Mobile UI: How to "translate" a web site into a mobile site

Attendeed:

• Jill MacNeice
• Danny Yang, working on a physical activity helper
• Rajiv Mehta, Zoomlife, solutions to help people with chronic diseases to stick to therapies and metrics
• Andrew Chen, Mohr Davidow ventures, funding for digital media and several mobile companies
• Sean Kung, Stanford Univ, medical media and info tech, elearning, medical
• Fred Raab, Univ of Cal San Diego, School of medicine, mobile apps, formerly of Lifestock
• Adam Tolnay, visiting scholar at Stanford, social approaches and financial literacy for teens, games
• Evita Twerdahl, startup company using mobile solutions for autistic people
• Alec Dara-Abrams, Sony electronics, how can cameras be smarter

Questions:

From app developers, there are lots of problems related to lack of uniformity in phones and interfaces, carriers walled garderns...is it possible to create complex mobile apps or are we stuck with SMS?

If you don't have the funding to work with carriers, you need to rely on sms or people's internet web browsers. Rich applications on mobile you have to work through the carriers....

Probs with phones changing every 2 months

Even sms is complex because carriers want to get involved

Either work through the carriers, or work aroundthem.

Using flash, (only 10% of phones) easier to program, easier to port than Java, can get around a lot of questions.

How can you get it past the carriers: in a small setting with flash as a development platform: -- this solves the porting issues. but how do you get it on the phone? either through carrier

• blue tooth, for sharing
• wap pushes, send to eachother
• mixed medium where you put it partially on the web, put the same game on the web and put accessiblity via the phone and it's up to the organization that is running the product to negotiate with the carrier.

Example: a bank, ie Wells Fargo, wants this game, and the bank negotiates with the carriers. Get the elephant to talk to the elephant.

Example: Real Networks is a web games portal. People play these flash games. Very popular, but still have problems working through the carriers...

So: can the elephants band together to create a large organization?

Nokia has invested in supporting flash in the phone. All new Nokia phones will have it.

Flash is also on Qualcom.

There are also aggregators you can work with as an intermediary.

How to find the aggregators:

To use Google map on phone, go to to the site, enter kind of phone and carrier and google can push to the phone.

If you solution helps drive more data the carrier might approve, but might not if they have a competing service.

Sometimes making a sale to a carrier, you lose control of your product -- the carrier dictates what you need to do and you have to keep up with new phones all the time....if you're not ready for that, it's a real problem.

another problem: phones don't share the same interfaces.

solutions must be really easy, such as a pill reminder, how can you design an interface that is easier than taking the pill when things change all the time.

where there is the voice channel.

Examples of things that work well on phone: ie opera browser on nokia phone, sprint's on-demand (handmark).

Either browsers need to get smarter or we need thin client applications like google maps that pull down info in the background, where the website is a content management system.

Discuss several mobile applications that we like and use:

Biggest way the use of cell phone has changed is email. This totally changes how you use the mobile technology. email is an example of a great mobile application.

How does the email interact with the office?

I feel much safer to have freedom because I know if I need to get to the office, or get involved, I can. I'm untethered from my computer and office.

But attachments are an issue: can't read pdf and big ppts.

Also: uses wikipedia on web browser on mobile. this is hard to use on mobile.

you have to scroll forwever.

Amazon is easy to use on mobile. Easy to look up a specific product.

(Web browser is a total pain in the ass.)

Google maps application is good on mobile, you download it. doesn't have all the features you want. Hard to find a restaurant nearby.

Creating email: you write shorter responses on mobile. or look at the email and say: let me call you. a full sized keyboard gives you full sized text messaging. you write words full out on blackberry, but you still write less.

From yesterday, Rachel Hinman: Think access to what's essential, not browsing.....

People don't really browse, they look up the essentials.

You need to solve something for a person, it's access to what's essential, but that's different to different people. Think: what's essential to when you're on the go, instead of when you're at the computer.

think the top 5 things: very actionable things...mini & micro actionable. Lists of to-dos and operational behavior. where policy is set: ie watch blood pressure.

you should probably reduce an interaction to it's essentials for a mobile interface. this is what a web interface should do, ideally, but doesn't have to.

user should be able to configure what the mobile homepage should look like: ie i want craigs list on my phone for weekends looking at yard sales...or if you're looking for apartments...so you want to be able to cut out the parts that you want.

he'll cut out an address at craigslist and email the sms address to his phone and it's a way of sending to to yourself. "send to phone" functionality.

voice: also voice enabled simple searches can be done, or voice to activate some of these....but how is back end voice recognition technology? is it good enough to use as an input device: look at a yak pack approach to this.

What does a wikipedia page sound like read to you?

Voice for search or narrowing the interaction vs voice for returning information. hard to do on a cell phone because there a lot of ambient noise....or use an earpiece. or restrict the lexicon.

• iAnywhere from Cybase, has this functionality via natural language. you say: I need a restaurant on 4th street and it responds with info
• Tellme: an IVR system
• 18003411

successful applications:

• Medio Systems.com startup in Seattle, has distro w/5 systems nationally, including Tmobile and Verizon (?) mobile search since carriers are afraid of google. can use for checking flight times. Put in Delta 644 and will know which airport and return the times, type in weather and it knows where you are gives you weather.
• Mapping, very big, even though the browser experience isn't good
• comparison shopping, take image of barcodes and tags and uses OCR to look up what's nearby or offer coupons.

What keeps this all together, makes mobile value proposition more important:

1. assumption you are mobile and away from computer

2. timing is important

3. location is important

Entertainment is big for teens. They have $ and don't pay bills. This is the biggest category now.

TV on phones: the real problem -- licensing is complicated. You will never have super open content available on phones.

TV based entertainment will adapt to phone -- it won't be 22 min sit-coms.

What does a mobile TV get you that staying at home doesn't. It's commuting. That's why mobile TV has taken off in Asia.

Any place you have to wait: dr office.

U-Tube is video snacking!

Are there interesting, sophisticated games for mobile?

only 4% of people have downloaded a game for cell

5% have ever played the game the phones come with

in last 26 weeks of tracking game usage - 7 of top 10 games is top 10 slots

tetris is the #1 game for years, and it's loaded, it's appropriate for a phone interface.

challenges: most people don't want to play games, the people who play only play the games that are on the phone, it's hard to get onto the top 5 publishers, less you have no chance otherwise.

how do you get the game onto your phone?

there are good flash games out there...but how do you make something that you can put onto your phone? a memory stick (note: flash games are 126 K) you need to get around the wireless carriers.

lots of cool games coming, but innovative delivery mechanisms need to be developed.

it's impossible for individuals, yet thousands of companies work with the carriers and get stuff on the phone.

does it make sense to develop aps for gameboy? they are closed platforms, too.

some companies that work around the carriers:

Admob, ads on mobile devices through browsers. so they don't depends on the carriers.

the numbers with mobile phones are so big, that 1-2 % ofthe US market is plenty good.

Can you do ajax on mobile? the opera browers does something like it.

Good resources:

Book: See Mobile Web 2.0 by Ajit Jaokar, blog: walled gardens

gives context and answers and points to questions of ajax and location based services

for development of games assume mid range phones: Razr and using flash and only will port to top 5 phones in java because costs are too high for others.

only count on standard phone buttons. games stay away from the numeric keypad, you can enter name and high score, but for the play it's 1 click. 1 hand games.