There was a good mix of attendees, with o2 employees, sponsors and third party companies each sharing the presence. Looking back at only a year ago, the same event was restricted to internal o2 employees and we have Sandy Hammer of Conference-Art to thank for the progress made in the last 12 months.

I was half-expecting a day of back-patting and marketing spiel, but was actually very pleasantly surprised by the level of the panel discussions and general conversations. Also, importantly for us, key senior people from o2 were available and more than happy to chat with us about our experience with o2 Litmus and the opportunities for the application we were exhibiting – little spender.

Overall, a very positive and exciting day and it’s great to hear an operator talking openly about the state of the industry and the future direction. We’re looking forward to all the follow-up discussions.

Antony Ribot @ Mobile Design UK – 23/02/2009 from Bryan Rieger on Vimeo.

Dave Williamson of bittube.com fame has done a great job in writing one of the early reviews of the event. All videos are now available on Mobile Design UK vimeo group.

I bare all (or as much as I can in 15 minutes) from spending the last 5 years as a designer/developer and now entrepreneur in the mobile sector:

Adam Cohen-Rose of Kizoom has done a great job providing an in-depth review of the day on his blog.

The central issue related to the advertised speed when browsing the internet and the Maps application on the device, which Apple itself referred to as “really fast”.

It said the advert was likely to lead viewers to believe that the device actually operated at or near to the speeds shown in the advert.

With the watchdog stating: “Because we understood that it did not, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead”, what kind of reminders does this have for the rest of us in the industry?

Some may say it’s just an advert, but the banning of these widely-shown broadcasts, of such a tightly-run, squeaky-clean ship such as Apple somehow puts into question the real quality of its mobile user experience.

But, to suggest that Apple needs to fake the experience in some way need not be all bad. Furthermore, it teaches us a few things:

1. Believe it or not, we’ve still a long way to go. It’s a helpful nod to the divergence between perception and reality; between efficiency and latency.
2. Gives us all (including Apple) something specific and exciting to work towards – if a demonstration of the UI alone can be used as an advert with real public wow factor, then…
3. Reminds us that the iPhone, though arguably the best mobile user experience out there right now, clearly isn’t perfect. There is, believe it or not, room for improvement here. Browser latency aside, the 3G iPhone experience, on the whole, is a lot slower than its predecessor, for instance. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iydS0f65o2I&feature=related
4. To be honest, it brings Apple off its high horse a little. Its mobile arm will definitely take a knock from this, so competitors may feel compelled to capitalise on the situation, though they must act quickly. Nokia…show us your speedy, stripped-down UI please.
5. Heightened publicity / debate regarding the issue and importance of mobile user experience, which is always a good thing.

To summarise, this whole debacle can only be good for us mobile designers and developers. To embrace the ruling and understand that, though there is much we can all learn from the iPhone’s successes, there is perhaps more value in taking on board and capitalising from this recent failure than we first think.

In the short, medium and perhaps, dare I say it, long term, we may not be able to rid ourselves of the scourge of network latency, but we should learn that while it is ugly to wait, if you hold a person’s hand throughout the process, as long as it isn’t for too long, they will thank you for it when they arrive at their destination, both happy and reassured.

Overview

The Storm is a rough diamond. Lovely industrial design, but let down substantially not by the lack of Wi-Fi, which has had all the press, but instead by the quality of the touch-operating system. Touted as an iPhone killer, I can confidently confirm that the Storm is unfortunately only half an iPhone. Confusing interactions, hard-to-click buttons and an unpolished UI result in an irritating performance. BlackBerry OS 4.7 is clearly a platform that hasn’t been fully designed for finger interaction, which is a huge shame. That said, the Storm will get better with age, with over the air (OTA) software updates, through which most of these issues will be ironed out. The Storm (or its successors) will in time contend with the likes of the iPhone.

Lets all touch and click

The main difference between the touch interface of the iPhone and the Storm is that the screen on the Storm allows you to cast you finger across it, highlighting the UI elements, but nothing is actioned until you press into the screen. Pushing your finger into the screen actually indents the screen into the device and this is what is defined as a “click” in the interface. It takes a moment to figure out (especially for those of us who are used to the iPhone way of life). It’s different, but it actually works. I’m curious as to what the engineers have devised beneath the screen. Is it time to take a screwdriver to the Storm?

Not for the traveller/talker/photo taker

Battery life seems to be worryingly low (is this perhaps why Vodafone chose to remove a Wi-Fi option?) Since receiving the device, I’ve charged it from empty 4 times (in four days). Yes, I’ve been testing it, but I wouldn’t class my actual usage as heavy. Today, after a full charge, 12 hours later I have 60% battery left. My usage for the last 12 hours included a 20 minute phone call, 5 emails received and a combination of 20 sms’ received/sent. Bluetooth is off. No browser, camera or games usage.

