Foursquare, We Have a Problem

I've been using Foursquare for a few months, mostly as a function of my job, to see its potential impact on my client's businesses.  For a while, I was only annoying my less socially-connected friends by my constant posts on Facebook about every time I went running in the morning on the local bike path, for which, I am the mayor, thank you very much.

Embarrassingly too much Tex-Mex

Then, in November, my mom and I went to dinner at ma peche in New York City, and while sitting at the bar, I received a buy-one-get-one-free deal for drinks.  Score!  Then, the week of Thanksgiving, American Express started with their small business deals, getting me money back when I spent at local businesses, here and there.  Very sweet!  Life was good.

The deals have waned, which makes me wonder if this is really enough to get me to check-in.  Even for me, it's a chore to whip out my smartphone every time, when one time out of 8000 gets me a deal, and my wife's stare is burning holes through the back of my head.  I'm not saying that the City of Dallas needs to celebrate my presence on the running trail every morning, but maybe once in a while, a small marching band would be appropriate.

Today, though, as we brought my wife's niece to the local, up-scale mall, I encountered a more serious Foursquare's challenge: connectivity.  There never is any at this mall.  That's why so many teenagers must hang out here, so their parents can't get a hold of them, and they have a valid excuse.  I was able to sneak a check-in for American Eagle Outfitters, but when I clicked on their deal, the Interwebs failed me.  Most other places, I could never check-in, even though I really wanted to and tried very hard, against my nature.  Most humans would never try the second time.

Clearly, malls are not on the rise, but this is not the only place that I have had Foursquare connectivity issues, sometimes not seemingly caused by connectivity issues.  The problem is not that this will not improve.  In fact, Foursquare might consider subsidizing fempto cells in some shopping areas and malls or encouraging some of the innovative schemes that exist to improve data network and spectral efficiency.

Anything to improve the experience, because most people's bozo bit is more sensitive than mine for new technology and services like this one.  Once it gets flipped, it's hard to reset.

The 9 Circles of Air Travel Hell

Over the past 15 or so years of my professional life, I've travelled too much.  I've seen some amazing things and places, ate some amazing foods, met some amazing people that I count as friends for the rest of my life.

Unsuspecting Travelers...

Before 9/11, my wife and I both have traveled in some unorthodox ways that I will not document to protect the relatively innocent.  Early on, achieving premium traveler status was joyous, but the loyalty cards quickly became badges of shame.  Today, on American Airlines, I am Platinum for life and have over 3 million lifetime miles.  Sad.  Post 9/11, I don't look forward to air travel anymore and often joke that it's exotic: exotic long lines, exotic delays, exotic lost luggage, and exotic mechanical issues.

Being the analytical type, however, I have managed to categorize the stages of air travel corresponding to Dante's Inferno and its 9 Circles of Hell.  Enjoy:
1. Limbo: This is either waking up for the flight in time, trusting that nappy hotel alarm clock or wake-up service, or leaving your client meeting on-time.
2. Lust:  How many times have you been stuck in traffic calculating the time before they won't let you get a boarding pass anymore?  Or, doing circles trying to find a parking spot?  One time, in New Delhi (eating biryani, en route, of course), I arrived 2 hours early, and it took 30 minutes, in the cab to get up to the departure area from the street.  I cut to the front of the line to get into the airport, made a lame "dumb American" excuse why I did not have my ticket to get in, and I did not sit down at all the next 90 minutes until I was seated on the airplane.
3. Gluttony: Some airports are awesome in terms of the efficiency of getting your boarding pass and getting through security.  Then, there is making a connection at Charles de Gualle (CDG).
4. Greed: So, you've woken up, traversed rush hour traffic, and made it through security in plenty of time.  Is there a plane at the gate?  Is your plane the one coming in from O'Hare in January?  So sorry.
5. Anger: Late flight?  Lighting push the planes back?  Inefficient airline staff?  Boarding on-time is always a challenge.  Maybe it's a conspiracy to get people to spend more money in the terminals with the local merchants.
6. Heresy: I honestly can feel this happening to me, as I type it.  I'm on the plane.  Seated.  5 minutes before the departure, but they are not buttoning up the plane.  There's some technician that keeps coming in and out of the plane, checking in with the pilots in the cockpit.  Does this plane work?  One time, we were flying to Barcelona, through Paris, and we had to head back to the gate twice because the weather radar did not work.  Apparently, they did not fix it the first time, or the second...
7. Violence: ...because as we approached Boston at 1AM, the pilot informed us that the weather radar was not working and we would head back to JFK, where we stayed the night.  Will we even make it to the destination...or maybe just land in JFK, instead...
8. Fraud: So, one time I was flying home from Nice, France.  Clearly, I was going in the wrong direction.  Anyway, I've documented some of the challenges of flying through CDG, so I chose to fly through a new connection in Zurich.  First sign of danger was when we waited in the plane, connected to the jet bridge for 2 hours.  Then, second sign of danger was when the plane pulled away and parked at the end of the runway right before take-off.  Apparently, there was some dispute between the pilots, the air control in Zurich and the air control in Frankfurt about our plans.  Regardless, we took off  3 hours later and landed home just as a storm hit.  I started to slump as I saw us turn away from the terminals and approach a massive line of planes, waiting for gates to free up.  Two hours later, we officially landed.  What should have been a 10 hour flight turned into a 17 hour affair.
9. Treachery: Lord knows I've secretly wished that our plane would land somewhere tropical instead of my dull destinations, but it has never happened.  However, my luggage, when I have been forced to check them, have probably been to some amazing place, because they often times do not make it back with me to my destination.  One time, when I was in college, I was visiting my wife and her family in Costa Rica for the Winter Holiday.  I arrived December 20th.  My bags arrived December 26th, two days before I left.  That helps.

