User Experience @ Teleca

By Frank Bisono
Many of you have been seeing the term “User Experience” surfacing with increased frequency on many of our projects. Some of you may be wondering, “…just exactly what IS this thing called User Experience?” My goal is to shed some light into this mysterious yet essential role in today’s software development.

What Is User Experience?
"User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.

*Definition by Nielsen Norman Group

User Experience (also known as UX) encompasses several disciplines: interaction design, information architecture, human computer interaction, human factors engineering, usability and user interface (UI)/visual design.

These roles can be broken down into two competencies:

UX Research:
A UX Researcher will typically come from a cognitive psychology or human factors background. A UX Researcher formulates research plans, conducts studies (both in a lab and in the users environments, also known as ethnographic studies), gathers the data, analyzes it and recommends follow-up actions. This is done working closely with a UX Designer.

UX Design:
The UX Designer is typically involved at the earliest stages of product development. Everything from the product strategy, business goals and aesthetic aspects are taken into consideration. The UX Designer will look at many factors in a products design including but not limited to: ease of use, aesthetics, efficiency, processes, and performance.



What User Experience is Not
There are a lot of misconceptions about what UX is, but here are some things that we can definitely say it’s not:

1. UX Design is NOT the same as UI Design. UI Design is focusing on one element of the overall experience.
2. UX is NOT a simple checkbox in a process. The user experience process is an ongoing and integral part of any product. It’s something that we need to keep iterating on and improving. It’s never done, even after we ship.
3. UX is NOT just about usability. Usability is but one aspect of the overall experience. We want to make products that users embrace and find desirable, but is not our only goal.
4. UX is NOT one size fits all. Every project and situation will be unique and have it’s own special problems to solve. You can’t take a canned approach that can be priced the same across all projects.
5. UX is NOT a choice, it’s an imperative. In order for a product to be successful, you must factor the overall experience your users will have in the end. We can write the best code and solve the most complex problems in the world, but if in the end the users can’t use it, don’t like it or don’t perceive the value then we have ALL failed. It takes EVERYONE on the team to create a solid user experience.
   

How can UX help you at Teleca?
There are many ways in which you can engage with UX at Teleca.

Sales: From initial bid proposals where we can partner with you to help tell the Teleca UX story and what we can offer our potential clients, to helping forge a solution and wireframe concepts to use in a proposal. Please feel free to engage us as part of your pre-sales business development and strategy efforts.

Project Management: From the moment you have a potential project, please bring us in to discuss how we can help with requirements gathering, defining business objectives and proposing design solutions for our clients. We can help you get clearer timelines and milestone dates for your project based on current projects in the pipeline and estimated deliverables for the client.

Developers: We are here to work with you in an iterative way throughout the lifecycle of the project. If you have a question, or something just doesn’t feel right and you need a sanity check on some element of the experience, please feel free to ping us.

While this article certainly doesn’t cover the gamut of services we can provide as part of the user experience, I hope it sheds some light on how we can help make every project at Teleca a resounding success for our clients and us.

Mobile World Congress 2011 Review

By Andrew Till

OK so now I’ve had a few days to recover from this year’s MWC it’s time to reflect on the key takeaway’s from 4 (wet) days in Barcelona. You’ll also see that I have again failed to meet my objectives of keeping blogs to less than 200 words – I hope you enjoy and happy reading.

Android, Android Everywhere

So let’s get this out of the way first. Abig well done to Google for s

tealing the show. No I’m not referring to the overwhelming number of devices powered by the small green robot but of course to the 86 unique and collectable badges available from the stands of key partners such as Teleca. It was a truly masterful stroke of marketing innovation and managed to turn MWC in to one of the largest treasure hunts I’ve ever seen.Of course on a more serious note there was a major show of force by the Android community with a host of Gingerbread based handsets and Honeycomb based tablets being shown off by all the key players and also by many brands that I had not heard of before.

And of course we at Teleca we showing off the work we have been doing on GoogleTV and for Sirius XM on their new Android platform as well as a host of other innovations such as Dual Display support, 3D UIs and a world of cool applications.

MeeGo, MeeGone, MeeStay
Staying on operating systems then MeeGo turned out to be a real surprise package at MWC 2011. Heading in to the show I wondered if it was a case of here today and MeeGone tomorrow. However there was a strong show of force, at least behind the scenes if not publically, around MeeGo and it’s clear that in the words of Mark Twain “rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.

Yes Nokia’s announcements around MeeGo cast a shadow but it’s clear that operators, devices vendors and automotive companies as well as Intel have big plans for MeeGo and the investment in the platform will continue with Meego 1.2 devices expected to start shipping later this year.