Previous tests with the camera left me with unsatisfactory results every time. I would, without doubt, always opt for shooting with my N95 (if I had it handy). The Storm picture quality is quite desaturated, blurry and noisy. The auto-focus is extremely slow and irritating and I’ve had one crash where I’ve had to remove the battery to start the device again. After taking 5-6 pictures, the battery depleted by some 12% – I’ve not had a chance to test out video, but I’ll keep my expectations low.

Don’t make me wait!

If I had one request for RIM, it would be to improve the speed of the interface. Compared to other devices, it’s not the slowest but it’s certainly far far slower than the iPhone and, once you’ve used an Android G1, you could be forgiven for thinking that the “slow-motion” setting had been turned permanently on. Switching between landscape and portrait modes takes too long and the immediate feedback that one requires from a touch-screen device isn’t quite there yet (numerous people have also mentioned sticky accelerometer issues, getting stuck in portrait mode). That said, future updates will hopefully start to correct these issues and we could have a pleasurable experience.

Landscape text entry is a delightful experience

My favourite experience when it comes to my Storm is when I have to write messages, memos or emails. I start a new email, turn the Storm onto its side (landscape view), after a short delay, the keyboard swaps to landscape and I start to type using my two thumbs. I’ve only used the Storm for four days but I’m already addicted to entering text on this small screen device. It’s just a joy to use and once I’ve learnt the keyboard layout, I’ll be extremely efficient and happy.

On the subject of input, one of the other lovely interaction elements that took me by surprise was the glow technique. When you touch a key on the keyboard, a blue glow eminates from beneath your thumb. Its radius is quite large (covering up to half of each of the button’s neighours). The glow acts as a feedback helping to indicate that you’ve highlighted/pressed the right button.

Storm text entry with glowing indicators

The “app store” experience

Two days after receiving the phone, the software self-registered itself and the “app-store” became available as an option from the menu panel. In total, 11 applications were currently available for download. Most of them designed and developed by RIM. The experience here was mixed; server errors (Null Pointer Exceptions), apps that didn’t allow you to download them (apparently due to session issues), apps that sounded impressive, but ended up failing to live up to expectations (is it just me, or would you expect a flickr app to do more than just upload your pictures?).

I’ve not had any success installing the Facebook app (which I’ve heard great things about), but I was very impressed by the speed and simplicity of the Google Map app (although I wish the icons had text labels above them when you touch them) – great use of cached data and simple gestural swipe actions to navigate.

My finger isn’t the size of a stylus pen!

The help pages are, at best, irritating. You are presented with a list-driven interface and this is where the major problem both begins and ends. This list has clearly been lifted off classic non-touch BlackBerrys and hasn’t been optimised for finger-selection. Selectable areas of items are only as wide as their text, so to click on a list item titled “Maps” is actually quite a feat, requiring a degree of care, attention and patience (something which, on the iPhone, is painless). Replace with a simple list, where active item areas span the width of the device. Introduce some top/bottom padding to each item to make them finger compatible and hey presto, an altogether nicer help page.

Missing polish

Where’s the “bounce” feedback when you get to the end of a list of photos? Why use two different types of scroll bar (one of which doesn’t have an indicator for how far you’ve got to scroll until you get to the end)? Why isn’t there any momentum in the gestural interface? Why don’t all action buttons have text labels that helpfully float above your finger? Why the lag between finger action and interface response?

Boot-up time

I count a total of about 3-5 seconds from the press of the on button to a fully lit and active home screen. Very impressive, but I hope it’s something I won’t be doing too often.

Lets not end here…

Although the Storm hasn’t lived up to my expectations, I’ll be carrying it around with me over the next 12 months (as my primary phone) and will hopefully be reporting of the improvements with successive updates to the software. Stay tuned and I’d be interested in hearing other peoples’ experiences, both good and bad.

Seeing the opportunity to generate some brand recognition, and have a little fun in the process, we wondered how we could make this beer special? How could we get the ribot brand out there?

There was a veritable flood of ideas but time was a major mitigating factor. We only had a couple of days to design, produce and implement any concept we decided to run with…and there was no time to start another if the first didn’t work!

Customising the beer bottles in some way seemed the way to go. Ideas ranged from the simple:
- Tagging each beer with a ribot business card;
- Hanging an info-graphic leaflet from the beer depicting our team, concepts and processes…

…to the more complex:
- Attaching DIY origami to the bottles so that each attendee could build their own paper-craft, ribot branded, creature or plane;

…to the downright crazy:
- creating a weathered-terrain look on the beer bottle surface with tacked-on modeling moss and mini trees sourced from model railway component manufacturers.

But finally, the proverbial lightbulb lit above Jerome’s head and the idea to completely re-brand the beer was born. This seemed like a simple idea at the time; all we would need to do is produce a few ribot-branded (ri-branded?) labels and stick them to the bottles. As time went on, we slowly realised that this would require a lot more work than we had imagined, but by then it was too late to turn back!