And this does not even consider the threat of airport evacuation, which has happened to me twice, once in Paris' Charles de Gaulle and a few years ago in London's Heathrow.  Both, quite exotic.

Privacy

Waves of articles about the embedding of the Carrier IQ quality of service agent in phones in the past few weeks have captured the attention of media and mobile phone users.  It's raises the topic of privacy and the importance of clear disclosure to end users.  Because the bottom line is this: if the phones visually notify the end users of what data they were capturing, what they are going to use the data for, and how the end user can opt-out of such measurement, this is a non-issue.  These 3 privacy commandments are critical not just for market research but for any mobile and internet startup, as well.

Now, in the case of CIQ, this all may have been done, in all cases.  From the press articles, it seems that there may have been some breakdowns between all the parties responsible for delivering the end solution.  Given that the situation has attracted the attention of Senator Franken, and the Senator still does not seem to have received all responses or seem to be happy with those he received, there will likely be more disclosures to the public to understand more.

The commandments sound simple enough, but its amazing how the smallest and the largest companies don't do justice to them.  I have met with startups who gloss over this when we discuss privacy, and when companies are small, they want to focus on building the framework of their business, expecting to plumb the details when money is flowing in.  Fair enough, but the early investment likely does not cost much, if anything, and the importance of embedding the edicts of user privacy are important to seed early and often.  Large companies often do everything legally required, but often embed disclosures and  how to opt-out in the middle of much larger, user agreements that no one ever reads.

The reality is that most users are willing to make the trade-off.  Given clear and definable value, they will let you use their information for benefit and profit.  Actually, being very up-front and transparent about privacy and data usage helps users gain more confidence in companies.  Thinking about opt-outs, data storage and removal, and breaches up front and early is infinitely cheaper early on.

Tell the user up-front and right away what data you want to use and why, make it clear and easy to opt-out, and if you give a service of value, they will give you invaluable access and demographic information.  Win-win.

Invisible Computer

I've commented before about a book, The Invisible Computer by Donald A. Norman, that I forced myself to read about 10 years ago.  It discusses the unnecessary complexity of computers and their software, at the time, and the opportunity to embed computing in smart appliances, where the "computer" was invisible.  It would seem, at least in hindsight, that companies like Apple and Google had learned similar lessons with the advent of iPhone and Android smartphones, but one could say that, as an industry, we are still nascent in our progress.

Newer appliances, like the Nest Learning Thermostat, are excellent examples of what Mr. Norman was forecasting.  What once constituted a computer, it's memory and processing power can be found in extremely miniaturized and inexpensive silicon that are economical to integrate into consumer electronics.  Additionally interesting, that the Nest takes advantage of, is the ubiquity of connectivity in the home, via Wi-Fi, and the value that connectivity adds to a consumer device.  Controlling your thermometer from your smartphone, making it ice cold in the dead of winter for a friend or loved-one, when you are warm and cozy in a hotel room traveling for work, for example.

But for every Nest, there are 10s of examples of connected refrigerators, smart washers and connected televisions that have not found the right formula.  The idea of a connected television sounds like a slam dunk, but the video world is so complex in terms of rights and legacy, the obstacles are challenging.  What is the magic, then?  If I knew, I would be retired on the beach, so take this with a grain of salt, but in hindsight, the final answer is always: how did I do this before?  That is, these great technological advances make something so easy, that you look back at the way you did it previously, and it makes you wince.  How did I do this before?

