Mobile Strategies

Mobile devices can now know what things are made of ... That's right, your phone can tell you what it's pressed against, by analysing the material, not just an image.

Back in 2016 Google showedoff their radar cat gadget that could detect objects.  It uses radar and is taught the signature of objects, so that it can then recognise them when they are placed on the detector. It’s the size of a coaster for your mug to tea,  and yes the device could tell the difference between cup of tea and a cup of coffee, apple and oranges, different metals, plastics etc.   You…

Are you worried about Harmful Apps on Android Play store, well here is some good news.

I am often asked about the potential for the apps on the Play store to be harmful, and therefore make using Android devices unsafe in an enterprise setting. And I think that in the early days of Android this a perceived risk that and was often true. However the Android team have been tackling this problem through the use of Anti-Malware scanning and indeed their solution is the largest…

Computers and Study of the Brain, in ’64

Quote from MIT Technology Review – 1964 I was curious to look at what the MIT review was writing about in October 1964, however MIT’s archive does not have that copy, but it does have November’s and in there was a discussion on computers and the brain. Here is a quote that struck me,  from an article called “Computers and the study of the brain”

Those who prefer that their approach be known…

The future of mobile vision. I have been thinking about the future of our mobile tech, starting with lidar vision. A Game changer

I have been thinking a lot about the future of mobile, and how we are likely to move away from an over reliance on that little black rectangle we carry around.

There are many new developments that are coming to fruition that will allow us to greatly enhance the technology that we carry around with us,  far beyond the current phone.

Soon we will have far, far better visual sensing, way beyond…

Deciding on mobile app features and functions – part 1: who uses what?

It is commonly understood that mobile apps should have a clear focus and designed for that particular task.  I wanted to say single task,  but some require the ability to support more than this. Apple are very good at making this distinction,  so for example the email is separate from the calendar, which is seprate from messaging, calls etc.  Each are dedicated task based apps. However most…

The problem with Alexa skills

I have a couple of Alexa and as everyone says they are great at streaming music, and for simple things such as the flash briefing.

However there are now thousands of skills, which on the surface seems like a good thing,  and in many ways it is.

However

to you use a skill you need a couple of things:

to have installed it, most likely from the app on your phone, and you have to remember the skill’s…

Managing your apps data usage is so important.

<teaching you to suck eggs> If you have an app that your users rely on, and make good use of, then you need to ensure that you have the best possible experience. So often that experience is affected by the throughput and latency of the [mobile] network your user is connected through. </eggs> Why am I saying this ? well below you’ll see a storyfrom Business Insider’s Intelligence arm showing that…

Time and behaviour context for smart interface design (IX)

So earlier so I was suggesting that interfaces need to be smarter and better at predicting what I want when,  and morphing themselves accordingly. I suggest that time of day is a simple way to consider how this might work. If you look at the graph below you can see that Facebook has peaks at lunch time and post evening meal. Whereas Instagram builds up during the day. FB is for being nosy seeing…

UX evolution as the user’s skills and needs improve over time.

I’ve been thinking about the use of AI in apps and web sites. Currently there is a lot of effort going into the data science aspects, using AI to make sense, at a human scale, of the huge volumes of data. Separately there is a strong movement towards conversational interfaces where the AI is processing your requests either through text, speech, or gestures. All well and good. I am thinking,…

App discovery and installations are falling – is this a return to the golden month of old ?

So there has been a string of reports over the last few months on the decline in the number of new apps being installed by users.  Most of these stories are based on American data,  but I am sure that this is a trend that is happening all over. Back in the day before we had smartphones,  a customer would buy a phone, and over the course of the first month would customise the phone to their…

The loss of socialisation in the family

Push notification fatigue – comScore data

I find this interesting

Yes is the short answer,  and it is entirely in line with other similar declines is use.

We advertising in the late 1990’s had very good click through rates,  and now they are infitessimal. SMS and MMS advertising had huge response rates when first used,  guess what,  that’s right, they are in the toilet now. and the same is happening with Push notifications.

Initally the…

Mobile Web usage – and what comsore say

ComScore have produced their 2016 US Mobile App report,  and it is full of very good data and graphs on all things mobile.

However I would challenge their implied assertion that mobile users are not very interested in mobile web.

I think a large proportion of the decline is that the mobile web sites are improving (finally) and therefor as a user you are spending far less time working out how to…

Instant Apps and discovery

Stories are going around about the fact that instant apps are finally starting to see the light of day.  But what are they and why should you care ?

Firstly you should care because it should make a lot of actions we do on our devices much smoother and better.  For example you want to pay for car parking,  but don’t want to down the app from the app store, fire it up, pay,  then some time later…

I work for IBM in the mobile and emerging tech spaces.

I have been asked a lot about what Watson does and what cognitive means.

I was lucky enough to hear an over view from the Watson CTO yesterday,  and this is derived from my (rather sketchy) notes,  and hopefully is just enough to get you thinking,  but not so much as to bore the pants off you! Watson is large collection of capabilities that…

How much functionality to cram into your app

Sizing your app

One of the perennial questions I get asked is regarding the functional sizing of an app, or set of apps, in particular for staff apps.

By that I mean how much functionality should I put into an app ?

Should you have one big app with everything in it,  or should you break it up into sections/groups of different apps, and how to decide what those sections should be ?

This is not an…

Is Cisco about to knock out the Mobile Operators ?

Its been heralded many times,  the cornering of the mobile operator into just being a dumb pipe.  WhatsApp and Instagram have stolen the messaging business.  Will Cisco Spark, and the other new incantations of VoiP (or VoLTE if you prefer, mean that their voice revenue will go the same way.

Of course the operators will sell us bundles of data, messaging and calls,  but the price of these will…