With haste, Jerome and Jonathan started researching current beer brands: What exactly was there on your standard beer label? Was there anything we had to legally include, even on a project of this scale?

We decided on three main label elements for our re-branded beer: a front label, a back label (containing a description of each part of the ribot process) and, if there was time, a label for the neck of the beer. Jerome quickly got to formalising some of the ideas we had.

The central concept was to show our process, which we split into three main parts, portrayed by the style of the beer label. These were the results:

Step 1: The concept and ideas phase (Quick sketches and rough mock-ups):

Step 2: The formal wireframe phase:

…and Step 3: The finalised design:

So, with final designs done and our ribot process implemented, we started treading forth into new territory. We had to get the label elements printed, cut and affixed to the side of 80 bottles. As simple as this may initially sound, there were several problems we faced. The main one was a limitation of time available. We had just over 1 day to get this done and having a professional printer rush the job through would cost us over double what the beer cost; following a round of phone calls, printers also needed a lot longer to get things finished. We also wouldn’t have been able to test the printed results until the very last minute, so if there were any problems it would’ve been goodnight Vienna!

And so we decided to put our A3 Deskjet printer to the test. The results were, thankfully, great. Initially we planned to use three types of paper, one for each stage of the design process, increasing in quality:

+ Plain paper for the sketches;

++ Matt photo-paper for the wireframes;

+++ High Quality gloss paper for the final design;

So we got in some samples and quickly tested them. The plain paper was far too see-through when taped to the bottle – even the super thick stuff!

The matt photo-paper, however, worked great and provided excellent results so we decided to use it for stage one as well!

With a secure method of adhesion and a way to protect the labels from condensation still eluding us, Jonathan proposed to laminate the labels and simply use double-sided sticky tape to keep them down. With less than a day to go we decided to quickly test the idea out, and it seemed to work! Woo!

With that all done, the 80 bottles of beer needed to be purchased and individually labelled, and so for a trip to Sainsbury’s…

After a torrential downpour during the journey back to ribot Towers, a soggy Antony, Jerome and girlfriend RoxyBird began the long task of drying out, cutting out, applying tape and attaching all the labels to the bottles (in that order). Finally, after working into the oui-hours of the morning, ribot beer was born and ready to take its first steps in the world. Fast-forwarding to the next day, the beers were very well received at the event, and were a great talking point for all.

Overall, it was a great mini-project, during which we took ourselves, for the majority of the project, away from the computer, and towards the scissors and glue. For a day and a bit, ribot totally changed into a industrial setup; everything became physical, real, and subject to different constraints, like moisture, stickiness, and process hyper-optimisation.

Though the main aim of the project was to showcase our design process, it was incredibly interesting to extend and augment this process away from conventional user interfaces, and to see how we work when faced with a more physical, industrial process. Needless to say, the project was a great success and we had a lot of fun doing it.

To conclude, here’s a few things that we found out from the beer label-making process:

1. Of course, it’s not only user interfaces that need designing for interaction:
1.1 we had to redesign our neck tops so they wouldn’t fall off during drinking.
1.2 people would be holding the bottle for prolonged periods so, what with the condensation, we had to make sure the print for the final concept stayed on the label and not transfer to peoples’ hands.
1.3 Also that ‘keen’ fingers wouldn’t be able to easily pick our labels off (This was documented during the evening: attempts were made but fingers proved thankfully futile).

2. We could really speed up production after optimising our process:
2.1 Everyone had their role in the production line; we spent a bit of time dividing up the tasks into roles that would allow for most effective handover between people
2.2 We turned the desks into a production line, where the label elements in their various stages would be passed down the line
2.3 Having more people work on the line helped improve morale:
2.3.1 We had a massive stack of uncut label sheets and a load of unlabeled beers on the table, so for each worker to be able to visually see a noticeable reduction in the remaining amount of effort needed as time went on certainly acted as a motivator
2.3.2 With greater numbers of workers, it was noticeable that song-singing became more prevalent, helping boost efforts and reduce fatigue.

3. Testing became incredibly important if we were to find issues early and finish on time:
3.1 Good testing of materials at the start meant we had less problematic variables to consider as the process went on.
3.1.1 We found that after testing a labeled bottle by putting it in the fridge for a few hours, and then taking it out, a few hours later the beer label, even with all its double-sided tape glory, started to unpeel quite dramatically due to the condensation. Following this test, we built in an extra bit of focus for the taping bit of the process.

To conclude, a job well done! So chieres for the bieres!