I don't think the majority of the potential innovations that are hanging before our minds are complex.  Simplicity is key, both for the actual advancement and the user experience of the result.  Simplicity usually indicates a focus on what is most important, keeps costs down, allows for easy investor and consumer messaging, and means a normal human, like my mom, actually might understand it and be able to use it without calling her IT department: me.

Think Big, Go Small

Sometimes, you want to bake a cake from scratch.  Other times, someone has baked an excellent cake and offered you a slice, for free, and you would be a fool to pass.  In this case, Google has made an excellent website for brands to understand the importance of mobile in their digital marketing strategy and provides resources to build their mobile site.  They call their initiative GoMo.  It even provides a tool to assess the readiness of your website for mobile, and asks the right questions.

As an example, this year, on Black Friday, online retail sales grew 24.3%, according to IBM Coremetrics data, yet mobile traffic increased 255% and mobile retail sales grew over 300%!  This does not specify the impact that mobile has at the beginning of the consumer journey or the impact that it increasingly has with mobile loyalty schemes.  iPhone and iPad, alone, accounted for 10.2% of all online traffic this Thanksgiving.  The bottom line is designing a web presence today without building in optimized support for tablet and mobile is asking your customers, viewers and fans to go elsewhere.

So, where to start?  First, since mobile web is the principle destination from search, having an optimized mobile web presence is key.  With modern, responsive design techniques, one design can scale from larger PC and tablet sizes down to smaller smartphone and feature phone form factors, optimizing what content and actions are available based on key user scenarios.  In smaller form factors, the focus can be on quick hitting information and actions.  Starting the design from the smallest form factor also helps to focus on simplicity and impact, which can benefit the designs for larger form factor devices, as well.

From there, brands can branch out to offer optimized app experiences that many fans and consumers prefer.  Companies like Facebook and LinkedIn have done an excellent job of blurring the lines between mobile web and apps, but for most brands, they can think of an app on the user's home screen like a loyalty card in their wallet.  If they like a brand enough to carry their card, it is a meaningful indicator of the affinity they have for the brand.  A brand needs to capitalize on that and deliver value from the app, or run the risk of abandonment.

For many companies, they need to walk before they can run, but ignoring the growing impact on mobile in digital marketing is an increasingly dangerous gamble.

The UX Teeter Totter

I think it's very impressive the mobile work that companies like LinkedIn and Facebook are producing today.  Click on their app or their mobile website and the experience is almost identical, as much as the two mobile channels will allow.  Especially in the case of Facebook, which I do wonder how it remembers who I am, in mobile Safari, without cookies enabled...hmm...

I believe companies shade too far away from utility towards fancier user interfaces, on mobile.   Bob Robinson, Executive Creative Director at Rockfish, always talks about the balance of user experience and brand experience in digital design.  On the web and on tablet, a company who demands more brand experience can reach more and push the envelope, but on mobile, the platform itself demands more utility, by its nature.  People browse longer on tablets and frequently want quick information and action on smartphones.  User experiences need to be optimized for both, which might limit, in the case of mobile web, how much responsive design is used, if a more brand oriented experience is chosen for the tablet or web.

The recent LinkedIn mobile app re-design, while visually interesting, strays too far from utility in its approach and at times is confusing on what a user should do where.  I find LinkedIn an awesome tool for business, and before I meet someone for the first time, I constantly find myself looking them up on my mobile, reminding myself of their experience and taking a quick mantal snapshot of what they look like.  Something about the redesign though makes me think that the mapping of mental model to conceptual model is not right yet.  It does not intuitively click for me, even after some months of use.

I have more issues with Facebook's redesign, though.  I was using Facebook more and more on mobile, as are many people according to Eric Tseng, but in hindsight, since the redesign, I find myself coming back to my laptop more and more to interact with Facebook.  While there still seem to be some defects in the iPhone app that cause more user action than is required, especially with notifications and updates, I feel like any action that I plan takes several more steps than what might be optimally required.  It would be interesting to do an industrial engineering time study on Facebook mobile use.  Maybe this is why I find myself hovering back to my laptop when I want to engage with Facebook?

The different models of how users expect to interact with the different channels challenges the design to balance reuse and optimal experience.  It's expensive and difficult to do an optimized design for each platform and channel.  A good approach starts with the right content architecture that allows for the same source data, without sacrificing performance on the apps, by splitting the presentation from the data.  In this way, each platform can be optimized to host that data with the best experience.

In the coming weeks, we'll dive into some approaches on how this might be done.

Free, Easy, Angry, Loyal

Monday: Angry
Tuesday: Free
Wednesday: Easy
Friday: Loyal
Sunday: Lucia