Blogs | design mind

Message to Mobile Operators: Monetize Personal Data

Theo Forbath — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:17:18 -0500

As the exchange of personal data becomes a lynchpin of the modern business model, mobile operators are confronted with new challenges and opportunities. At frog, we’re working with mobile operators on the challenges and opportunities in a world where a richer personal data stream is opening unprecedented possibilities for creating value. This article explores the why behind the market’s development and how operators can use Leverage, Risk, Scale, and Tangibility to evaluate opportunities to create value from personal data.

Personal data is the root of the next-gen business model

Twenty years ago, nobody imagined creating revenue from personal data. But a number of factors—the rise of the Internet, globalization of workforces, heightened access to capital, and a strong entrepreneurial spirit—changed all that by opening the way to rapid social and technological growth. Enter Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a whole new era in the sharing and consumption of information (read: data). All of these business models were predicated on the notion that if you can create a service cheaply and then offer it for free to establish a large user base, value would follow. And it has, mostly in the form of personal data monetization.

Now, by the time you read this, a huge trail of data will have been generated. Nearly everything we do in our daily routes—from checking email to buying coffee or driving to work—leaves distinct trails of data exhaust that describe who we are, what we do, and how we spend our resources. Today, your morning coffee not only gives you a buzz but also generates a rich personal data stream that can be logged, tracked, shared, and monetized.

As we continue to advance technologically and behaviorally, the opportunities to create value from personal data have become ever more real and exciting. These include embedded computing, the cloud, streaming service delivery models, location-based services, and multi-screen modes of online access in combination with mobile-centricity, hyper-sharing, and rising demands around the quality and cost of technology. With all these technological and behavioral forces taking shape, more and more businesses are taking strides to get in on the data monetization game.

Mobility and a growing dependence on connectivity put mobile operators in an advantageous position in this changing market. After all, operators provide the backbone of a consumer’s digital life and they have high levels of trust concerning sensitive personal data, such as home addresses, billing information, location, calling and texting histories.

Yet it won’t be easy for a mobile operator to create new forms of value from this personal data, mobile or otherwise. Operators must be willing to explore fundamental changes to the existing business framework, from new and different revenue models to new partnerships and customer segments (including B2B models). This will require more agility in responding to market dynamics.

Insights

Over the last few years, we have collaborated with mobile operators on adapting to these new market dynamics and the growing importance of personal data monetization. Our experience has led to a number of observations about the personal data value chain.
Personal data is not consistent enough in purpose and origin to ever constitute a unified dataset, nor should that be our goal. Andas the amount of data grows – from medical and social security records to transactional data - this fragmentation will only increase. Not all of this is equally accessible, because of necessary regulatory and privacy reasons and because companies will want to maintain control over their excusive customer base.
While the future will be driven by advances in the unseen systems that surround us, the objects that we touch and feel and interact with in our daily lives receive the bulk of our attention, love and loyalty. Operators must embrace these objects – our homes, cars and media centers – and the companies that manufacture them, to facilitate new services that will create value for consumes.

Strategy: How Operators Can Respond
These observations suggest that mobile operators should selectively pursue opportunities to cross industries or domains to create specific value for the consumer. One issue we see with clients in this regard: they sometimes assume you can do nearly anything if you just collect some data. But when pressed on what specifically can be done, there are often few concrete ideas.
To be actionable you must understand the needs of the end consumer and work from there. Place the consumer at the center of your ecosystem and imagine which specific combinations of services would provide the most value to them. Once these have been identified, focus on the following factors: a strong operator presence with considerable leverage; low risk; scalability and tangibility.

Leverage
Having leverage is key to any successful business model. Relative to other types of stakeholders, operators have a lot of leverage when:

·       Adding cellular connectivity to an existing service will create new value. One operator we’re working with is already taking steps to team with auto insurance providers in this way. Using cellular networks to tap into sensors in the car (acceleration and braking speeds, impacts, etc.), operators and carriers together can improve insurance underwriting, which can benefit drivers and providers alike.

·       The reliability of the network connection matters. Another operator we’ve encountered is working with healthcare providers on connecting heart monitoring devices via the cellular network. Operators have leverage in this model because their powerful networks can guarantee the level of performance needed for this critical function where other networks cannot.

·       Adding contextual information from the mobile will create new value. For example, operators have an aggregate view of consumer behavior on the mobile. Operators can determine where a customer was located when they did X, who they called after they did Y, and what apps they use in conjunction. This information could be used (with great caution) to create enhanced service experiences for the consumer.

·       An existing service can piggyback on the recurring billing relationship that operators have with the customer. For example, partner service providers could add their bus or taxi fare to the operator’s phone bill and reconcile transactions on the back end to avoid building out consumer billing infrastructure and lower consumer barriers to use.

Identify additional levers that you have as an operator (relative to potential competitors that are not operators). Then identify your levers as a business relative to other operators. These together will help you find points of leverage that will provide sustainable advantages.

Risk
In the example opportunities described above (i.e. connecting cars and heart monitors), the challenge for these operators will be to command value beyond just providing the pipe. Providing the pipe is an easy foot in the door, but going beyond this to create new forms of value introduces greater risk. For an operator to begin to monetize the usage (data) on the network rather than just access to the network, a certain amount of risk is unavoidable. This is because the fundamental levers of an operator’s business model today (focused on monetizing network access) are quite different from the levers that drive the monetization of data:

The challenge for operators is to find opportunities that allow you to pursue elements of the data monetizer’s business model without undermining the core purpose of the business.

Maintaining a sustainable position in the market requires that all the activities your business undertakes have a high degree of consistency. For example, if the mechanics of your company’s business model are based on keeping your costs low internally in order to provide a value-based alternative to competitors, would the pursuit of the new opportunity be consistent with this model? Would it reinforce it? Spend time articulating the core purpose of your business and identifying the principles of your strategy that should not be compromised, then evaluate the new opportunities for their fit within this to minimize your risk.

Scale
If you’re going to pursue opportunities to cross industries and monetize customer data, identify the levers that will create scale within an opportunity. One of the curses of belonging to a multi-billion dollar organization is that opportunities worth (just) a billion may not move the needle enough to get behind. Don’t lose months to detailed business cases, but do the back-of-the-napkin version to make sure the upshot is worth it to your business. Don’t constrain measures of scale to just total available market; attach rates and pull-through for other (and potentially much larger) sources of revenue could be key levers in the modern operator’s business model.

Tangibility
Operators will be much better positioned to create new levels of value for consumers if they play a substantial role in the tangible products people use. Easy to say, but this represents a significant obstacle for operators, who traditionally haven’t focused on making tangible consumer goods. So how can operators respond to this phenomenon in a way that adheres to its core purpose?

Becoming more tangible doesn’t necessarily require that other core businesses that are unseen go away, but if a brand is to elevate its status, gain deep consumer loyalty, and earn the opportunity to generate greater and greater value for a consumer, it needs to remain as close to tangible as possible to ensure that users attribute their experience to that brand. For operators, just one step removed from the consumer’s device, this leap may simply be a matter of revisiting positioning and branding strategies to shift consumer focus away from “five nines” and pipes, toward world class experiences that evoke strong emotion and loyalty, in order to gain the required mindshare.

Conclusion
At frog, we’ve learned that one of the most effective ways to prove a concept is to just do it. Market conditions change rapidly, and the timeline of the innovation lifecycle is shorter today than ever before. As the flow of personal data increases exponentially, mobile operators are in an advantageous position to seize the opportunity to monetize personal data and create value. They can use their widespread connectivity and a broad consumer base to create, leverage and scale up new services.

To do that, operators must look beyond existing business models and frameworks to seek new partnerships, revenue sources and consumer segments. They must be open to crossing industries and domains, and most of all, focusing on the needs of the end consumer and what services and experiences would be of value to them.

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As frog’s vice president of innovation strategy, Theo Forbath helps clients transform their products and services, key business systems, and applications into competitive global solutions.

frog is pleased to join the 17th annual CONNECTIONS: The Premier Connected Home Conference, hosted by Parks Associates, May 20-23 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CONNECTIONS focuses on emerging technologies, monetization strategies, and content distribution for connected CE and connected home services. The agenda features key industry leaders, representing Comcast, DirecTV, Ericsson, Honeywell, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Ooyala, Qualcomm Inc., Verizon, TiVo, VeriFone and many more. Check out a full agenda and register to attend here.

