LG, for example, has two Telus Mobility Fastap devices.

Why is this? Because the manufacturers will not spend the money on it unless they know they can sell it to the operators. The operators will not buy it if it costs them money, even if it will make them money. And it is very easy for them to justify why your product is not actually as good as you say it is, no matter how good it is.

If it costs more than about 1USD per unit, you have a probable failure. More than about 4USD, and you have a certain failure.

Many alternative keyboard manufacturers, such as FrogPad and Keynetik, are going after smaller markets such as military or industrial workers. You might find some traction there, for much less money. But of course you will not get the GreatNewKeyboard on every phone that way. And you will need to work with someone in business development who knows those markets.

So before investing our time in your product, we would need to know that you had assembled the capital and business development expertise to move forward. You probably need more than two million dollars: some for re-design, some for responding to operators’ requests that will take you nowhere, some to keep you fed, some to do usability tests, some to make prototype units, but most to sustain a business development effort that will leave everybody exhausted.

If you find this money and the right business development team, do come back to us. We can definitely help. But our help would be wasting your money right now.

Sincerely,
Barbara Ballard
President
Little Springs Design

I just put together a page that kind of complements the mobile design resources wiki. This is a single page with links to key resources, feeds from top mobile design bloggers, a list of good books, my del.icio.us links mobiledesign, a place to add and vote on the quality of design resources. It’s supposed to be a comprehensive starting point to mobile design. (In contrast, the wiki goes far far deeper).

Check out mobile design at Squidoo. I suggest you sign up, but you can look at it and following the links without registering.

A LinkedIn question asked challenges in the US off-deck mobile content market. Go check it out, answer it.

To my mind, you have to solve the following problems:

1. Discovery - the user has to find the content
2. Distribution - the content has to get onto the handset
3. Usefulness - the content has to provide actual value to users, to delight users
4. Usability - it has to be easy to use
5. Contextuality - the right function and the right content at the right time, while mobile
6. Monetization - content owners have to have a business model

I include under "distribution" things like typing a URL, dotMobi, install problems, signing, platform support, data plans, and so on. Content must be moved from a server somewhere onto the user's device in a state in which it can be run.

We address this entire list with pretty much every project. Without all six points, the product will fail.

In last month’s Future of Mobile conference, I was tasked with asking experts Marek Pawlowski of MEX and Tom Hume of Future Platforms how to make users happy. I found myself not really having a good idea what to ask, so I asked about 100 people what they would want to know on the topic.

The questions I got back were wide ranging, and had several themes such as vision difficulties associated with aging, design for everybody else, impact of technologies, and so forth. There was no way we could even hit all of the themes in one 30 minute panel discussion.

So we’re going to start answering the questions here, grouped by theme. Anything in this series is going to be tagged “faq” as well as content-related tags. I encourage you to participate: if you have answers to the questions we answer, post them here or on your own blog with a link back to the question. Try to link back to this first entry as well, as it is the one with the explanation. If you have questions unanswered, post them and I’ll add them to the list.

If we get a lot of participation, we’ll add the questions and answers to our resource section as well as our forthcoming new community project. If not, you have to put up with the questions with this tag.

Theme: Why do operators…?

Q: When are mobile operators going to realise that they are a phone company and start focusing on Voice services? What I am seeing at present is too many people talking amoungst themselves about the future and not enough genuine consideration of what the user wants. Sit in a train station and see just how many people are using handset that were the one before the one before your current handset and you quickly discover that what you are doing is so before the curve that it would not be the chasm you are crossing put jumping continents.
A: Operators are very good at person-to-person voice services. They have successfully added directory assistance and voicemail, two more wonderful voice services. More far-ranging voice information services, including voice web, voice dialing, and voice messaging have not done as well. Since these other services did not require an upgrade to device equipment, the barrier to use has been something else.

At the same time, voice revenues have been declining, as voice becomes a commodity. Operators know all about this with their experience in long distance. Michael Mace over at Michael Mace has reviewed quite a bit of market research; while 65% of the market wants just voice and text, the other 35% want more. To increase revenues, operators need to go after that “more”. Further, the 65% didn’t know that they needed text before text was available; the operators are hoping to find another.

Q: Why don’t operators place (or force OEMs to place) a “web button” on each and every device, so that going on the mobile web is simpler. (this implies also making it as simple as possible to type URls and save bookmarks)?
A: Many devices have web buttons. Not all, but do keep in mind that buttons are expensive. Operators are allocating the buttons to things that make them money, such as picture messaging. Why doesn’t the web make money for the operators? Unlimited data plans make simple web use unprofitable. Profits could be increased by getting more customers to adopt the mobile web, but users were burned by past marketing hype and do not necessarily believe that the mobile web is that useful. The iPhone is helping everybody understand that better.

Q: Why don’t operators get all devices to be email clients with arbitrary email accounts?
A: I’m not sure that has a huge value to end users. Free email accounts are readily available; the only value I could see is to create an email account that is something like phonenumber@operator.com, so my phone’s email address would be 7858383003@att.com. Instead, my device (it’s a Blackberry) has a different email address. I don’t use it: I use one of my “real” email addresses. If you really want to get to my device by text, you’re better off texting me. Many pundits think that email is an artifact of stodgy U.S. executives, and that texting is the future. I don’t agree (perhaps I’m a stodgy U.S. executive), but that just illustrates that email and SMS are different media that achieve similar but not identical goals.