1. Direct Manipulation

• Users generally respond better if they can control something tangible.
• Users will better understand the results of their actions if they can directly manipulate what they can see

Make sure that:

• Objects on the screen are visible while the user performs actions on them
• The result of their actions are immediately viewable

2. See and Point

• Present list-based choices to the user. Can be scanned quickly and are intuitive
• Reduce text-based input as much as possible. (more time efficient. reduces error checking)

3. Feedback

Users need to see:

• Immediate feedback when they operate controls (list items should highlight after selecting)
• Status updates during longer operations

• Audible feedback can be used, but shouldn’t be the primary/sole form of feedback
• Show activity indicator for non-instantanious operations
• Show progress bar for operations lasting more than a few seconds
• Provide textual explanation to the user of what is happening, if applicable…

4. User Control

• Let users control actions
• Keep actions simple so users can understand and remember them
• Use standard controls and actions as much as possible
• Allow users the option to cancel an action before it begins, degrading gracefully;
• Allow user to confirm potentially-destructive operations. Don’t over-use confirmations though – This will ruin any fluidity you have built up.

5. Aesthetic Integrity

• Level of aesthetic depth depends upon type of app
• Productive apps – keep aesthetic subtle and in the background – give prominence to the task – use standard controls
• Immersive apps – bring aesthetic to the fore – users expect a beautiful, fun experience

6. Build in Simplicity and Ease of Use

• Make it obvious – Minimise controls; label controls
• Put frequently-used, high-importance information at the top of the screen
• Minimise text input – Provide as much functionality for each piece of info given by the user; – If possible, use a picker – it’s easier to choose from list than to enter words
• Express yourself succinctly – Make UI text short and sweet. make it quick and easy to absorb. think like a newspaper headline editor
• Provide finger-tip-sized area for all tappable areas (40-45px minimum), and provide ample space between tappable elements (20px min or so)

7. Focus on the Primary Task

• Stay focused on your product definition statement, and make sure each function in the app supports it.
• Query what’s most important in each context. ask yourself whether each bit of information being shown is critical at this stage. if not, is it critical at another stage, or at all?

8. Let the user always know where they are

Throughout the application hierarchy, always make sure you use the page header properly to inform the user where they are in. For example, this may be by informing them which image they’re browsing, or that they’re about to ‘Add a bookmark’. If applicable, support/repace this large header text with smaller text to describe what’ the page is for, in a simple human fashion.

Remember that by default, the iphone has no visible scrollbar – it only becomes visible when users begin to scroll, so make sure that it’s clear to the user that there’s more content below that can be scrolled to.

1. Semi-translucent soft-key menu button

As we all know, screen space is precious on mobile apps and with this slight alteration, a little bit extra of the map can now been seen. Arguably, an alternative option would be to hide most of the soft key label after a period of inactivity by the user, presenting the user with a more or less full view of the map in question.

2. Faster start-up time

Primarily due to the use of native Symbian code rather than Java, the application now lets the user get to their map view far quicker. Hopefully future Java VM’s will be optimised to the point where we’ll find it hard to detect differences in initial load time (between native and java apps).

3. Basic auto-location (without the need for GPS)

So, more devices are now coming out with one form of GPS or another (e.g assisted GPS). But lets face it, most consumer devices don’t have any form of GPS chip in them. Personally, I tend to use GPS features sparingly on my mobile devices due to the battery-sapping nature of them. This, I feel is one of the reasons why GPS at least at this stage is not ready to take off, as users fundamentally want to know that they have enough battery to make that all-important emergency call. Even though you can use the GPS functionality of your device when using the Google Maps app, you don’t have to – you can instead rely on the not-so-accurate, “triangulation of cell towers” method.

So where am I going with this conversation? The inclusion of this triangulation method (or simple GPS as I like to call it) has a dramatic effect upon the user experience: by simply pressing the ‘0′ key, the application will home in to your location (which will obviously be more accurate when using GPS than triangulation). Either way, with a single key press and a little bit of a wait to load in the viewable map, you’re ready to explore your local area. Compare this user experience with that of the prior version of Google maps, where the user had to go to the following to get to the “explore stage”:

• Key press 1: “Options” Left soft key hit
• Key press 2-4: Traverse up to the “Search” option
• Key press 5: Select the “search” menu item
• Key press 6-11: Minimum key presses required to enter your postcode*
• Key press 12: “Search” actioned

* I realise that it is, in fact, possible to search for shorter place names/postcodes e.g. w4, but I wanted to perform a search with a little more precision and usefulness.

A single or double digit keypress pathway? You choose. I know which one we prefer.

So well done Google on improving what was already quite a nice little app, turning it into something very nice indeed. I urge you to check it out, either for inspiration or for very helpful location-based assistance on the go, GPS or no GPS.

Wow, what can I say. It’s the first time I’ve been to the world’s largest mobile event and it stood up to the hype – it was huge! There was so much to see and do but here is what stuck out for ribot:

Sony Ericsson

The Xperia X1 phone – lovely use of materials: metals and glass, slide-out keyboard. Large touchscreen display and some interface elements that remind me of modern Apple interfaces. Surprisingly all on a Windows Mobile OS.

Generally impressed by the Sony Ericsson stand for their exploration of market niches – radio phones that look like radios, the inclusion of silent gestures, generally nice-looking and inspiring to see so many ideas.