To schedule a meeting with frog at CONNECTIONS or CTIA, please contact Marie.Lozano@frogdesign.com.

The 10 Building Blocks of Design Studio Culture

David Sherwin — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:21:15 -0500

This is an excerpt from from my new book, Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers, out now from HOW Books.

Culture is everything people in a design business do that supports the process of making work happen. Culture can create joy for designers, while improvements in process can facilitate profit. A common misperception is that culture emerges organically based on the decisions of a business owner or CEO. But a design studio’s culture is not created solely by those at the top. For a design-led business, culture is generated from ongoing contributions and discoveries from both studio owners and employees.

In researching my recent book on how design businesses can be more successful, I began to see important building blocks that were present in the most successful studios. These building blocks are divided into two groups: hard building blocks and soft building blocks. Hard building blocks are realized through a budget, meaning that you can allocate money and time for them as part of business overhead. The soft building blocks can be created through the decisions employees make over the course of their daily work, life and play (with less material investment by the owners).

A healthy studio culture draws equally from both types of building blocks. They provide emotional and material stability to employees in the face of ongoing work challenges, and often clients, family and the general public perceive them as ingredients of the company’s brand. These building blocks are equally present within design firms and in-house design teams—though for the latter, the composition of some building blocks may be heavily influenced by the company's overall behavior and needs.

Let’s take a deep dive into these building blocks, with important questions to ask yourself (and your team) in order to create a strong studio culture.

The “hard” building blocks of design studio culture

Type of Work

Type of work is the largest cultural building block for any studio, as the majority of the time in the studio is spent immersed in the work.

The kinds of customers selected by the business owner, the design disciplines practiced by the staff and the way projects are delivered by the team all contribute to the excitement that motivates employees and owners when they start work every morning.

What follows are the questions you should be asking yourself before the phone rings and prospective clients ask you if you’d like to take on a project. Your answers, and how they may overlap (or not) with your staff’s answers, will help you better understand where you can take your studio portfolio.

Customer types

What industries do you want to work with? As an example: Health care or consumer electronics?
What size of client do you prefer? Working with small companies or only the Fortune 100?
Are you working with for-profit companies? Are you focusing on opportunities from the nonprofit sector? Or are you interested in working with start-up firms?
How deeply are you entrenched in helping shape your client’s business? Are you a strategic partner, or does the client see you more as an executional vendor?
What types of brands are you seeking to work with? Small, hip local companies? Or older, established international firms?
What ethical stance do you take on certain types of clients? For example, working with a religious organization may not be considered appropriate for some studios, while others would jump at the chance.

Discipline and practices of design

What types of design does your studio want to practice? Print design? Interactive? Industrial? Environmental? Service?
What tangible things do you want to generate? One of the benefits of designing products, environments and brand systems is that every project generates physical evidence of your efforts. When creating interactive products or online advertising, that may not be the case. You may blink and miss it.
On what scale do you want to operate? For example: If your firm focuses on branding, do you want to create simple identity systems or the kind with hundreds of moving parts?
What other disciplines would you like to partner with? For instance, an interior designer may work with an architecture firm to design a retail space.

Style of delivery

What size projects do you seek? Do you prefer short-term projects, or would you enjoy working on an engagement that lasts years?
Are there specific delivery processes you prefer over others? Some designers like to work in a controlled waterfall-style project process, while others like the close collaboration and constant change that emerges from an agile or scrum-based project process.
Where are the clients located? Are you comfortable working with clients in a completely virtual manner, or do you prefer face-to-face interaction?
What level of security do you want as part of the client relationship? For example, do you desire a client retainer, which guarantees revenue at the cost of freedom? Or do you generate revenues from flat fees, causing the staff to regularly propose and secure new work as part of their work life? This can influence the studio atmosphere.

Space
Once you know what kind of work you’d like to create, you’ll need a space where you can make the magic happen. Studio owners must carefully consider the placement of their work space, the studio layout, the use of the studio environment and whether a formal space is even necessary to get the design work done.

Placement
You may be tempted to lease or purchase space in a far away, yet “up and coming” neighborhood that is great for your budget. However, getting to work shouldn’t be hard work for your employees or your clients. Otherwise you are implicitly charging your employees time that they could be using to take care of their wants and needs. Well-placed studios can help support those needs, by being near local coffee shops and restaurants, gyms and yoga studios, public transit or the freeway.

Layout
The layout of a studio helps facilitate the flow of conversation and the style of work taking place. Studio layouts can be open, closed or some combination of open and closed elements.

Closed environments are manifested through cube farms, closed-door offices and conference rooms—areas where people can seal themselves off from others and focus on their work. My first years as a designer took place in studio environments where each designer had his own cubicle, and any ongoing conversations required us to peek our heads over walls. At one point, we joked about sawing holes in the cubicle walls so we could see each other’s faces without having to stand up. (This was before video chat, mind you.) The layout of the space was a direct reflection of the kind of work that was taking place: production-heavy print deliverables.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have been working the past six years in entirely open studios, with little to no privacy possible unless I exit the studio floor. The complexity of the work product—much of it rooted in designing and developing interactive products and services—requires constant collaboration. An open studio plan encourages ad hoc conversation and a cross-pollination of ideas that otherwise would never see the light of day. However, an open plan also requires pockets of privacy, whether via conference rooms or closed-door “war rooms” where the staff can work without distraction. Noise-canceling headphones also are handy—I consider them the new “do not disturb” sign.

Use of environment
Decisions about the use of studio space can have a major impact on culture for both employees and visitors to your studio.

Design Commission leases an affordable studio space within the Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts. As a requirement in the lease, part of the design studio must be run as an art gallery. Every first Thursday of the month, the employees have to put on a show as part of a community art walk. Year after year, they have exhibited work from a range of international artists as well as created their own interactive art installations. This activity is also reflected online through a gallery website.

Other examples come from design studios that intentionally preserve a portion of their space for bringing in visiting artists and fellows, running a small retail store or subletting office space to like-minded businesses.

Co-location via virtual spaces
Some businesses choose to forgo a leased office space and work virtually, using by-the-meeting office spaces for face-to-face meetings with clients. In these situations, design teams work from home or from a local coffee shop, connecting regularly through email, IM, phone calls, video chat and online collaboration tools such as Basecamp, Campfire and WebEx. With the recent increase in drop-in and shared spaces, you can have the benefits of a studio environment on demand—providing the needed infrastructure at a fraction of the cost of leasing a full-time space. Plus, you also get the benefit of having some office mates to chat with.

Amenities

Amenities help create an atmosphere that supports staff as they go about their business. These amenities can help satisfy creature comforts—such as the daily caffeine fix—or encourage the staff to stick around the office, whether to socialize or to stay at work a little longer. (Sometimes both.)

Amenities are factored into the studio overhead as part of the benefits provided to all employees. They may be as simple as free soda and juice in the fridge, or a studio iTunes account stocked with thousands of tunes. Whether it’s locally sourced fruits and vegetables as a daily late afternoon snack or ice cream sundaes with chocolate chip cookie dough on the side after a hard week, what does your studio provide to keep your staff well-fed and happy?

Amenities may also include side benefits, such as subsidized gym memberships, a weekly on-site masseuse or free dining for those who choose to work past 7 p.m. Be aware that these perks can say a lot about your firm to potential employees. If you offer free cab rides home after 9 p.m., you might be broadcasting that working there requires staying late.

Training

Training is a line item struck from studio budgets when cash flow is meager. But both on-site and off-site training opportunities help foster a culture of continual learning. Designers are refreshed and revitalized by information and inspiration from outside their daily purview or work responsibilities. This can happen in person or virtually, whether by attending conferences and events, taking classes in new techniques or technologies, or fostering staff-led learning opportunities within your company.

Strapped for cash but want to satisfy your staff? Rotate the staffers who attend important events and require them to summarize and share what they learned with the studio.

The “soft” building blocks of design studio culture

Community

All work and no play can make a design team wear away. For this reason, design business owners should carve out dedicated time where studio staff can decompress and grow closer on a personal level.

Community-building activities and social outlets may be designed into the workday by studio management and staff, but ideally they should be realized and enlivened by the staff. Whether movie nights, Friday afternoon cheese tastings or ad-hoc happy hours, semiregular social outlets are often the highlight of a busy week. They become rituals ingrained in the company operations.