Tablets, Tablets, Tablets
Perhaps the least surprising observation of MWC was that everyone is jumping on the Tablet bandwagon. All the major players come out fighting in this segment showing off their tablet devices including Samsung, HTC, LGE, HP, RIM, Motorola etc. The good thing to see is that after the initial wave of vanilla Android tablets launched earlier this year at CES we are now starting to see some real innovation in this space. For example LGE showed off a Tablet with 3D video capture, HTC shown an impressive implementation of their Sense UI, while Samsung was pushing on Multimedia and imaging with their Galaxy Tab 10.1 supporting 8MP camera. I also got the chance to play with the latest version of the MeeGo based WeTab which is a very impressive device with a very simple and compelling UI for first time users

With so many tablets launching it’s great to see device vendors really pushing their own take on the tablet and just falling in to the trap of launching pale imitations of the iPad. This bodes well for the future and suggests that the Tablet market is here to stay.

3D
Another key theme of the show was 3D with a number of vendors showing some impressive, and some not so impressive, 3D enabled devices including handsets and tablets. Thankfully for the most part this does not involve revisiting the 1970’s for a red and blue overload but instead the mobile market is jumping straight to Stereoscopic displays thus removing the need for glasses. It was not only device vendors showing 3D but scattered around the halls were a number of innovative start up’s showing some very impressive next generation 3D display technologies that if bought to market will really make 3D a viable mass market solution.

The initial applications being shown off focused on UI enhancements, especially carousel UIs, 3D Movies and mobile gaming. While this will help to establish the category we will need to see a rapid expansion in terms of general application support and ultimately browser support for 3D to firmly establish itself as something more than the next marketing slogan but for now I am sure that it will play a key role in all the big summer marketing campaigns.

The Dawn of Dual Core
A very hot topic was dual core support in new devices. Just about everyone had a Tegra 2 based device and was busy promoting the MHz’s packed in to their latest products. It looks clear that for the next couple of years there will be an intense level of competition around who has the largest number of cores and the highest MHz number which will likely drive many wild and wonderful applications and services. The use or dual and quad core chipsets holds a lot of promise for enabling both the next generation of WOW UIs (most likely 3D) and a wide range of new applications and services as well as improving overall device responsiveness. However for this year’s MWC there was little evidence of new applications or services really taking strong advantage of the dual core capabilities but I for one expect the focus to have moved significantly by MWC 2012 from just having a dual core device to really showing off the benefits and targeted applications support this.

NFC gains momentum
Near Field Communications was another hot area of discussion following the inclusion of NFC in the Android 2.3 release and the Nexus S. It certainly appears that NFC is now being taken very serious by both handset and Tablet vendors but also within the Automotive community with use cases moving beyond mobile payment in to a much wider range of applications and services around content management and device interaction.

After many years of promise it’s great to see NFC finally gaining real traction, outside of Japan and Korea, as it’s a technology that has the potential to significantly reduce transaction times for a wide range of services as well as bring a strong security framework to support mobile financial services.

Chipset ecosystems
Another aspect of the show was the continued evolution of the Silicon vendors to build ecosystems as they seek to deliver more value to customers in order to gain design wins. For example STEricsson launched their Igloo community play to support their new application and baseband chipsets and Intel continued to make a strong play around its Atom platform and MeeGo with a dedicated booth focused exclusively on this.

Conclusions
So in summary for me perhaps not major surprises are MWC, aside from the Android badges, but more a confirmation that the industry is moving forwards with a wider range of experiences and form factors. It was also further confirmation that the excitement from momentum that started to return last year has really built through the year and the industry in general is feeling a lot more positive about growth and profitability. It’s also great to see that people are now really starting to bring strong differentiation to their Android devices and are exploring many new user experiences which again underlines the renewed level of confidence that is building within the industry.

3D - The wave of future smartphones at MWC 2011 - February 15th, 2011

By Sonali Mishra
The first day of MWC 2011 marked the inception of devices with new multimedia features with world’s first 3D recording, seamless multitasking, advanced GMS and jet speed internet browsing features. LG launched its Optimus Pad – manifestation of tablet it was meant to be. The tablet comes with a one hand grip,8.9”dispay well crafted for work and play with new 3D experience, powerful performance, enabled by dual core and a whole new android 3.0 honeycomb platform experience.LG claims it to be lightning fast on account of tri dual architecture-dual core/dual channel/dual memory.

With the launch of its high performance smartphone offering the world’s first full 3D experience with world’s first tri dual architecture, you tube 3D collaboration and HD video play, LG send a key note to the public that 3D technology is going to be the wave of the future.