Nokia

To be honest, I wasn’t impressed by the latest release of devices. Nearly all the devices have that current “boring” Nokia look. Yes, there are specific “style” ranges, but even these didn’t amaze me. Maybe this is due to the thought at the back of my mind that they all run either S60 or S40, both of which aren’t very pleasant to use due to terrible response times, general overcrowding and mish-mashing of interface elements and there’s also nothing new.

However, what I was impressed by was how much time Nokia had put into developing their software app teams, with the stand showcasing many new releases. Of particular interest was the new version of Nokia Maps 2.0 Beta (http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/maps). General look and feel was refreshing. I didn’t get a chance to have a play for very long, so I’ll be reviewing the app in-depth when we get our little package of new phones next week.

Nokia S60 touchscreen unfortunately wasn’t very impressive – the device on display looked like an early prototype, using a very unresponsive version of the S60 interface (although I’m hoping this is due to the prototype nature of the product). It also didn’t feature haptic feedback which is something that I’d been wanting to test out for some time. techype goes into a lot more background detail regarding the potential pitfalls of the S60 touchscreen device.

Nvidia

The graphics-chipset company announced a new low-power graphics chip designed especially for mobile devices. They showcased the power and graphics capabilities on a prototype device built internally, allowing them to demonstrate future possibilities of small-screen user interfaces. The device ran on the Windows Mobile platform (6.1), supported OpenGL ES 2.0 and could potentially play a HDMI video for a full 10 hours!

taptu

A new form of mobile search. I’d heard the name being bounced around the London mobile scene in the previous few months but hadn’t had time to check out the details of the product. The CEO previously headed up a usability company and brings with him this experience; Taptu have hired two full time usability experts and it’s great to see the user being given prominence in the design of an interface. Anyway, they’ve just launched version 1.0 of their product, go check it out at http://taptu.com and see what you think. I’m still only a few days into using it, but it generally feels a lot cleaner and makes much more of use of the context than other services providing mobile search.

Flixwagon

The lovely Xen of MyFrame Inc handed me an N95 and unlimited data SIM on my first night in dearest Barcelona. Their product, Flixwagon allows you to take video on your mobile which is then broadcast live onto the web. I’d heard of a similar service provided by a competitor – Qik (which i’ve not yet used) and, as an avid twitter user, video was the next natural step in recording my thoughts, memories and stories, so I quickly felt at home.

Modu

Quite an interesting concept: marketed as the world’s smallest phone, that can jump into “jackets” of various forms, enabling a variety of interactions. Scheduled to launch in 6 months time, this will be an exciting product to keep an eye on.

SpinVox

These guys and gals had one of the best stands in the whole conference, hoisting up what looked like 1000 of their ‘mobsters’ onto a rig to display the latest MWC SpinVox messages. Quite a magical service too – their voicemail to text systems can even detect spoken words like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! I’m thinking this will be very handy for meetings when I need to check voicemails without actually making a call.

Google

Google had a very low-key presence at the conference and left it up to the hardware manufacturers like Texas Instruments and ARM to showcase Android-based prototypes. During the conference the new Android SDK was released which featured a very early version of a totally-new UI look and feel, but only the old UI was seen on the conference floor (I didn’t smuggle myself into the Google meeting room, where maybe I could have got a peak at it – there’s lots of screen shots on the web of it now anyway).

Networking events

Swedish beers was the best mobile networking night of the week, where I got to meet a great selection of mobilists and mobilistas from across the globe over a few glasses of Trapist Belgian beer. Thanks once again to Helen and friends for organising the night and for the sponsors providing the free-flowing beer.

All in all, though a somewhat overwhelmingly-large conference, MWC had many interesting little nuggets scattered about, which I’ll be sure to keep a close eye on over the next year or so.

With your delicious gambas, soft sea breezes and delightful side-streets, I’m sure I’ll be back.

Until next year, goodbye Barcelona. Thank you for having me.

Sorry? Forgetful interface??

Well, if we are to make better sense of the present, the past must be better managed in the future.

For, with ever-increasing amounts of information being created over time, relevancy is key; systems that allow for ‘purposeful forgetfulness’ will have to be given greater attention.

But what do I mean by a ‘forgetful interface’? Surely not a system that actually forgets my personal, treasured information?

Well, no. In my own forgetful interface, there would be no automatic purging of any data. It would remain stored unless explicitly removed by the user.

The internet in its present form is a relatively young beast. Though its many users have been creating, tagging, archiving, sharing and managing data across an ever-widening range of applications for a while now, this is only just the beginning. Ten, twenty, fifty years from now, even if the notion of the web changes radically (which it is certain to), it’ll play host to an incredible amount of data, in need of new depths of information management.

The key here is relevancy – getting the information to the user that is most applicable to them at the current time. To help take some of these ideas a little further, I’ll use a simple example.