When I lived on the East Coast, Wednesday lunch meant Tex-Mex. It was our ritual for decompression. The studio principal would take the last few minutes of lunch to encourage staffers to talk about what was happening in their work and to tap into the creativity of the other designers to help them solve any problems they might be having. (It also made the lunch billable!)

The larger the business, the more these connection opportunities will help define the culture and inspire your staff. “The details, rituals and the camaraderie are an important part of frog culture,” says Doreen Lorenzo, president of frog, a global innovation firm. “For example, coffee time is at 4 p.m. every day at every office. It is a time to pause, maybe grab a bite to eat, talk to someone you haven’t spoken to, even play a friendly but competitive game of foosball. I often thought that if we took coffee time away we would have the highest attrition frog has ever seen. These small details make it an important reason why people choose to work at frog.”

Philanthropy

While earning money is obviously important for running a stable business, many studios also donate staff time or money toward passion projects related to nonprofit, educational and philanthropic causes. Studios can provide staffers with charity days that they can use individually or in groups. Some studios donate their space or evening hours toward supporting local educational or fundraising events. The costs of these efforts are included in studio overhead and can influence the type of work that a studio receives.

Recognition

Design business owners set the tone regarding how the performance of studio staff and their work should be recognized. The best recognition for your efforts should come from your client’s customers. Studio staffers, however, may desire additional praise from their peers, the press or the blogosphere. Some studios take pains to enter competitions, though such efforts can be costly and steal time and attention away from other endeavors.

Also, recognition doesn’t have to be solely about the work. The personal passions of studio staff can be shared with the world, as long as you continue to support your studio culture and properly represent your brand.

Leadership

How the studio owners lead a team, as well as how staff are properly trained and supported in taking leadership roles, can have major cultural implications for staff happiness. Not enough leadership, and your core staff may feel adrift. Too much active leadership, and your staff can feel like there’s no space in the work (or the studio) for their vision.

Challenge

A high level of challenge in client projects can supercharge a studio environment. Smaller-scale, more tactical projects may exercise the staff’s skills and craft sensibilities. Tackling larger-scale projects and design problems can provide the studio with new perspectives on persistent issues in the world and give your staff the chance to make a difference.

Additionally studio owners and staff can take on internal projects and initiatives to stay nimble and challenged when the project work isn’t as stimulating as they would like. Regular critique of ongoing projects should also challenge designers and studio owners to realize their best work.

Ownership

Ownership is the one of the best indicators of healthy leadership. Ownership is when the staff feels like they have control over their time and their work product. It emerges when business leaders provide their designers with the necessary space to ideate and create appropriate design solutions. It can also arise when a designer is able to imprint her unique perspectives and expertise on any of the cultural building blocks, such as the design of her office space, securing the right type of work, gaining a leadership role, receiving recognition or even coordinating a guest speaker series for the office.

Some design businesses provide incentives for demonstrating ownership around growing studio accounts, such as profit sharing. Staff can also gain an ownership stake in the studio if they stay with the studio for a substantial period of time. However, such monetary carrots might not appeal to everyone, and they should never preclude your staff receiving regular opportunities that align with their evolving passions.

What studio culture would you like to create?

Now that you know the building blocks of design studio culture, what are you going to do to focus on the culture at your studio or business?

I’ve created a Studio Culture Worksheet along with David Conrad, the Studio Director of Design Commission, to help you answer the following questions: What can your staff do to create their ideal studio culture? And how can that culture align with everyone’s desired working environment?

Here’s how to use the worksheet:

Take the worksheet and list what cultural building blocks you currently have in place as part of your studio.
Consider, based on what you want to do in the future, what new building blocks might increase joy. Add them to the worksheet.
Highlight which cultural building blocks you could give to others to increase their sense of ownership.
Have other team members do steps 1–3 with their own copy of the worksheet.
Merge all of your answers together and implement what the majority of the staff want first. Delegate ownership of specific initiatives to those on your team that have growth goals aligned with the culture-building activities.

Get a copy of Success by Design: The Essential Business Reference for Designers on Amazon.com.

frogThink at The Tech

Timothy Morey, Bonnie Reese, and Maryanna Rogers — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:24:27 -0500

Approaching a problem with a design mindset is a craft—a way of working that may seem effortless, or even second nature, to a master craftsman, but can prove very hard indeed for a novice. And, like all crafts, it is something you learn by doing rather than by knowing. You can read all about “Design Thinking,” or other user-centric approaches, but it is only when you start to do them, to apply them, and to practice them that you start on the journey to becoming a master craftsman. As a result, these methodologies don’t really lend themselves to classic corporate education seminars. You can learn what they are in a seminar but not how to apply them. Such methodologies do not easily fit into a traditional school curriculum either. Though core curriculum standards are beginning to value twenty-first century skills, such as collaboration and creative problem solving, it is not obvious how a school might integrate the design-mindset into students’ schedules. It’s creative but it’s not “art”; it involves problem solving but it’s not math. So, if design-centric thinking is the future, and schools are not adopting it, how and where might we teach it?

Museums are a great place to start. They aren’t constrained by curriculum, they are environments that celebrate innovation and creativity, and they are often dealing with groups of students looking for an interactive experience.

The Tech Museum of Innovation is rising to the challenge, employing a hands-on, collaborative approach to its exhibit philosophy. As a museum without a collection to showcase, they put designing and making at the center of the museum experience. In fact, The Tech Museum has been providing opportunities for visitors to engage in “design challenge learning,” as they call it, for over 25 years—with The Tech Challenge (an annual team–based design challenge for 5th-12th graders), design-based lab programs, summer camps, and workshops. Now, as the museum is in the process of a complete re-design, they are also focusing on how to bring more design challenge learning to the museum floor.

The exhibit design team from The Tech came to frog and asked us how best to use some of our collaborative methodologies (which we call frogThink) in a museum environment with kids. We were thrilled to be asked to think through this with them and quickly pulled together a cross disciplinary team to engage for a day and define what this experience might look like. What better way to tackle the challenge than through some collaborative design exercises?

We started off the workshop by defining key Experience Principles. It was important to identify a set of principles that took into account the range of roles and people who would be engaged in the experience – the kids, the teachers who bring school groups, the parents, and the museum staff. Here were some of the key principles we identified through this exercise:

Make it collaborative: Give everyone a clear role in the process (including the adults on the sidelines)
Make it fun and entertaining for everyone
Provide a low barrier of entry, making it easy to get drawn in to the activity
Tie the activity to an achievable/tangible output
Create a lab environment where you feel inspired to invent and it’s safe to fail
Enable sharing and celebrate the outputs
Allow for reflection and realization of value

After establishing a shared vision for the key elements the experience should incorporate, we reviewed a range of different types of frogThink activities that we use in our business. Then we broke up into groups to tackle the design of the actual activity. We formed three groups made up of designers from both frog and The Tech and tasked each group with creating an activity flow of how museum visitors might engage in designing a social robot. We asked each group to use the Experience Principles as a touchstone for their activity design.

Our design also had to take into account the logistics of managing a field trip. These specific needs added a certain degree of complexity—keeping them safe, engaged and contained, taking into account the required chaperone-to-kid ratio, providing them with opportunities to MOVE and run around. We also had to ensure our activities would scale to different timeframes given the various constraints on school groups’ schedules. Finally, we had to recognize that not all chaperones speak English.

Each group designed a unique activity flow that responded to the challenge. One activity engaged the group with a provocative video to draw them into the challenge. Another group focused on simulating customer research to define the solution. The third group employed a lateral thinking exercise to generate unique robot solutions. Despite the differences in process, each solution aligned across the Experience Principles and included compelling components that could be prototyped.

The next step will be for the exhibits team at The Tech Museum to prototype these activities to test with the kids to see what works and what needs further shaping. We look forward to hearing what worked and what didn’t. Like all good design, we know it will need to go through numerous cycles of iteration informed by user feedback and testing. Luckily, The Tech team is committed and we know they’ll do a great job tuning the activities for their audience.

Timothy Morey is an assistant VP for the Innovation Strategy Group (ISG) at frog’s San Francisco studio. Bonnie Reese is a principal creative director at frog’s Austin studio. Maryanna Rogers is The Tech Museum’s director of innovation.

Mobile Ecosystems Evolving

Various frogs — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:15:37 -0500

Download Mobile Ecosystems Evolving

Mobile technology is more than the sum of the world’s portable electronic devices and the supporting telecommunications infrastructure.