NTT Docomo launched the touchable 3D display where you can feel the sensation of touching a 3D image. By combining a glass 3d display and force feedback junction using magnetic force, a natural 3D image and the feeling of touching it can be realized without glasses.

With 3D technology being one of the undeniable themes this year in MWC and being pushed to the mobile devices opens up a lot of opportunities for developers. Starting from Implementation of 3D UIs and presentation layers, development of applications and services using 3D, advanced location based services using 3D buildings and surfaces to 3D modeling such as displaying a 3D model of a car it provides a range of growth opportunities. The development of the 3D technology will move quickly and leverage many of the innovations from other parts of the mobile industry. While taking advantage of our experience, Teleca recognizes the uniqueness of the 3D ecosystem and our mission is to keep our customers on the path to success as they navigate this journey.

MWC and the OS fire -February 4th

By Martin Wilde

Heading into Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain later this month (14-17 Feb), numerous questions around mobile operating systems continue to emerge. The next release of Android, Honeycomb 3.0, is coming this week. It will not be fully compatible with previous Android versions, mostly in the UI, and will result in more fragmentation headaches for Google.

Adding fuel to the OS fire, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said recently that, "Nokia must compete on an ecosystem-to-ecosystem basis. In addition to great devices, we must build, catalyze, and/or join a competitive ecosystem." Are we witnessing a new, multiplatform smartphone strategy from the cellphone giant? What does this mean for Symbian and MeeGo, which both lack a coherent ecosystem? Will Nokia will adopt a 3^rd-party OS? Since Elop came from the great US Northwest, will we see a renewed push into WP7 ?

Some tried, and not so true, OS decisions are just around the corner. What do you think will happen?

Looking forward to 2011 -January 31st

By James Salter

Mobile apps, connected devices, telematics…and an improved economy? As we welcome 2011, I am excited about the advancements of mobile technologies that I am seeing in my initial time in the industry. Combined with what some economists are predicting could be some okay economic growth and you get a potential recipe for lots of great news for consumers and businesses. And this optimism is coming from someone in Seattle right in the middle of our dreary rainy season J.

Fresh from the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas there is a buzz that comes with dozens of new tablets entering the market, many high-end 3D televisions ready to grace living rooms, new mobile phones, fantastic advancements for in-car infotainment systems and more gadgets than you think would be possible for consumers to consume. But all of these advancements won’t mean much without an improved economy. I mean, who’s going to buy these devices if the economy continues to move backwards or sideways, right? There’s lots of evidence that point to a “stagnant” economy in 2011 but I liked what I read recently from Kiplinger (www.kiplinger.com) , a long-standing U.S. publisher of business and economic forecasts (yes, my glasses are a little rose-colored if you read the whole report). Here’s my summary of the positives:

- Business spending will experience a 10% growth in 2011

- Retail sales will resume their modest growth off a solid holiday season

- People will buy lots of mobile gadgets

Okay, so I made up the last point but I still bet that people find room to buy the latest in tech toys for office, home and car. In any event, as a marketing executive in this industry, I’m pumped about 2011. What are your thoughts and hopes for 2011?

Summing up Android for 2010 -January 17th

By Bhavya Siddappa

So how was the year 2010 for Android ? Here is my summary for the key ingredients.

January:

Year started off with the release of Android SDK 2.1.

Google launched its first phone Nexus One on 2.1 running Flash 10.1.

Motorola Backflip with Yahoo as a default search page, LG GT450 Android Phones got launched.

20,000 units of Nexus1 were sold out in the opening week.

February:

With the introduction of live wallpapers in Éclair version, users started enjoying richer, animated, interactive backgrounds on their home screen.

There were many edge cases in the service lifecycle that made it very easy to accidentally leave a service running; new APIs in 2.0 make this much easier to deal with.

Android SDK introduced a new UI for end users to monitor and manage the running services on their device.

March;

With the help of Voice-enabled keyboard feature in 2.1, one could dictate message instead of typing it.

Android NDK r3 version released .

Google Labs released Gesture Search App for Android.

April:

Google started working on Android Tablet.

Google confirmed Android 2.1 downgrades Image Quality 2.0.

Android twitter app from Google was made available in the app store, this app brought in an evolving Android UI design patterns.

May:

Google Developers day – Google I/O was hosted and it got an awesome response and support, for the first time the keynotes were live streamed.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) was introduced with features: Cloud to Device Messaging, Dalvik JIT etc.

Through the new app market feature, users could report bug and developers were able to receive crash and freeze reports from their users.

Google Latitude API were made public.