Geoff’s size problem

The year is 2015. Though its form and the company that maintains it has greatly changed, Geoff, a 54-year-old, self-employed business consultant, still uses Gmail: an email web application popular with many users across the world. He was a relatively-early adopter of the free service, signing up in late 2004. He’s a heavy user, using this email account as his primary point of contact. Gmail holds over ten-years-worth of his emails. Despite this, it remains incredibly responsive, due to the nationwide fibre-optic rollout policy adopted by the new Government some 5 years ago.

However, the problem has shifted from one of reliability, to one of relevancy. Even though the tagging system used heavily by Geoff has been refined and developed by Google over the years, he now has tens of thousands of email conversations stored under the numerous labels he’s created.

Geoff regularly searches for emails relating to meetings with his current clients. He has a good reputation, and many of his clients have been so for years. A search for a keyword relating to one of these clients brings back 1000s of results, and every time Geoff wishes to search, he has to set the dates within which the search should take place to be the last 6 weeks or 6 months. He’s frustrated by this – although he greatly values their importance and in no way wants to get rid of them, his emails from 8 or 9 years ago hold little relevance to his operations and requirements today. “If only there was some way that Gmail would take these really old emails somewhere else, a safe place, away from my what I see every day, it would realy help me out – there’s tens of thousands now. I don’t want to delete them, but they’re just not relevant to me anymore”, he ponders. If only the system could ‘forget’, and keep the information shown to him relevant, it would greatly simplify his experience for many years into the future.

Deep archiving

Unbeknown to Geoff, Google had been thinking about this issue for a while now, and is currently undergoing internal user testing of a new service, code-named ‘aMail’, short for archived mail. aMail would be a subsidary service offered to gmail users whereby older mail (at what point the mail becomes old being determined by the user), auto-tagged by time in years (2004, 2005 etc), would be available for aMailing; that is, it is sent to another place: a mail archive, stored at a deeper level of the Gmail system hierarchy.

Though Google sees this service as free, it too will be ad-funded, by a new, more intelligent system that gives user-specific advertising based on more long-term analysis of email content – as opposed to the previous keyword-based system, it can now read content as a narrative – giving the ads a far more personal, deeper focus on Geoff’s long-term requirements and desires.

9 months later, aMail, now known in the industry as ‘deep archiving’, is silently released as an option within Gmail’s existing archiving ability. Geoff is notified of this update, and tries out the new feature. He chooses to deep-archive all emails but those from the last two years. Now manageable on a larger scale, the myriad unnecessary information clogging up his everyday interface is greatly reduced. Performing searches is now a more simplified experience, and far less time is spent browsing through pages of results.

This service allows the interface to safely ‘forget’ old and unnecessary information, keeping the data relevant to the present-day needs of the user.

Monetization through added value & meta-social management

Other companies soon copy and further monetize this system. For example, a social networking site specializing in the sharing of hi-definition video content since 2009 offers a deep-archiving service as part of its ‘Enterprise’ account – where users can safely ‘deepen’ an unlimited amount (well, not unlimited, but a lot) of now-not-so-relevant content, keeping users’ content as fresh for both themselves and all others who view it, as they need it to be (a lot can change in a decade).

We can also take this a step further; a service could be developed that aggregates the user’s deep-archived content from across their numerous now-open social platforms, spread across a wide variety of mediums (e.g. your photo albums from Facebook, your blog articles from Blogger, Twitter posts, youTube videos), and packages them all together, as a life narrative tool of all your memories down the years in digital form. You can view it as a spin-off concept of Google’s upcoming Open Social platform, but more content-specific, and focused more on the past as opposed to the future.

Regardless, though this is very much a fictitious, simple example of a forgetful interface, and one can see how aspects covered here regarding the gathering of information over time raises some interesting questions about how best we can look to manage it.

To conclude, though the notion of archiving already exists across many web application systems, how it will deal with the ever-increasing amount of data some many years down the line is something important and not yet fully defined. That the interface will ‘forget’, does not mean that the system will necessarily do the same – very much the opposite, in fact. The key point is that the user’s experience is simplified, and given greater relevancy to the events and requirements of the present day. That this can be monetised through its perception as an added-value service for the organised, heavy or sentimental users among us can only further catalyse its inclusion within future interfaces.

Overview of mobile space

• 1.3bn net users, 3.2bn mobile users
• Every second in china, four babies born, 25 new subscribers
• Mobile content far more profitable (you pay for everything) – otoh web content generally assumed free
• Higher value perception on mobile – people are comfortable with this.
• Web and mobile – two very different worlds – software build and ad structure different

iPhone

• New paradigm shift from carriers to web companies
• Carriers have no choice – $150bn spent on EU 3G licences, $70bn rollout costs. And now 4G investment…
• Built on the premise of rich content to 100s of millions. But on iPhone, carrier doesn’t see bulk of transaction (iTunes) – just the start…

Qik

• Stream video live from mobile to web – multicasting (many peeps communicating to many others)
• Users can participate / add to questions pool ‘during the interview’ – a remarkable facility!