Unlike earlier versions of the Internet, the mobile Web is a halo of information that follows us almost everywhere, an increasingly meaningful part of our most minute interactions with the physical world. It is an infinitely complex, dynamic system fed by billions of users and a growing variety of hardware and software programs that generate, transmit, and structure data.

These continuous streams of data are already transforming business on many fronts. How can improved user experience design make the vast trove of data more useful? What role does hardware play in the new digital ecosystems? And as the mobile Web continues to evolve, how will we prefer to interact with it?

frog explored these questions over the course of several weeks in our recent web series, Mobile Ecosystems Evolving. From healthcare, to retail, to enterprise—download the full collection of the insights and perspectives that were shared as we studied the future of mobile technology and its impact on diverse industries.

Rethinking Big Data with frog

Shine Chu — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 01:21:30 -0500

In today's age of hyper connectivity, data consumption and production will continue to grow at an inexorable pace especially in China and throughout Asia. Organizations will not only be challenged to manage, secure, and understand the data but also to create experiences that consumers find meaningful. With frog's Chief Creative Officer Mark Rolston, Executive Creative Director of Global Insights Jan Chipchase and Executive Creative Director Rainer Wessler, we will explore the notions of radical transparency, intimacy and authenticity that are pushing the boundaries of big data in Asia and enabling a new generation of change agents.

在当下的这个网络世界，数据正在以惊人的速度被生产、被消费。如何更好地管理、保护和理解这些大数据，将是未来几年里，我们所有人的重要工作之一。而其中最关键的，则是要让数据对消费者有价值。本次活动演讲嘉宾包括青蛙设计首席创意执行官Mark Rolston、全球视野洞察执行创意总监Jan Chipchase以及执行创意总监Rainer Wessler。届时，我们将与大家共同探索、搜寻，究竟有哪些开放透明真实的理念在整个亚洲范围内不断推进着大数据的变革。

Join frog at our "Rethinking Big Data" event, to be held at the SOHO Design Center on May 16.

青蛙设计诚挚邀请您参加5月16日于SOHO中国创意空间举行的“重新思考大数据”活动。

Thursday, May 16, 2013

6:00 pm Registration 签到

6:30 pm Cocktail Reception 冷餐鸡尾酒招待

7:00 pm Presentations 主题演讲

SOHO China Design Center

1st Floor, No. 299 Tongren Road, Jing'an District, Shanghai, China

上海市静安区铜仁路299号SOHO东海广场1楼

To RSVP, please contact frogsh.marketing@frogdesign.com

活动预约请联系frogsh.marketing@frogdesign.com

Speakers 演讲嘉宾

Mark Rolston, Chief Creative Officer 首席创意执行官

As Chief Creative Officer, Mark is responsible for driving frog's global creative vision. An early Web pioneer, Mark co-founded frog's digital media group in 1996, working with clients to leverage emerging technologies and setting the tone for user interface design and e-commerce platforms. Mark has been widely quoted in the press, including in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Technology Review and the Wall Street Journal.

作为首席创意官，Mark Rolston负责青蛙设计的全球创意构想。作为一个早期的网络先锋， Mark于1996年创建了青蛙的数字媒体组，运用新生的技术为用户界面设计和电子商务平台奠定基调。他是一个在数字媒体、用户界面设计、电子商务和移动运用领域国际公认的专家，并且其言论广泛地被《商业周刊》、《快公司》、《纽约时报》、Technology Review、PC Magazine和《华尔街日报》引用。

Jan Chipchase, Executive Creative Director of Global Insights 全球视野洞察执行创意总监

Jan Chipchase oversees frog's global design research practice that runs over 150 projects worldwide each year, spanning a range of industries including healthcare, mobile, finance, automotive through to consumer packaged goods. Based out of China for two years, he ran projects across over a dozen 1st to 5th tier cities. Jan is a renowned keynote speaker ranging from innovation, design, marketing and strategy conferences, governmental & C-level events through to TED. His work is widely covered in the media including CBNWeekly, Economic Observer, New York Times, The Economist, Nikkei, Business Week and The Atlantic.

青蛙设计执行创意总监Jan Chipchase领导公司设计调研团队每年全球范围内服务超过150个项目。在加入青蛙设计之前，他曾任诺基亚的首席调研专家。他对于人类行为模式的研究准确地预测了消费流行趋为新产品开发奠定了重要基础。Jan Chipchase曾多次参与复杂的跨国设计研究项目，经验丰富，在将“以人为本” 的深刻理解融入产品开发方面，他的权威地位受到广泛认可。他的研究范围广泛，为了更好地理解技术给人类带来的影响，他寻访世界各地，探究其所处的更广阔的情感氛围，社会背景，与文化环境。他曾被《财富》杂志评为“全球技术界最聪明的人”，Jan的作品被广泛收录于国内外一线媒体如第一财经周刊、经济观察报、纽约时报、商业周刊等。

Rainer Wessler, Executive Creative Director 执行创意总监

Rainer Wessler has over 13 years of experience in strategic design, innovation strategy and concept design, helping clients in the consumer electronics, automotive, finance and retail sectors. As Executive Creative Director of frog Shanghai, he leads the studio's creative teams servicing clients in Asia. Prior to frog, Rainer led multiple programs at the Vodafone Group UX team in Dusseldorf, Germany. Rainer has spoken at multiple universities and events across Asia, such as the World Economic Forum Summer Davos, Tsinghua University, and the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Global Green Summit.

Rainer是青蛙设计上海工作室的执行创意总监，他本人在创意产业领域有着超过十二年的工作经验。在他多面化的学科专业中，战略设计、创新流程管理、概念设计在其职业生涯中扮演了重要的角色。Rainer带领着青蛙设计创意团队服务于来自国内外的全球500强企业。加入青蛙设计前，Rainer曾在沃达丰集团领导设计规范化团队。他本人也曾受邀担任国内外知名论坛大会的主讲嘉宾，如“量化自我北京大会”、“Telco 2.0”、“彭博商业周刊全球绿色峰会”。他本人也曾接受来自《中欧商业评论》等国内一线媒体的采访。

A Model for Innovation in Emerging Markets

Emily Chong — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:51:50 -0500

Mobile connectivity is creating and enabling new approaches to markets which have traditionally been hard to crack. For emerging economies, connectivity can improve everyday life for the poorest if companies find a sustainable model for reaching new consumers and understand the complex canvas of emerging markets.

Visa, a payments company, recently partnered with frog to complete a three-month long project in Rwanda to uncover how technology can advance financial inclusion. Teams immersed themselves fully into their local Rwandan surroundings, living alongside the people who would ultimately benefit from financial inclusion to understand their everyday lives more completely.

Join Visa and frog at Singapore's historic Arts House on the evening of May 7, where we will present details of this design research activity plus an innovative model for understanding consumers and building market share in the developing world and beyond.

Invite only, for more informations please contact: frogsh.marketing@frogdesign.com

Tuesday, May 7, 2013
6:30 pm Cocktail Reception
7:00 pm Presentations

The Arts House
1 Old Parliament Lane
Singapore 179429
Map

Speakers

Gordon Cooper, Head of Emerging Market Solutions, Visa
Gordon Cooper is Head of Emerging Market Solutions for Visa in Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (APCEMEA). In this capacity, he leads a team exploring new business models for Visa in emerging markets, with a particular focus on meeting the needs of unbanked and under-banked consumers. The group’s focal project is Visa’s Public-Private Partnership with the Government of Rwanda and the rollout of the mVISA mobile money solution in Rwanda. Originally from Halifax, Canada, Gordon lives in Singapore with his wife and four kids but spends about a week a month in Rwanda.

Jan Chipchase, Executive Creative Director of Global Insights, frog
As Executive Creative Director of Global Insights Jan oversees frog’s global design research practice, that runs over 150 projects worldwide each year for Fortune 500 clients, spanning a range of industries including healthcare, mobile, finance, automotive through to consumer packaged goods. This role provides a unique perspective on innovation, design and the adoption of technology globally. Over the last decade he has conducted extensive research across the globe, from trend-hotspots through to warzones and pretty much everywhere in between. He is a renowned keynote speaker ranging from innovation, design, marketing and strategy conferences, governmental & C-level events through to TED. His work is widely covered in the media including the New York Times, The Economist, Nikkei, Business Week and The Atlantic.