June:

Android 2.2 SDK and NDK R4 both were available for download.

An application which violations Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement or Content Policy or any malicious application that poses a threat, Google developed technologies and processes to remotely remove an installed application from devices.

Logitech brought Android iPhone apps for Google TV.

This was beyond imagination, but it came true: iPhone 3G was running Android 2.2.

French, German, Italian and Spanish speakers started enjoying using Google Voice Searchl

July:

As android 2.2 supports application installation on SD card, this gave users room for many more apps, and benefits to apps from games categories.

Swype came to Android virtual keyboard.

Android Market welcomed Korea.

Google announced the release simple and free service provides a secure mechanism to manage access to all Android Market paid applications. At run time, application can query the Android Market licensing server to determine the license status of your users. It returns information on whether your users are authorized to use the app based on stored sales records.

August:

It was interesting to see new players like Spice Mobility, Dell, Micromax launching Android devices

Samsung Galaxy S got launched, which till today is sold like hot cake.

Google Android overtook Windows Mobile.

September:

Android 2.2 started to see wide adoption.

2007 when Google announced Android, Andy Rubin said “We hope thousands of different phones will be powered by Android.” But at this stage was growing beyond phones to new kinds of devices.

Samsung Galaxy Tab was announced and it was said to be a wake-up call for Android developers. It was scary for the developers as they had never seen a screen like this on an Android device before.

Launched Voice-Action in the new Google Voice Search for Android — an awesome new way to search faster.

Developers from 20 more countries were now able to sell paid apps on Android Market.

18 additional countries were now able to purchase paid apps from Android Market.

October:

There was lot of buzz happening around about Google TV and Galaxy Tab.

Android was quickly moving to hardware that are increasingly different from the smartphone devices, having lack of features like GPS, accelerometers, and video cameras

Google announced the mobile editing capabilities for Google docs on Android and iPad

Adobe AIR 2.5 cross platform runtime environment for android released.

November:

Showing content ratings for all applications on Android Market. This provided users with additional information to help them select the best applications for them.

U.S Military people favored Android and they all owned an Android phone.

Google Map 4.6 with new features in its Location Based Services was released for Android.

December:

Google with partnership of Samsung launched Nexus S with 2.3 android sdk with support for NFC.

Google Map 5.0 was released which was faster, supported offline & in 3D look.

Android Market Client Update; more payment options in Android market.

Skyfire the popular mobile browser released 3.0.1 for Android.

Google launched a new eBook store to read digital books optimized for Android devices running 2.1. Andy Rubin confirms Google activating 300,000 Android devices per day

Conclusion:

When Google launched the Nexus One, they thought this would be the flagship mobile device for their new Android operating system. The Nexus One served as the blueprint for Android devices, which exploded across most major mobile carriers. With their open approach and flexibility in what carriers and manufacturers can do with the OS, Android’s numbers grew. Android began to surpass the iPhone

As android became more popular, there was talk of fragmentation of the app ecosystem and the operating system itself. With frequent updates from Google, but carriers dragging their feet on sending updates to their customers, the problem seemed serious for developers and Android fans. Fragmentation may soon become less of an issue as more handsets are updated to the latest Android OS, but it’s still wait and watch.

Back from CES in Las Vegas -January 10th

By Andrew Till
Well another CES has now closed and it’s time to reflect on the key themes and trends from the show. So here are my initial observations though I reserve the right to update these after a good night’s sleep – something I have never mastered in Vegas !

BIG BIG BIG
Attendance at this year’s CES was significantly up over last year as could be observed from my favourite barometer the size of the queue at the taxi rank. Estimates for attendance put the total at between 120-130k people which would equate to a 40-50% increase over 2010. There were also some sizeable standards at the show with Sony, Samsung and LGE all seeming to be in competition for the largest stand.
What this really underlines is a renewed sense of optimism in the market and the prospects for growth with everyone expecting to enjoy a strong year in both the consumer and business segments.

Tablets
Without doubt the main talking point of the show was the volume of new tablets being launched. During my walk around I counted in excess of 70 new models being shown off. The undisputed OS winner was Android although many of the tablets leveraging Android were using a basic Froyo release with lightweight customisation to support a 7 or 10 inch display.

The coming 12 months will be an interesting time for the Android tablet market given the latest market forecasts for tablet sales it’s hard to see how the market will be able to sustain 60-70 tablet vendors through 2011. The Android Tablet getting the most attention was the Motorola Xoom which was announced just before the show and features Android 3.0 (though it was slightly disappointing that the units on the show floor were only running videos as opposed as a pre-release Honeycomb release).