GPS / Assisted GPS

Location-enabled systems will change the way we communicate – will be the killer app of the future (Nokia says this also – has invested $6bn in mapping company navTeq)

Mass-market mobile monetization…

• iPhone, qik not mass-market
• 2.3bn sms sent this year. The figure is growing, and won’t be replaced by email just yet.

…through innovative Mobile Advertising / payment systems

• Faceparty – text service for users to advertise their profile on the front page for few mins for £1.50 – highly successful.
• TheCloud – zero-pain transactions – wi-fi access time now sold via sms. Much quicker than physically getting credit card or money out of wallet.

ZONG

• Open mobile development platform, reduces barriers to entry
• Spawned out of age-old opinion on mobile software: “we can’t do this…it’s too complex…too many variables (handsets, sizes, platforms, carriers etc)”
• Still expanding the API but looking to have 1bn mobile content subscribers by EOY 08.

All day, every day, games are played. Though most start and finish without ever being fully acknowledged by their participants, when we actively or unconsciously participate, there is normally some form of interface. This can be something tangible, and/or perhaps a set of rules, known to all trusted game players.

Focusing down a bit more on the physically-interactive side, conventionally, when we think of games being played in a modern setting, we may think of some kind of external peripheral, such as a baseball bat, or a pressable button, that is used to interact with a central device, such as being swung to hit a ball, or being pressed to trigger an event on a machine display.

I’ve just finished watching a vodcast that focused upon addressing cognitive dissonances through play; basically, using innovative User Interface (UI) systems to ‘improve’ human beings.

As part of the Stanford University lectures on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Berkeley-based Joe Mackaay and Greg Niemeyer were shown demonstrating a number of interfaces developed to better understand human behaviour through both gameplay and art. In particular, I’ll be focusing on three of them here, with one you’ll see released by a major entertainment manufacturer and publisher later in 2008.

Watching users discover, and thus engage in new behavior through these systems, at first, tends to envoke an unfamiliar feeling; something difficult to master or perhaps feels ‘wrong’ in some way. However, over a short period of playing time, intuition quickly pulls through, trust from the user is gained and this negative feeling subsides – the user is able to enjoy and benefit from this new and enriching experience.

The first game revolves around the idea of colour as an interface.

The game involves two players in a room, standing next to each other behind a pulpit-like control area, containing a set of simple levers (like a mixing desk) for each player.

In front of them is a large screen, split up into horizontal thirds, defined by a particular colour. The player on the left has control of the left block of colour (vice versa with the right player), with the block in the centre of the screen being the target colour.

As mentioned before, each player has three levers, each controlling either red, green or blue – the resultant colour-mix combination chosen by the players’ movement of the levers being displayed on the screen.

The aim is to match the target colour quicker than the other player.

All simple so far, but with each progressive round, the levels become more optically-challenging, with angled and animating elements, resulting in a very difficult task for the player.

Mackaay tells of how addictive users found the experience, much to his amazement – ‘they would stay and play in the lab for between one and two hours, go for a night out out, get drunk etc, and come back to the lab to play the game some more’.

Fundamentally, the game provides a zone of decision-making relating to its tasks, but when you get to the further levels, it takes you to an area outside your zone of perception; a challenging area, where you know you’re in control, but where you no longer get sensory feedback for the decisions you make. This a very important mental condition in which we still persevere, but tend to, in the process, hit the target almost randomly…

Games such as this allow us to move outside our sensory zone of comfort, without the risks normally associated with doing so.

The second game, Organum, focussed on proposing alternative ways of being and interacting in the world, using sound as a platform for these new behavioral possibilities;

Here, using their voices, musicians / players were asked to navigate through a system of tunnel-like organs of a human body, shown on the screen in front of them.

Each player would navigate by singing, speaking or generally making experimental noises into one of three microphones, which control either the x, y or z element of movement. Organum would respond to changes in both tone and volume, allowing the player to become confortable producing a series of personal sounds, allowing them to navigate through the tunnel systems in their own way.

The most interesting element of this game was in the bringing-together of multiple people to play as the different axes of direction; a beatbox mc, a classically-trained singer with an incredibly wide vocal range, and a Tuvan throat singer. The game worked on a number of different levels: game, team and audience. Game: a series of tasks had to be completed (players had to work together to successfully control the thing and navigate through pathogens / hoops using movement). Team: a social performance between three players, developing their own unique dialogues and systems of communication. Performance: a live musical composition to an audience.

Niemeyer stated the importance that the game had self-extracting rules that people get engaged in and would gradually discover over time, thus slowly unearthing the meaning of the game. In the end, there were no instructions to this game; just 5 microphones in a room with a screen. So, as well as this, people would also develop their own set of rules on the fly, implied through the type of sounds they and their fellow players would make, naturally cohabiting the soundspace and finding a way to progress.