Conversations of People and Things

Rob McIntosh and Holger Hampf — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:08:57 -0500

frog developed the Connected\Projected program to explore potential for emergent, integrated product solutions by blending key trends in technology and user experience design.

Using wireless product-to- product and product-to-user features as well as sensors and laser projection, we created a series of first level “Superprotoypes”. Our prototyping process and the prototypes themselves have triggered an avalanche of new use cases, ecosystems, and product concepts that have all grown out of the seeds of that first idea.

***

We don’t need to wonder about the Internet of Things. We are already there. People might not have realized it yet, but things are already talking to each other. And, as electronics decrease in size and price, even more of our appliances and products will soon be able to sense, listen, and share. The question is, will we care about what they have to say?

We often hear about smart objects, smart homes, and smart cities. Are we aiming at the wrong target when we assume that everything needs to be smart? A drill should know about speed. A fridge should know about temperature. A toaster should know about toast. The real goal is not how smart each individual node can be, but how intelligent it can become while in a collective network.

This aggregation, translation, and horizontal connectivity is what creates new value and, ultimately, makes us smarter. Things will not only talk but explain what they do or what they need. They will follow one another, discuss, collaborate, create events, and complete tasks together. They will even fight and disagree. What if all my tools could collaborate as I build my house? What if they talked to other products and learned from their experience? What if they competed to be used or suggested what was best in a given situation? What if they learned with us and from us?

Today, a billion new voices are rising in the network. They will talk and be active agents in our lives. But it's not just about talking. It's about creating a worthwhile conversation.

Rob Mcintosh is a creative director in frog's Munich Studio. Holger Hampf is an executive creative director in frog's Munich studio. The Connected\Projected team includes Brendan Donovan, Simo Rebaudengo, Lasse Underbjerg, Alex Jonsson, Patrick Schmidberger, and Miguel Oliva.

Unraveling HTML5 vs. Native

Alex Conconi — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:51:07 -0500

I am discussing mobile application development with the IT manager of a provider of online content and services to millions of users, when the conversation touches on HTML5. He tells me:

“On September 11, 2012, Mack Zuckerberg stated that the biggest mistake made by Facebook was betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native. The very next day I got a call from my boss asking me if I was sure our company was not making the same mistake.”

Since that day, I've heard similar stories over and over again as the “Facebook dumps HTML5” headline spread through the web and reached even a non-technical audience. Many IT directors and software architects that had been pushing HTML5 as the future of mobile within their organization began to see their strategy questioned by upper management.

“We provide customers with native applications for iPhone, iPad, and Android to access our online content and services. Each application was launched at a different time and outsourced to a different supplier. Eventually the apps became misaligned to the point that managing updates and adding new features has become a painful process. HTML5 looked like the ideal solution to overcome that, but now I am no longer sure.”

Indeed, HTML5 was hyped as the ultimate write-once-run-anywhere solution for mobile, solving all the problems of cross platform development and device fragmentation. This has been proven to be plainly wrong. Not surprisingly, the old saying “no silver bullet” also applies to mobile applications. On the other hand, HTML5 remains a powerful technology for mobile development, a fact that is demonstrated by well-crafted executions like LinkedIn's original app. When it comes to choosing HTML5 over native or vice versa there is, of course, no universal answer. There are, however, key decision criteria.

Let's Take A Step Back

The first question to ask is, do you actually need a mobile application? No matter the selected technology platform, development and maintenance of a mobile application can be costly, and a mobile website might be preferable. By leveraging responsive design techniques, the browser can be instructed on how to best render the web page content depending on device display and input capabilities, such screen size and orientation, as well as touch-based interactions (a well-known example is the Boston Globe website.)

From the user perspective, this solution provides a traditional client-server web experience, with page-to-page navigation implying page reloads and redraws (completed in a possibly short but unavoidably noticeable time.) Also on the downside, network connectivity is always required (no offline modality), no device features are available, and discovery and monetization cannot happen in the native platform application store.

The browser is also an app.

From Web to Native: The Steps In Between

After a business case for a mobile app has been established, the question arises as to which platform to support. Unless the app is targeting a niche vertical or geographical market, chances are that it should support multiple platforms, namely iOS and Android (and its fragmented device base) to say the least. Viable approaches span web and pure native technology, with various intermediate degrees—single page applications, hybrid applications, cross-compiling frameworks and multiple native apps.

A web app is implemented with modern web technologies and unlike a mobile site it is constructed as a single, self-modifying web page (such as Google Gmail), with application and presentation logic moved to client-side. HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript provide plenty of opportunities to deliver advanced user interfaces that convey the feeling of an application. Bleeding-edge browser APIs, such as user media, geo-localization and local storage (on their way to standardization), can be leveraged, depending on the level of support by the mobile browser. A single page application can be typically added to the device home screen as web app, which is essentially a bookmark that launches the browser. Updates are transparent to the user, as they happen server-side. A notable example of this approach is the Financial Times app (seen at the top of this post), which leverages the distribution in the open web as opposed to proprietary application stores.

The hybrid approach is based on software frameworks that package HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript code into a container that embeds a webview (leveraging the native HTML rendering engine) and an integration layer to the mobile operating system. The webview is used to display a single page application. Thusly wrapped, the application is seen by the mobile operating system as truly native. Discovery, purchase, installation and updates happen via the application store. A popular framework of this kind is Adobe Phonegap (based on the Apache Cordova project), which powers the Wikipedia mobile app. Its integration layer enables JavaScript code to access software and hardware features such as contacts, notifications, local storage, as well as GPS, compass and camera.

The hybrid approach is taken a step further by cross-compiling SDKs such as Appcelerator Titanium, which provide a complete mobile OS abstraction platform, and translate JavaScript source code into actual native code (as opposed to rendering it in a web view). Such cross-compiled applications are not really web applications, as the JavaScript-based API is in fact used to create native UI components, with no HTML and CSS. Even more, other SDKs exist that adopt different languages as source code (e.g. MoSync also allows C and C++).

And finally we have native apps, built on the specific APIs of the target mobile operating system. Unfortunately each platform requires its own development language and tools (e.g. Objective-C on iOS, and Java on Android) and corresponding developers skills. As code reuse across different platforms is not possible, an app has to be developed for each individual system, at the cost of increased effort and harder manageability.

Understanding decision criteria

When facing choices for multiplatform mobile development you should not decide which is the best technology per se, as there is no general answer to that. Focus instead on understanding the peculiarities of your app and establish a mobile development strategy that satisfies multiple criteria in terms of functionality, business model and context. Which device software and hardware capabilities does your app need to access? What are the non-functional requirements (performance in particular)? How often do you plan to release updates? What is the monetization model (free, ads-supported, one-time-purchase, subscription etc.) and does it require the app to be in the app store? Also consider the context of your organization: what are your mobile development team skills? Are you willing to outsource development in case you cannot manage it internally? Answering those questions (and several more) will lead you to the selection of the most appropriate technology options for your needs.

Native apps maintain the edge as far as functionality and sheer power are concerned. They offer the fastest performance, familiar look and feel, full integration with the platform ecosystem, complete access to device software, and hardware features. Especially when it comes to highly interactive and animated user interfaces, they deliver a more effective user experience. HTML5 apps on the other hand are more limited in terms of functionality but they are a more cost effective approach to multiple platforms. Also, HTML5 yields higher flexibility when it comes to distribution and monetization. Want to be in the official application store? Then package your app with the hybrid approach. Want to escape the official application store (and its rules and barriers and due royalties) instead? Then go for your own application provision strategy in the open web.

When going for multiplatform solutions bear in mind that while the idea of a common codebase is desirable the “write-once-run-anywhere” paradigm is ultimately an illusion, as your app will still need platform-dependent tweaks, and a broad QA effort. This is a design as well technical matter: each mobile OS comes with its peculiar interaction model (e.g. think of how the “back” action is presented differently in iOS and Android), and your application should be consistent with that in order to meet users’ expectations, unless its brand is so powerful as to allow the superimposition of a completely custom interaction model.