Although Android dominated there were both Windows 7 and MeeGo tablets were on display but you had to invest some time and effort to find them. It’s probably too early to judge MeeGo for the tablet space at this point in time while the Windows 7 tablets I was able to see delivered what you would expect but failed to bring real differentiation to the segment.
RIMs Playbook as the other major Tablet offering at the show and was receiving significant attention and a lot of positive feedback with the RIM stand being constantly busy throughout the show. Based on, the limited, time I was able to get my hands on it the Playbook should be able to gain a respectable level of market share. The only concern amongst potential users seems to be the lack of local mail storage which may limit adoption outside existing RIM users.

Would you like 3D
The overwhelming focus of the show was 3D and not just for TVs (and there were some BIG TVs on show in the 65-70- inch range) but also in Phones (SEMC), Cameras (all leading vendors), BlueRay players. It’s clear that the consumer electronics industry is making some significant bets on the success of 3D. Both active and passive systems were on display with some genuinely impressive offerings and some quite uninspiring ones as well. It’s also clear that 3D will not be limited to just the delivery of HD playback but will also be applied to UIs and applications being developed for the next generation of TVs and which are likely to be a key focus at next year’s show.

Web & TV convergence picks up pace
Another key themes was Web meets TV with all leading TV vendors using CES to show off their offerings. In addition this was also a major theme of Set Top Box vendors and Over The Top box providers at the show. As expected GoogleTV was a major discussion point with Logitech and Sony both pushing their initial GoogleTV solutions. Teleca also took the opportunity to demonstrate the solutions we have been developing for customers around GoogleTV. Another key platform is Adobe’s AIR 2.5 which is being widely integrated by many TV and STB providers. Samsung was also showing off it’s in house development called “Smart TV” which was a key part of its 3D TV range. An MIPs was showing it’s Android Smart TV solution offerings in conjunction with a number of silicon vendors such as Broadcom, Reneses, Sigma etc.
The focus was not just on providing access to streaming on line services, such as YouTube and Hulu, and browser support but also on delivering a compelling applications platform and enabling your Tablet or Phone to be both a content source and smart remote. While some of the usability issues have not been ironed out its clear that it will be challenging to buy a mid to high end TV without a connected platform built in.

The Car is getting “Really” Smart
Car manufacturers were out in force at this year’s CES either showing of their latest prototypes, such as GMs 4G concept car, or roaming the halls to see the latest advancements in in-car entertainment. It’s clear that the in-car entertainment experience is set to evolve rapidly over the next 2-3 years with everyone looking to move to a fully connected experience enabling access to real time services, applications and content stores and providing a fully integrated Human Machine Interface that delivers a consistent user paradigm across the range of services being delivered to the driver or passengers. However it’s not just about being connected in the car but a lot of focus is also being placed on how the in-car experience connects and interacts with the in-home experience especially around the portability of multimedia content.

Phone Plus
With differentiation in industrial design becoming ever more challenging for handset vendors this year’s CES gave an insight in to one approach that is likely to develop in to a significant area of competition. A number of vendors where leveraging intelligent docking solutions to enable a phone to deliver an enhanced set of user experiences and capabilities. Most notable of these was Motorola’s Atrix4 handset which takes the intelligent docking solution of the Driod X to the next level and is capable of docking with a Laptop Dock enabling a much wider set of capabilities.

The key enabler of this trend appears to be the introduction of 1GHz processors with Symmetrical Multi-core Processing such as TIs OMAP 4 and the nVidia Integra2 offerings. Of course it is also worth noting that there were many 3rd party peripheral vendors offering similar solutions for the iPod and IPad platforms. One that caught my eye was Connect 4’s solution that enables an iPad to be docking in a wall and to become an intelligent home automation controller.
I expect this trend to be a key feature of CES 2012.

LTE a key competitive play from operators
After last year’s CES I commented that LTE would be key for 2011 and so it has proved to be with Verizon, Sprint and AT&T all pushing their 4G services. There was also a wealth of 4G handsets on offer at the show with HTC (backed by a very significant marketing investment around CES), Samsung, Motorola and Dell all launching 4G devices at the show.

Other notable items
• Microsoft confirm support for ARM with Windows 8
• Connected appliances are coming back into the play – and Windows CE is still a strong player in this space
• There’s an app for everything but based on the thousands of companies selling iPhone/iPad peripherals there is also an accessory for everything.
• After the success of the Kinect a log of companies are stepping up their focus on montion control solutions
• Home automation is becoming a key focus for next generation home entertainment systems

So that’s it. Another CES is finished and I am probably 4-5 pounds lighter thanks to all the walking but very excited about the year ahead.