To conclude this game, Niemeyer gives a great story of how three young sisters come and play with Organum one day, having a great time, though later returning home. The next day, the parents of the children call up saying how upset their daughters are; they’d been singing to their television set all morning but were extremely disappointed with the lack of sensory feedback they were receiving! A great showcase of how important it is to children for the media to acknowledge your presence and respond to your wishes.

Moving back to the colour game, creator Joe Mackaay, through having played the game intensely, became really rather good at it, touring round the country and offering to set it up for free if only to give himself the opportunity to play it again.

However, he gave the analogy of completing a video game – upon its completion, he always came away with the sense that he should have spent his time more effectively; spending the equivalent amount of time playing the piano would’ve resulted in his being able to better play the piano, instead of forking out another £35 to learn and perfect a totally new system of control.

Therefore, he came to the conclusion that this game, as good as it was, and as good as he had become in mastering it, had given him a very specific new skill, and he thought it unfair that it might only ever be utilised within the confines of this particular iteration of the game system. Hence, he set out to create a new, more advanced game, based on the existing base UI, that sought to utilise the skills he had already mastered previously.

While out biking in the foothills of Berkeley, Mackaay became astounded with the colour and variability of the sunset. This seemed to him the perfect basis for leveraging his existing ability and, in a way, set the basis for creating the ‘final level’ of the game, if you will.

Using the same hardware, he took it out of the room and projected it onto the side of a white barn in the hills. Now, instead of solid block colours, he had three colour gradient fields, which he would mix live with the ever-changing sunset backdrop. He could not only set the colours of the fields, but also the y positions of where they met, allowing for much greater control. However, the background wasn’t just a simple sunset. It also featured simple manmade features, such as a telephone line, and a silhouette hillscape, so sprites were added to the projection for added authenticity – stars were also added slowly as night fell.

The recorded 35 minute performance starts with a little too much ambient light, but as darkness sets in, the illusion begins to take place, and it really feels like the projection is part of the actual sunset backdrop.

He ‘intervened’ (he calls this game an intervention, not a performance, as it wasn’t advertised – he could just ’show up’) on five occasions, becoming better at the game with each iteration, going back to the studio to rewrite the code so he could do more interesting things, such as adding particular effects and functionality.

The third and final user interface system that I’ll have a look at here physically connects the body with the central device. The sense in question regards that of balance – when people get older, they tend not to exercise their sense of balance too much, leaving them at greater risk of falling over, and thus increased risk of injury. The game was thus developed to help improve and perfect peoples’ sense of balance.

Interestingly, the idea, though soon to see the light of day in the commercial world as a manufactured product of Nintendo, was originally targeted by Sony, but something must’ve happened for them not to take the idea further.

Regardless, the game is set up so: player stands on square brown board about half a metre wide, in front of a large screen. The screen shows a top-down view of the same brown board (3D board) in the centre of a simple 3D space, surrounded by four differently-coloured rings, one at each of N, S, W and E. As soon as the player stands on the board, the board on the screen instantly reacts according to the weight distribution placed across the player’s board, angling itself in an analogue direction relating to the player’s current weight distribution. Seconds later, a ball drops from above the board, down onto it. The colour of the ball determines which of the four hoops the player should aim to bounce the ball into, hence in what direction he/she should target the ball and therefore where on the board the player should place greatest weight.

Though very intuitive, each player shown took their time to get used to this new user interface – some got frustrated, while others took their shoes and socks off, and persevered quietly in front of the audience. As the player got used to the system and completed the ’simple’ first round, the tasks became increasingly more challenging, with the hoops beginning to rotate around the board, and moving closer to and further away from the centre.

This was a fun, challenging and innovative use of a natural unconscious body process, that, if used regularly, would surely help the balancing ability of people of all ages. Nintendo certainly seem to think this way…

Here we’ve seen a number of games with innovative user interface systems that give people an environment in which they’re able to explore outside of their normal sensory boundaries. Whether all these games will explicitly ‘improve’ those who use them is perhaps a difficult question to answer. But regardless, for each new player, a new environment was experienced, in which trust was given, and a new game-specific skill would thus develop – whether or not it should be the primary aim to leverage this skill for more practical use is worth questioning, but the fact remains that for each new experiential environment created, an innovative source of fun and enjoyment is also made. If nothing else, such experiences can only help to highlight and give focus to the natural game-playing nature of human beings and animals alike.

Well, in a way, what with the ribot site itself being launched last month, this is more of a second meeting – a familiar friend, if you like…

This blog area of the ribot site, tucked away to a degree that, though it’ll keep the same layout and format of the exisiting site, will be distnguishable by its darker, more laboratory-esque hues.

We intend to cover a variety of topics in this space, from UI tidbits, things we find inspiring and refer to when in need, interesting new developments in the mobile space and beyond, to reviews and breakdowns of events we’ve been to, and other such things that will make themselves apparent with time.

Fundamentally, if nothing else, this area will become a central repository for all the things that make us tick – a place to which we too will come to seek reference and stimulation.