Last but not least, consider the time horizon. Native platforms come and go with turbulences in the mobile device market, whereas HTML (an open, vendor-independent technology) has been there for over 20 years and is here to stay for another long while. HTML5 is now enjoying widespread support on desktop, mobile and smart TV platforms; its specification is expected to reach W3C recommendation level by 2014, yielding even broader stability and interoperability. A new generation of mobile devices will come with increased computational and graphical power: Faster and more compatible mobile browsers will thus reduce the performance gap with native and provide stronger support to HTML5. And strong support will come from the software engineers community too, as HTML5 has enabled a whole generation of web developers to transfer their skills into the mobile world.

Alex Conconi is a software architect at frog's Milan studio. You can find him on Twitter @aconconi.

[Image]

You Lookin’ at Me? Reflections on Google Glass.

Jan Chipchase — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:43:24 -0500

There is but one remedy for the Glass wearer - a bucket of iced water in the face whenever you suspect he has taken you unawares

With the public beta launch of Google Glass there has been a lot of discussion on why it will or won’t fail. The ultimate benchmark for success is high: After someone has tried Glass can they imagine life without it?

It’s the wrong question.

Glass is Google’s unintentional public service announcement on the future of privacy. Our traditional bogeyman for privacy was Big Brother and its physical manifestation (closed-circuit TV) but the reality today is closer to what I call Little Sister, and she is socially active, curious, sufficiently tech-savvy, growing up in the land of “free,” getting on with life and creating a digital exhaust that is there for the taking. The sustained conversation around Glass will be sufficient to lead to a societal shift in how we think about the ownership of data, and to extrapolate a bit, the kind of cities we want to live in. For me, the argument that Glass is somehow inherently nefarious misses a more interesting point: It is a physical and obvious manifestation of things that already exist and are widely deployed today, whose lack of physical, obvious presence has limited a mainstream critical discourse.

As a product that is both on-your-face and in-your-face, Glass is set to become lightning rod for a wider discussion around what constitutes acceptable behaviour in public and private spaces. The Glass debate has already started but these are early days; each new iteration of hardware and functionality will trigger fresh convulsions. In the short term Glass will trigger anger, name-calling, ridicule and the occasional bucket of thrown water (whether it’s iced water I don’t know). In the medium term as societal interaction with the product broadens, signs will appear in public spaces guiding mis/use¹ and lawsuits will fly, while over the longer term, legislation will create boundaries that reflect some form of im/balance between individual, corporate and societal wants, needs and concerns.

So Shoot Me

Of all of the companies and organisations that could bring Glass to market, I’m pleased Google is the one making a significant investment: A ompany with a recent record of genuine innovation that stretches/defines social and behavioural norms²; with a strong revenue stream and deep enough pockets to have a fighting chance of medium to long-term success. It also helps that the project is considered of strategic importance, and has key executive sponsorship. Less obvious but no less relevant in this equation is that the company has a lot to lose; is no-longer the media darling; has fucked-up enough times in public to know it can do so again (and again); has been humbled by more nimble competitors; has experienced talent drain and understands the impact of this on its culture and its bottom line. Of course Google can financially afford to fail again: Experimentation and failure is a critical part of its DNA, but while privacy-snafu fines are low, the internal and external cultural costs of Glass failing are high.

All technology challenges the status quo, and if a technology is noticed by consumers/users/constituents at all, it presents for some an opportunity and for others a threat. The perceived and actual threat from Glass comes not from crimes against taste. (Many have commented on the perceived inelegance of the design.) Their design team appears to have done a sterling job if you assume that particular design direction and constraints. Our sense of what is tasteful succeeds or fails as part of a far broader narrative, which they, too, are exploring. Yes, you can find a hundred and one designs of “wearable computing” from the past decade that look similar, but very few are packing the same experience into the same form factor. However, as a connected, sensing object it is capable of recording and transmitting photos, video, and sound directly, through content analysis or indirectly through proximate connected devices, other data such as location, temperature, trajectory, and so on. In other words in a worst/best case scenario it could record and measure “everything” and associate that data to a person. How will this play out?

I want you to try a little experiment. Find somewhere where you can sit and observe people interact with one another. Pick somewhere just out of the throng — the edge of a cafe looking in, a park bench, a doorway close to a market. It’s easier if you choose somewhere you don’t know so well, you’ll have less to unlearn.

Give yourself 30 minutes to view and reflect upon the scene in front of you: Who visits that space and why; the differences in ritual greetings, and indeed whether or not a person is greeted; how people project out who they are; things that signify status and social hierarchy; where objects are placed; the level of interaction with those objects when not in use. What can you see being documented online or off? What can you imagine being documented? Pay particular attention to things that fit your definition of “technology” and reflect upon on the things in front of you that once fit this definition but no longer do (my list of were-once-technologies includes the pencil, the wrist watch, and the smartphone).

If you’re close to enough to other people, you’ll overhear conversations plus bits of conversations that the speakers will allow you to hear, raised, projected, sotto voce, and in whispers, combined with body language all serving to emphasize what is said, and the intent of what is communicated. The challenge for Glass is that the costs of ownership falls on people in proximity of the wearer, and that its benefits have yet to be proven out. How much of that conversation is directed at the “listener”, and how much of it is directed at others in proximity, including you? This rich social choreography is playing out hundreds of billions of times a day across our planet, and is as subtle and delicate as anything appearing in a BBC2 nature documentary.

Of course, people and systems are already capturing (and channeling) content and data in this space in the form of photos, video, background noise on phone or video calls, who is connected to what, and what they are doing. It is likely that Google, Microsoft and Nokia’s Navteq (to name but three) have already systematically mapped this space and are serving up street views online. The difference with Glass is that it threatens surreptitious, unexpected, or continuous recording from the perspective of the human-eye/ear view. At this point, it doesn’t matter whether it can support sustained recording for long periods or not; what matters is that the form factor supports this, that it could at some point, and that we all know Google is in the business of selling ads against insight drawn from large volume of data. Continuous, indiscriminate recording in this space is drag-net fishing of data collection - its a destructive technology, a conversation and privacy killer³.

Back to our experiment. Take in the scene in front of you. Who owns this space both legally and figuratively? Who has the rights to do what? By What authority? Who enforces that authority? How do these rights differ for regulars or a first time visitor? What are the ways that people signal the beginning or the end of an activity? And how does that signalling make something more or less acceptable? The obvious clue to activities people have deemed socially unacceptable are often found on hand-scribbled “do not” signs as in “staff will refuse to serve customers who are on their mobile phone” “do not ask for credit.” The more sustained the infringement, the more official looking the sign.

Today we falsely assume that our conversations and our image is not by default recorded by other people in proximity⁴. Not having a persistent record allows us to present a nuanced identity to different people, or groups of people, provides with the space to experiment with what we could be. The risk that what we say will be broadcast, or narrowcasted, to people we don’t know, or may underpin someone's future business fundamentally changes what we want to talk about. The challenge for Glass is that the costs of ownership falls on people in proximity of the wearer, and that its benefits have yet to be proven out.

Anti/Social Interaction

A number of years ago, while working at Nokia, I was asked to explore use cases using an appearance model (a non-working prototype) of a form factor similar to Glass but clunkier and definitely less refined⁵. In the first phase of this make-it-up-as-you-go-along-and-see-what-works study, we hired students in Tokyo to act out various scenarios including content browsing, viewing and game-play using gestures and voice commands in a range of contexts: At home; on a commuter train; on a long distance train; in a hotel lobby; in a park; cafe; and while walking along. The research team then noted interaction issues with the glasses, carefully observing social reactions from people in proximity, before finally interviewing the actor/actresses for their own experience⁶.

Fans of Milgram’s New York subway experiment will be happy to note that our actors and actresses felt extremely self-conscious about wearing non-standard glasses, and awkward about acting out the scenarios particularly in contexts where there were others in close proximity. A number of the things we learned from this study surprised us:

» Most of what we ”see” is at any time is out of focus in the periphery where as long as the things going on in peripheral vision don’t trigger a threat response will probably pass the glance test. Glass is, in effect a blanket tax on the collective attention of society It will be interesting to see whether Glass is perceived as a threatening object and thus may force others in proximity of a wearer to maintain a hyper-awareness of the wearer and their own actions in places -- whereas today, they are currently able to relax. This would be, in effect, like a blanket tax on the collective attention of society

» Spoken interaction is awkward for almost everyone in confined spaces on systems with less than 100% accuracy. An interface built around short responses to contextually understood events will be the dominant form of interaction.

