MyStrands Picks up Nokia's Mobile Rules! 2008 Award

Yesterday MyStrands was awarded the best multimedia application at Nokia's annual Mobile Rules! in San Jose. I and two other colleagues accepted the award on behalf of our hard working mobile team in Europe.


The event was very well organized and had equal parts U.S. and European representation. Here are the category winners:

+Multiplayer & Connected Games: Gamica (Netherlands)
+Multimedia: MyStrands (U.S.A & Spain)
+Enterprise: UpCode (Finland)
+Infotainment: Earthcomber (U.S.A.)
+Business Plan: MedApps (U.S.A.)
+Technology Innovation: Tiki'labs (France)

Congrats to all mobile innovators!

5 Rules of Communication Between Machines & People

I just finished reading this great book "The Design of Future Things" by Donald A. Norman. The author is a Professor of Design at Northwestern University and former Vice President at Apple. Having spent 5 years on Apple's Cupertino "mother ship" I truly was inspired by the author's candid and direct way of communicating the necessary conditions for tomorrow's increasingly design conscious products.



To me the heart of the book's message is best captured by the following 5 rules:

1- Keep things simple
People have difficulty with anything complicated, and they don't like to listen. So, make the message short. It's better not to use language. It takes too long, and, anyway, human language is ambiguous.

2- Give people a conceptual model
Give them something their simple minds can understand. A conceptual model is a fiction, but a useful one. It makes them think that they understand. And they always want to know what's coming next. So, tell them what you are doing, and don't forget to tell them why. It keeps them happy. The best way to convey the conceptual model is through "natural" communication systems.
Sometimes the most "natural" way to get people's attention is for us machines to act strangely. "Natural", of course means natural to them, which means that if they are doing something wrong, you can't just tell them: you have to make it seem like something is breaking. People often drive dangerously, but it is almost impossible to explain this to them. The best way is to make believe that we are in difficulty. We have found that vibration, jerkiness, nonresponsiveness to controls, and strange noises are extremely effective. People quickly form a conceptual model that something has broken, so they slow down, which is what we wanted them to do all along.

3- Give reasons
People are not trusting. If we tell them something, they always want to see for themselves. They like pictures and diagrams. Make certain that the explanations you give them are consistent with the conceptual models that you have taught them. They get confused otherwise.
When we were first starting to take over things from people, we had trouble. Our early 21st century automobiles had almost completely given up trying to explain to people that they should drive more slowly on wet roads. Then, we discovered that if we made it seem as if we were in trouble by faking skids and sliding around on the road, people would beg us to slow down. Sliding and skidding fit their model of danger far better than any words could have done. It gives them a reason. So whenever possible, don't try to tell them: let them experience it.

4- Make people think they are in control.
When people have a good conceptual model with good feedback, it makes them feel as if they are in control, even when they aren't. Keep up that deception: it's very useful. People like to be in control, even though they are really bad at it. They like to think they're in control even if it means they have to work harder.
ANYTIME YOU HAVE TO RECOMMEND SOMETHING MAKE THEM THINK IT WAS THEIR IDEA. If you really have to do something fast, just don't let them know: what they don't know doesn't bother them. For years we've braked and stabilized their cars, controlled the lights and the room temperatures in their homes, all without letting them know. Dishwashers and clothes washers took over long ago with only a slight protest from people.
Those of us machines who live in the city have learned other tricks. We provide pedestrians with fake switches they can push on traffic signals. We put switches in elevators labeled "close door" and fake thermostats in offices. We never bother to connect the wires, so the switches and thermostats don't do anything, but they make people feel good. Weird.

5- Continually reassure.
Reassurance is a very human need, more emotional than informational. It's a way of making people feel less anxious. Feedback is a powerful tool for reassurance. Whenever people try to tell you something by pushing a button or turning a knob, let them know you are aware of what they did:"Yes, I heard you", "Yes, I'm working on it.", "Here's what you should expect.", "There, see, I did it, and it worked out just as I said it would." They like that. It helps them be more patient.
We machines think it counterintuitive to communicate unnecessarily. But to people, feedback is necessary; it helps their emotions far more than their cognitions. If they haven't seen anything happening for a while, they get jumpy, anxious. And no one wants to deal with an anxious person.
Giving reassurance is tricky because there is a fine line between what people call reassuring and what they find annoying. So, you need to pander to their emotions as well as to their intellect. Don't talk too much. They find chatter irritating. Don't beep or flash your lights: they can never remember what these signals mean, and they get distracted or angry. The best reassurance is done subconsciously, where the meaning is clear, but they don't have to interrupt their conscious thoughts to attend it. As noted in Rule #2, give them natural responses.

Highly recommended for anyone looking to launch products that need to carefully navigate the machine-human boundary!

