Let’s try to wrap-up a week of workshop at Hyper Island on “Mobile Lab”, or how to think mobile, do it, test it and sell it without reaching the cemetery of these thousands of unknown, poorly designed or simply not marketed apps.
Mobile, says Jonathan Briggs, a veteran of computer science and founder of Hyper Island, is a significant project for a brand, as it aims to reach a user in a much more personal and contextualized environment. This is not a useless precision when most budgets for apps seem ridiculously small (because, clients say, “it’s smaller”).
With 84% people unable to spend a single day without their phone, a data traffic 12 times bigger than PCs, it’s a true psychological change. What is mobile in one scheme could be this:
With a few notable differences between iOs and Android users, the latter using the terminal more as a starting point to more experiences and functions (learning, keeping healthy) with the apps and add-ons (quantified self objects, for instance), the former more as the conclusion of a spending, which can explain why the revenue generated on Android apps is still quite low, despite a growing market share as an operating system.
Designing an app must hence “do a job” for the user to get a chance of being actually used. Thinking of what kind of jobs people need to have made proves interesting, and will allow to think of mobile as a service strategy through a product, rather than just answering a brief to promote a brand.
Mobile apps can be, at this stage and for brands, either experience apps, one-off, in line with the spirit of a campaign for instance, or service apps, with a long-term commitment to bring a value. Nike Fuelband’s job, for instance, would be to keep your motivation to do fitness up.
So, in a nutshell:
- Every successful product solve a job for the consumer
- These jobs are technology independent
- Look for existing apps in the same “job” and why they fail or make it
- Try your product with prototypes to avoid tunneling
More to come, and you can check out Vera’s and my posts on Hyper Island too!
Martin Pasquier