» Gesture interaction is just as awkward in close spaces and in many instances will restrict regular use and/or in a vocabulary of “quiet-gestures”. To get a sense of how this plays out the next time you are on the subway and have people sitting on either side, raise your hands in front of your face or look down and move your hands in your field of vision. Even simple gestures require upper-arm/shoulder movements, which when you are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder impacts fellow passengers. A Glass wearer that wants to maintain the social cohesion in that context (and not all will be that self aware or considered) can mitigate this by pausing interactions for the moment when they are appropriate, or more likely by avoiding interactions in that context.

» In contexts where social interaction is required e.g. sitting with friends around a table in a cafe, it will create a situation where people are not sure whether they, or the contents of the display are engaging the wearer.

» In-ear or close-to-ear (inductive) audio changes the wearers enjoyment of food and drink - a problem for an otherwise prime this will introduce "you lookin' at me" moments use-case: watching movies at home where snacks and beverages might naturally be consumed.

» Humans tend to fall asleep in contexts where they are seated, safe, and there is minimal physical movement - providing opportunities to design for disengagement.

» Humans have a vested interest in tracking changing emotional states of the people around them. This will introduce are “you looking at me” moments where others in proximity assume that a smile, tear or frown is triggered by their own presence and will spur people to send inappropriate content to their Glass wearing peers, with a weary inevitability will include this but is far less likely to include this (or was it the other way around?). In some contexts these moments will lead to confrontation. Read the footnote in this article in the Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and imagine introducing erratic behaviour into the equation. Amplify to billions of of social interactions a day.

What starts out as a fairly broad set of use cases rapidly starts to narrow.

Tooling Up
I’ve got a confession to make. frog has recorded thousands of conversations around the world, videotaped many more, tailed people around town, nosed around people’s homes--opening cupboards and drawers, asking personal questions where there were none. All with their permission and all in the name of research. There are a few things we’ve learned that relate to the broader discussion of what is collected by whom, how and why, and how it is used, you’ll see why these are relevant in a moment.

Anyone can collect data. The real issue is how to collect data in such a way that that meets both moral and legal obligations and still manages to deliver some form of value.

Ownership. People are naturally suspicious of what they don’t know. The simple act of giving them control over the process or the objects/technologies we carry defuses initial suspicion. A few simple field research techniques can rapidly build trust. These include handing someone you’ve just met on the street a five-thousand-dollar camera and then ignoring them to concentrate on a conversation with their friends. This shows we trust them. And then they trust us.

Clear On/Off States. Most people have, at least initial concerns about being recorded. There are numerous ways that we emphasize the transition between on and off: from how a camera or other recording device is held when not in use. It is useful to think of a camera as a gun: understand the impact that bringing it out can have on any given context; only take it out if you’re prepared to use it; be careful where you point it.

Reciprocity. Today it is easy to maintain a persistent connection between the researcher and the participant - often in the form of a social media or email address. You’ve asked something from them, they have the right and now have a channel through which to ask something of you.

Full circle: We give participants the opportunity to review, delete or own any of the data collected on them by the research team. This is normally carried out at the end of the session, after any reward is handed over (so they are not pressured into letting us keep data) and before any data consent form is signed (so they better understand the implications of what they are signing). A team that knows the data will be reviewed by the participant changes what they collect in the first place, it becomes self policing. More than any training, this simple principle helps keep teams honest and operating within social norms.

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A few simple steps lower the more obviously anti-social aspects of Glass. The evolution of body language that helps communicate Glass’s current state e.g. pushed above the head to show that not in use; a literacy around the spoken commands that communicate the current task that the user is engaged in “take panorama” or “grindr lookup”; and showing whether the camera and other recording mechanisms are in use, or disabled.

Glass has four design principles for developers that focus on the Glass-wearers user experience: "design for Glass," "don't get in the way," "keep it timely," and "avoid the unexpected"⁷. As challenging as it is to find a compelling use-case (beyond porn) these principles are aimed at the wrong people - Glass wearers, rather than those in proximity. Two complementary principles will go some way to accommodate the concerns of people in proximity and lower social barriers to adoption.

Proximate Transparency: allow anyone in proximity to access the same feed that the wearer is recording or seeing and e.g. view it through a device of their choosing. Make it easy to identify the Glasses themselves and to trace back to the wearer. This simple act help demystify the technology, create a broader sense ownership of its inclusion in any given space. The reality is very few people would be interested in jacking in and the act of having an open stream will change the behaviour of what is watched. For many this won’t be enough of a step, it is after all an opt-out measure for people who have the technological nous and literacy - forcing people in proximity to do something for dubious gain.

Remote Control: allow identifiable people in proximity to control Glass’s recording functionality and have access to the output of what was recorded. Allowing others to demonstrably benefit from the utility of glass will make it part of the social landscape.

Pedestal or A Pauper’s Grave?

One could argue that the form taken by Glass offers up a lazy-futurists vision of what might be--take the trajectory of one product (displays becoming smaller/cheaper/more efficient over time) and integrate it with another (eye-glasses) sprinkle in connectivity and real-time access to content and big-data-analytics. Our expectations of what it could be are raised in part because this Glass offers up a lazy-futurists vision of what might be join-the-dots vision of the future fits neatly into western un/popular young-male culture from The Terminator through to Halo, Glass has a certain inevitability about it like the weight of expectation of child born to a great composer or if you prefer, to a middle-aged suicide. As any visitor to Yodobashi camera over the past decade will tell you the hardware technologies that make Glass hardly feel novel (and for recent competitors see Sony, Golden-i or the Telepathy Device Prototype) but neither do they need to be, because this is all about how they are brought together into a holistic experience.

There are of course alternative, complimentary visions of this connected future that are far more discrete, taking connected, sensing things and embedding them in the world around us to inform, guide, direct, cajole, tax, enrich, ... us and the things around us. It’s an area worthy of an essay in its own right but for now a few pointers to people, places and things that have helped inform my sense of this space: Dan Hill writing on the City of Sound; the MIT Senseable Cities Lab; Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, Tisch ITP, BERG, Nicholas Nova and Julian Bleecker at The Near Future Laboratory help stretch our understanding of what could be, Curious Rituals in conjuction with students at the Arts Center College of Design is a particularly lovely piece of work; living for more than a decade in Tokyo, Shanghai and frequent trips to the cities that define this century’s urban experience: the Seoul/Nairobi/Mumbais/Rio/Chongqing’s of this world; products like Nike+, FitBit, Moves (to take one narrow category) through to less well known but arguably more impactful services that for me are at the very center of the internet of things - services like Kilimo Salama and Sarvajal; through to business units/activities in large corporations such as Cisco, IBM, Disney, and Ericsson with more of a how to make money/make a difference at scale.⁸

Where Next?

This essay starts with a paraphrasing a quote - here is the original in full: “There is but one remedy for the amateur photographer. Put a brick through his camera whenever you suspect he has taken you unawares”. It could be written about Glass today but is in fact taken from September 18th 1885 edition of Amateur Photographer magazine⁹, seven years after the introduction of dry plates a technology that supported far more surreptitious photography. The full article by Bill Jay is worth reading in full. The same article contains another quote from Amateur Photographer, twenty five years later, when cameras were becoming less noticeable: “Our moral character dwindles as our instruments get smaller”. In due course the technologies to deliver Glass’s emerging functionality will truly disappear from view -- this is window of opportunity for reflection, discussion, debate and action. I’m thankful to Google for putting so much effort into Glass at this moment in time. That passion? Channel it. That anger? Channel it.

I’ve not tried Glass and have no idea whether I’ve been recorded through one. My first book, Hidden in Plain Sight explores explores the intersection of people, technology, design and strategy, is out on HarperCollins in April 16th.

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References
Read this 1903 edition of Amateur Photographer (via Google Books) This essay draws from numerous pieces on Future Perfect, not limited to: Let’s Agree I Don’t Know You about signally discretion when far more is known than we want to let on; Great to See You, Just Not Around Here about the (then) rise of location based services (and incidentally inspired by a couple that used location-awareness to not to bump into each other when out looking for sexual partners); Don’t Get Mad, Change the Rules on the opportunities from new business models; how some airlines have solved the social issues around the seat recline; a photo of tethered dynamics that I could look at for hours; new forms of social contracts; the simple how to sit poster in Tokyo; It’s Not Your Face, It’s Ours about the companies that will make money from effectively owning the rights to connect your face to, well, whatever they want; how South Korean residents minimise social friction by posting their phone numbers on their car windshields; cultural differences in our desire/ability to experiment with our physical identity using coloured contact lenses in China as an example; thoughts on knowing what else has gone on in that used car you just bought; thinking about personal identity; thoughts on how we signal the boundaries of anti-social behaviour and not least, the social/anti-social thread from around the world.

