Why don’t people understand Mobile Advertising?

So the Wall Street Journal released an iPhone application on the 15th April. Lots of people are talking about the fact that you can get WSJ content without subscribing, which is great, and it’s not a bad little application.

However, their foray into mobile advertising within the iPhone app itself isn’t so successful, with three big issues:
1. Poor Placement
The mobile ad stays at the bottom of the screen the whole time, taking up precious vertical screen real estate. More importantly because it is always in the same place, people will start to block it out over time and it will just annoy them. It’s also in the same place on deeper pages.

Recommendation: Embed the ad in the content just above the screen fold and let it move with the content list.

2. No Call to Action
The text (on this ad) reads “Oracle #1 Business Software Company”. Why would I want to click on that mobile ad? There’s no incentive, there’s no education apart from a branding message, and while that might be of some value, it could be much more useful. Remember, this person is reading the news, the ad needs to motivate them away from that to engage them.

3. Ad Takes Me Out of the Application to a Normal Web Page
When I do click on the ad, it takes me out of the WSJ iPhone application and into the Mobile Safari web browser. This isn’t great, as it means that I’ve got to return to the iPhone home menu and relaunch the WSJ app to get back to what I was reading. Even worse though is that that it takes me to a generic web page about Oracle that isn’t formatted for the mobile device, let alone the iPhone.

Recommendation: Ensure that the customer stays within the application and resulting content is iPhone specific. This doesn’t take much work and results in a much better user experience. Admob have a range of better iPhone advertising user experiences and I’m sure there are other companies out there that do too.

This isn’t rocket science people, and it has the effect of creating a bad user experience for those people engaging with mobile advertising, who will be less likely to engage with mobile advertising in the future. The mobile industry is moving more toward relying on advertising revenue and this sort of campaign doesn’t help. Nor is it likely to result in a great response for the advertiser who is also less likely to invest if they’re not getting much response/engagement.

Outcome
Customer doesn’t have a good experience and is less likely to engage with mobile ads in the future.
Brand doesn’t get the response they potentially could and might not invest as heavily in the future.

Technorati Tags: advertising, customerexperience, iphone, marketing, mobile, ui

Developing for iPhone

Mike Rowehl on developing for iPhone vs other handsets: “It’s not that I’m blind to everything else. I know everything else that’s out there, and because of that I’ve chosen to develop for iPhone.”

My 2 cents worth: It’s clear that Apple has a far better customer experience with the iPhone, and that includes making apps easier to access from the home screen of the device (critical for regular app use on mobile), and a very easy way to find and purchase applications (on mobile or via iTMS on computer) that the customer is confident will work on their device.

This results in more applications being sold for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Combined with relatively easy development tools that are free, and clear access to an international market it’s much more likely the developer will get good ROI and that’s very important.

Technorati Tags: Apple, customerexperience, iphone, mobile, Nokia, thoughts, usability

An Example of How to Improve the Westpac iPhone App

Why I did this:

• Westpac launched a native iPhone application in December 2008 (You can download it from the Apple App Store here)
• It’s great that Westpac have done an iPhone application at all, this is just some advice on how to improve it.
• I appreciate that I don’t know Westpac’s back-end systems, but this is an ATM database, not their banking system, so it shouldn’t be too hard… 🙂
• The iPhone is the best mobile user experience, and applications which don’t provide a great user experience stand out more and don’t help the company brand
• The mobile device is very time sensitive to interaction because people usually want stuff quickly. The faster you can make the interaction the better, especially for tasks like finding an ATM
• I did this as an example of how interaction design needs to be thought through properly to improve the customer experience

The Task: Finding an ATM

Their Version

• Seven steps to find ATM over six screens (one screen twice)
• Can’t easily switch between branch and ATM
• Header title case doesn’t follow Apple iPhone Guidelines
• Visual design could be improved (branding & colours/fonts)
• Circled arrow on Suburbs list doesn’t follow Apple iPhone Guidelines

(click the image above to enlarge it)

My Version

• Three clicks to find an ATM over two screens
• Type-ahead can reduce required input even further than shown (Remember this is an application and the number of ATMs/branches isn’t too large to store locally and/or update over the air)
• This allows easily switch between branch and ATM
• Easier access to phone numbers, Lost/Stolen Credit Card is prioritised
• I haven’t addressed the visual design stuff here

(click the image above to enlarge it)

Step 1: Tap the “or type Postcode or Suburb” field. The keyboard will appear and the field will move to the top of the page with focus
Step 2: Start entering the postcode and the list of options should narrow, leaving a list for that postcode,
Step 3: Click the desired option and the list should appear with the ability to switch between ATMs, Branches, and All

What do you think? I’m also keen to hear other people’s thoughts on how to improve it even further.