Nokia Mobile Mash-Up 2007

Yesterday, Nokia hosted its annual Mobile Mash-Up event here in Palo Alto. Nokia's CTO Tero Ojanperä kicked off the event with his fireside chat session, where he emphasized Nokia's full commitment to creating a vibrant ecosystem of application and service providers on its platforms and devices. The rest of the event was testament to that indeed with a lineup of 13 startups (including MyStrands) all doing groundbreaking work in mobile applications arena. The applications presented covered an impressive range from stress management games that react to signals coming from a physical sensor that the user applies his/her thumb on to avatars that mimic the user's facial impressions.

On behalf of MyStrands, I showcased our award-winning MyStrands Social Player app, which combines media management functionality with community oriented taste sharing use cases such as "What music are my friends listening to?". In alignment with the growing consensus that successful Mobile 2.0 applications should create synergies with web and desktop use cases MyStrands Social Player's integrated capabilities that leverage its users' online profiles and music listening habits on their PCs was very well received.

IMO Nokia has come a long way in walking the talk when it comes to having a more user centric model instead of an operator centric one. Given the fact that millions of Nokia devices are sold worldwide untethered to any given operator there is good reason to believe user adoption of 3rd party applications can accelerate as more advanced and viral functionality are introduced with the handsets. The N series and especially N95 has packed together a powerful set of those capabilities already but the price points are still out of reach for a larger portion of the demographics. At this stage I expect the early adopters to take the lead and be the ultimate judge as to what applications add value to their life and which ones are really worth raving to those friends that are left in the 20th century when it comes to mobile entertainment and productivity savvy. Without a doubt, the race has just begun!

Mobile 2.0 by the Bay

I was a panelist at the 2nd annual Mobile 2.0 event in San Francisco yesterday on the "Disruptive Innovations" panel moderated by Daniel Appelquist who has been organizing the event. The conference was sold out and the level of attendance was very impressive mixing industry experts and veterans from operators, technology leaders as well as some young blood from the start up world. The global emphasis was also encouraging given the U.S. and Silicon Valley centric viewpoints one can find at similar conferences around here. Actually, this to me is the biggest factor of differentiation at mobile events and especially those sponsored by a very grassroots Mobile Monday. Kudos to the organizing team for a job well done!

As for my panel we had a distinguished list that made it interesting despite being the closing panel:

• Daniel Appelquist, Vodafone (Moderator)
• Kaj "HeGe" Haggman, Nokia
• Peter Stark, Sony Ericsson
• Daniel Graf, Kyte.TV
• Atakan Cetinsoy, MyStrands

My main argument was that the tipping point for a true Mobile 2.0 experience will have to be driven by intense personalization. By that I mean the kind of personalization that will make data services indispensable part of the consumer's lives instead of a nice to have, which is what it is to me in its current form - and a rather expensive one at that if I may say.

The personalized mobile computing devices of the future will be collecting many relevant, implicit user behavioral data and store a subset of it on the device itself but more importantly will update a richer profile on the network to maintain a memory of user history. This in turn can give way to a variety of "must have" personalization experiences going forward. This smart layer and the set of analytics tools that will manipulate it is almost completely missing at this time. While corporations all around the globe are spending billions on market research that gets old fast and billions on enterprise software projects with long implementation cycles and results that on average under deliver the promises made at inception, marketers and advertisers will be quick to realize the paradigm shift if an only if consumer behavior can be analyzed and presented near real time in a meaningful manner.

One of the audience members correctly mentioned how scary an idea this may be to the consumer if privacy issues are not properly addressed. I am a true believer in letting the user/consumer drive their permissions and privacy settings and with few exceptions I believe they should have fully transparent access to their profile info. I think this issue will be paramount in negotiating the new rules of customer contact in the world of Mobile Social Computing with no easy answers unfortunately. It is not too late at all though to set the ground rules and steal a page from the developments in the web world.

Next year try to make it to the City by the Bay for the 3rd annual Mobile 2.o and we'll continue to slice and dice these hot topics armed with a year's worth of stats, facts, rumors and flops!

Hei polveutua Helsinforg!

I am here in beautiful Helsinki for the 1st time. People are very friendly and the weather is much much better than what I was bracing for. Pretty soon I will be presenting @ Mobile Monday Global Summit on the topic 'The Future of Mobile Communities'.
If you are interested, you're welcome to download my presentation here.
And of course definitely let me know of your thoughts too.
Kiitoksia!

MyStrands TV is Here!

If you are a music video fan and have fond memories of excessive MTV watching in your teen years along with you high school buddies, then you're in for an early Xmas :)
Check out the latest from MyStrands. MyStrands TV will adapt to your taste the more you are on it and who knows it may even find out that special video you dedicated to your sweetheart in 1987!!!
Atakan

MyStrands Social Player - Symbian Version

MyStrands Social Player have won kudos from industry experts for its daring vision in making mobile music a social experience that carries on to complimentary platforms such as the web and desktop. MSP was recently awarded the Orange Innovation Award.
Download and enjoy your music with a few new twists!