Footnotes
[1] This sign did the rounds but is closer to advertising for a seedy bar than a warning sign. The suspicion can be real, but the real test comes from reactions to a wider deployment.
[2] Eric Schmidt’s quote “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it” is an interesting reflection of company culture both that it’s refreshing to have a CEO that is this frank about the business they are in and the way they operate, and the assumption that the best way to institutionalise an understanding of creepy is to measure it and place it on a line. See also 50 questions you should consider.
[3] If you want to extrapolate the argument around wholesale recording through Glass, its actually highly inefficient, particularly once much of that space and context is known. There are other, emerging technologies with far more processing power and unlimited power supply that are in a better position to continuously record.
[4] The default assumption of privacy is not universal: from conversations in an interrogation room, online, or whether state agencies are. When conducting research in Iran and making a call to the US I assume it is being recorded by both Iranian and the US agencies. The only question is who else is listening and what is their motivation, today and at some point in the future.
[5] I’ve not done a full write up of the research, but it was shared publicly a few years back.
[6] After the Tokyo study my then colleague Raphael Grignani ran a comparable study in New York City, with broadly analogous findings.
[7] The physical toll of having to maintain a state of hyper-awareness is touched on here and here, and while these are extreme examples it is an interesting topic to further explore).
[8] As Bruce Sterling pointed out, take each of those design principles and flip them to understand the actual experience.
[9] Full disclosure: this list includes both personal and frog clients.
[10] The Amateur Photographer, 18 September 1885, p. 871.

This post was originally published on AllThingsD.

The Crowd As DJ: The Results

Bonnie Reese, Mike Herdzina, and Shaina Donovan — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Crowdsourcing Gives Everyone a Voice

The overall response to the Crowd Sourced DJ was overwhelmingly positive. It was described as "novel" and people loved that it allowed them to participate in the music selection. When we probed further about what made it attractive, party-goers were enthusiastic about the philosophy of crowdsourcing, noting that it is a vehicle that gives everyone a voice. We were struck by the passionate tone and language of the participants. Some of the comments included:

- "It's for the community by the community,"
- "It's democratic,"
- "You have a chance to have a say"

However, while people embraced the spirit of crowdsourcing, many openly acknowledged that it compromised the quality of the output. We heard comments like:

- "The masses have bad taste"
- "I don't trust the public"

And yet those interviewed did not perceive the conflict between crowd selections and individual taste as an inherent negative. One music-savvy partygoer intimated that while the music being played did not align with his preferences, it still "fell within his range of acceptability." In the context of a large social experience, like a party, the spirit of empowering the crowd reigns supreme. Many people acknowledged the party context and noted that there's a time and place for everything. So while crowdsourcing is okay in one moment and social environment, it may not be appropriate for every situation.

Crowdsourcing Makes Everyone Think Like a DJ

So what were the biggest influencers when individuals had to make a music selection? First of all, people took into account the audience for the music as well as the party context. "Party music" was referenced almost as its own genre (although based on the range of musical styles we heard, we doubt that everyone would agree what the key characteristics of "party music" are). While many used the word "upbeat" to define "party music", we didn't see further alignment in the music played. One partygoer commented "What am I in the mood for? Something that will create the right environment. What will make the right environment? Upbeat music."

Overall, the music that was selected could be described as more "upbeat" on the music scale. (Click to view full-size infographic)

People also mentioned that they overrode their own preferences to choose music for the crowd, noting music as a "shared experience." One party-goer said, "I avoided a few songs that I wanted to play because I wanted to choose for the crowd," while another person noted "I think it is more important that the crowd has fun." People mentioned avoiding songs they liked that might bring "down" the mood. They continually referenced music's role in creating the right social environment: "The music affects the vibe—it drives conversations and relationships." These comments acknowledge the importance of music's role in shaping the experience for individuals and the crowd as whole. They also point to a party environment as a scenario within which the greater good should come before personal preference.

It was also interesting that when asked to state their opinion about the quality of the music (on our scale from "it sucks" to "awesome"), a number of people said that "it's like voting for myself," showing an identification with the crowd. This leap from crowdsourcing to an identity alignment with the crowd was very interesting. Crowdsourcing went beyond simply being a method to create a shared playlist to creating a dynamic of communal identification. One person even said, "It's democratic, so people will like the music," voicing an assumption that music chosen by the crowd will automatically be embraced by the people within that crowd. It's worth noting that there were no overall trends in perceptions about quality of the music from the data we gathered at our Music Perceptions Wall; where people placed their dots on the scale truly ran the gamut (and some partygoers just wanted to be clever about where they put their dot regardless of what they thought of the music).

Music Choices Are Still Personal

Despite the identification with the crowd, people voted for the music they liked. This personal connection to music often led people to select their favorite artists and songs, even knowing they would never get played. Many people said that they made a selection knowing this. One woman noted that when she "came of age," her music preferences represented her spirit of rebellion, and she felt it important to honor this rebellious spirit by choosing songs no one else would choose. And while many partygoers took into account the party context when selecting music, no one that we spoke to chose songs they disliked. So all selections, despite being chosen for the crowd, still reflected an inherent musical preference on the part of individuals.

There's Joy in Discovering New Music at a Party

Many people placed great value on the discovery of new music and had a hope that would occur in a social setting. Some saw crowd-sourcing as an effective way to provide this introduction to new music, while others were skeptical that the crowd would actually select the unexpected. They perceived the crowd's "winning" music selections as inherently mainstream, and expressed a desire to expand their musical horizons as part of the social music experience. Regardless, the encounter with new music be it curated by a DJ, chosen by a friend, or randomly selected was seen as a valuable part of social music listening.

Visualized Data Tells a Story

Throughout the evening, we gathered data about each vote from the TouchTunes devices and from the mobile app. The resulting information answers questions such as: What songs were voted for? What time were the votes cast, and by which device? How many times over the course of the evening was a particular song voted for, and was it eventually played? This information as it exists in its raw form is interesting but offers little meaning on its own.

So, how do we shape the information into something digestible and meaningful? frog's SXSW music selection visualization combines numerous data sets into an interactive timeline. Recorded audio spectral analysis, time-lapse video, and voting activities captured in real-time at the event are rendered using D3.js, a javascript framework that builds on web standards like SVG, HTML 5 and CSS 3 to create engaging, interactive graphs. Fast-forwarding through the timeline allows you to feel the buzz of the party. Noise levels rise and fall, the clock indicates time moving forward, and voting activity is visible, measured in icons depicting whether the vote came from a TouchTunes device or from the mobile app. Some timespans are less active, while others suggest minor conspiracies to vote songs to the top. Votes that led to a song being played are celebrated with a crown. The information is visualized so that each data stream provides a different perspective on the evening, serving as a reminder that successfully articulated data tells a story that one person and one perspective alone cannot.

Our Conclusion

In looking back at the evening, we were surprised by the lack of a cohesive musical narrative. There were no discernible music trends or patterns in the music itself or the perceptions of the music over the course of the evening. No dancing climax or low point that everyone pointed to unilaterally. But that really shouldn't be a surprise given that narrative is carefully constructed to support a singular vision. The music narrative for this party was not about a singular vision, but instead a collective voice defining its own soundtrack. What we learned from our fellow partygoers was that the spirit of the crowdsourced vision for the music was more powerful than the music itself.

We have no illusions about the unique nature of frog's SXSW party and how this might have shaped our findings. It's a combination of pre-conference revelry and enthusiasm about cutting-edge technology. It's an environment where people are open to new ideas and want to participate. We were gratified by the crowd's enthusiasm about our research, and we enjoyed talking to a range of people about the music and their experience. We only wish that it were always so much fun to collect data.

This post is the third in a three-party series originally published by Core77.

Read: Part 1 (The Concept), Part 2 (The Methodology)

Bonnie Reese is a principal creative director, Mike Herdzina is an associate creative director, and Shaina Donovan is an interaction designer in frog's Austin studio.

Data Visualizer by Design Technologist Thomas Brady, also based at frog's Austin studio. Infographic by Nathan Burazer, a visual designer at frog's San Francisco studio.