Technorati Tags: Apple, customerexperience, design, idealinterfaces, iphone, mobile, software, Sydney, thoughts, ui, usability

1st Experience with Google Search App w/ Voice Recognition for iPhone

Here’s a couple of quick comments on using the Google Voice Search App for iPhone, but first the caveats; I mumble alot & I have an Australian accent 🙂

1. When I first installed and launched Google Search (w/Voice) it crashed three times in a row while listening to the voice command, restarting the phone fixed this.

2. The interaction takes a while:
a. hold to head and wait for tone to indicate to start speaking
b. start speaking
c. wait for the proximity sensor to recognise that it isn’t next to your head any more
d. process
e. it enters the search term into the Google search field
f. searches for results.
I expect for most things it would be faster to just start typing in the Google search field, especially as it uses a type-ahead function which may help in reducing the number of characters you need to input. Longer natural language phrases are obviously going to be quicker to enter via speech, if it gets all the bits right..

3. The feedback sound when it is processing the voice input is awesome and worth trying out. I’ve worked on a bunch of Natural Language Speech Recognition systems and this feedback is the coolest 🙂 You can hear it by keeping the phone to your head, or using headphones.

4. The inclusion of (access to) the introduction video is helpful for people who may not have used speech recognition before. Kind of like Apple’s instructional video on how to use gestures on the new trackpads is included in the Trackpad System Preferences window. People can learn alot about these new interactions with a quick demo video.

5. It’s good that there is a manual way to start the voice recognition, so people with headphones don’t have to hold it up to their head 😉

6. BennyG suggested talking faster, this seemed to improve some things (“Apple Store London”), but not all (e.g. “The first man to land on the moon”)

7. I’ve been trying to voice search names in my address book, but they don’t show up at all. I’ll put it down to accent. Update: Techcrunch says you can’t search contacts using voice. Which really is totally understandable, because Google would have to run their voice rec over your contacts list and names are notoriously hard for NLSR processing.

I love the concept and one day it might work better for me but for now I’ll be sticking to on-screen keyboard text entry Google searches

Update: Waxy.org tries to deconstruct the speech recognition, with a response from Google

Technorati Tags: Apple, consumerelectronics, customerexperience, Google, hci, iphone, mobile, speech, ui, usability

Gruber on iPhone UI Design

Gruber = Daring Fireball says:
“I’ll put forth one central, overriding guideline for iPhone UI design:

Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience.”

I couldn’t agree more!

Technorati Tags: Apple, customerexperience, design, hci, iphone, mobile, ui, usability

Cross Post: The ABC interviewed me about being a Usability Specialist

About a year ago the ABC interviewed me about being a Usability Specialist. They came and videoed me up at the usability lab I use, my home office and even speaking at a conference. It was all quite fun.

Anyway, today I accidently found a photo of myself on the ABC Science website with a link to the interview with me. You can read about my job and watch the video interview here

Technorati Tags: business, customerexperience, hci, idealinterfaces, industry, information architecture, interview, iphone, marketing, mobile, Sydney, thoughts, TV, ui, usability, video

Nokia 5800 ≠ iPhone

It seemed odd that the Nokia 5800 was being launched in a whole bunch of markets, but not key iPhone markets (e.g. US/UK), then I read this at The Register:
“While lauded as an iPhone competitor, thanks to the touch-screen interface and music-centricity, in reality the 5800 is more of a niche handset. Nokia has made clear that next year it’ll be launching a higher-end touch-driven device to better compete with Apple.”

Technorati Tags: Apple, iphone, mobile, Nokia

iPhone Tech Talk in Sydney & Melbourne

Apple are running an iPhone Tech Talk World Tour, which includes an event in Sydney (19 Nov) and another in Melbourne (21Nov).
If you’re keen to develop for the iPhone, I’d get in quick if I was you…

Technorati Tags: Apple, design, iphone, mobile, Sydney, ui

Fennec Wireframes: The Mozilla Mobile Browser

A nice little insight into the design approach to Mozilla’s upcoming Fennec browser for mobile, including wireframes for the Nokia N810 interface.

Technorati Tags: customerexperience, design, hci, mobile, mozilla, software, ui, usability, wireframes

James blogs about my iPhone typing tip

I caught up with my old colleague and friend James Breeze yesterday to talk about the joys of having your own usability company, and to celebrate his birthday. He’s pretty new to the iPhone, so I gave him a tip: the important part of typing on the touchscreen is the release, not the press that most people are used to. Press as close to the right letter as possible, then look at the enlarged letter to make sure you’ve got it right, then lift. But if you don’t get it right, keep you’re finger down and slide it to the correct letter, then lift. He blogged about it here

Remember: iPhone typing is registered on the lift, not the press like most phones.

Technorati Tags: Apple, customerexperience, friends, hci, iphone, mobile, software, Sydney, ui, usability