Tag: iPad

Ideas of the week 25th-Nov-2011

This week’s post for the Ideas of the week featuring ideas that might change our world.

 

 

1. Chevrolet Speedometer Design – a design evolution over the last hundred years
Design+Usability+Experience

Speedometers are those kind of items you look at thousands of times during your life, without ever really noticing. You notice the speed, not the meter. And if you do notice the meter chances are you don’t realize someone actually designed it. The company probably even did some research beforehand. Research regarding the readability of typefaces, the right size of the numbers and the space between them. More

 

 

2. After Trying To “Kill Math,” An Ex-Apple Designer Aims To Kill Reading
Design+HCI

Bret Victor thinks that text itself should be as interactive as graphics or apps. And he’s built an open-source Javascript library to help the idea catch on. More

 

 

 

 

3.  Condition ONE iPad App Makes War Reporting Visceral, Terrifying
Augmented Reality+App+News+War

The main feature of Condition ONE is its augmented-reality-esque interaction design. Instead of watching documentaries in a tiny, static video window, Condition ONE plays back full-screen video that you can literally pan and tilt around in by moving the iPad around in physical space. More

 

 

4.  Mercedes: Blur
Marketing+Idea

A brilliant marketing strategy used by Mercedes to launch its new Mercedes-Benz 2012 C-Class Coupe. More

 

 

 

5. Computerised contact lens will keep you up to date with news and texts
Augmented Reality+Tech Innovation

Until now, the concept of info-vision had belonged to the realms of science fiction. However, scientists have developed a prototype lens that could one day provide all kinds of hands-free information. More

 

 

 

6. Aparna Rao: High-tech art (with a sense of humor)
Art+Technology+Humor

TED Talks Artist and TED Fellow Aparna Rao re-imagines the familiar in surprising, often humorous ways. With her collaborator Soren Pors, Rao creates high-tech art installations — a typewriter that sends emails, a camera that tracks you through the room only to make you invisible on screen. More

 

 

 

 

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Meanwhile the idea of the week at our Garage Sale

WhizPhone

A product that helps you manage all your incoming calls – receive, reject or send calls to voicemail – depending on the time of the day or the person calling you. More

 

 

 

 

This week’s post compiled by Nitish Sharma

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The Case for Sales Mobility – an interactive thought paper

Have you equipped your Sales Team with the iCollateral advantage?

Current technological platforms and devices like the iPad with their mobility and multi-touch capability are redefining the potential of the customer’s interaction with your Sales team. Organisations are realising the value added by these devices in personalising the client-sales team interaction and are equipping their Sales Teams with these smart devices. While devices like the iPad are one piece of the message delivery puzzle, the real magic can only be added with the use of dynamic, interactive content that fully exploits the interaction capability of these devices.

 

Operating at the intersection of Design, Technology and Business, Ideafarms understands the value of an interactive experience. Our extensive experience in crafting  Sales Configurator solutions across different verticals also affirms our belief that your client values an intuitive experience that is contextual to her needs.

Our thought paper “The case for Sales Mobility”  [PDF] is intended to be a trigger to start a discussion with your organisation on how your Marketing and Sales functions can maximise your existing investments as well as provide your Sales team with the right tools and applications to win that next deal.

View and Download the thought paper.
(Interactive document Containing videos. Please wait for it to download completely before viewing.)

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Neutralising Applethink

Neutralising AppleThink
Watch out Apple! App publishers choose to go the web-app way instead.

In my previous post about the Smartphone wars -“ Android vs Apple – I had touched upon the point that some people feel that Apple may have adopted a rather restrictive approach when it comes to their devices and the app store.  While consumers have to get used to downloading apps from the Apple store, the deal is not so sweet for the app publishers.

This is what a recent HBR post says –

An interesting battle is looming over Apple’s newspaper and magazines subscription pricing for iOS devices (notably the iPad). Apple’s offer to publishers is simple. They can offer an app that allows consumers to buy individual issues of their content or to subscribe to it from within the app; the publisher sets the pricing. But Apple will take a 30 percent cut of the revenues and it will also require the publisher not to undercut the price offered to iPad app users.

Which is why we now see newspaper and magazine publishers – the likes of Playboy and Financial Times – coming up with an interesting way of bypassing the Apple App Store. These gutsy app publishers have chosen to make iPad optimised websites rather than apps that are downloadable only through the Apple app-store. While for Playboy it might be that they do not qualify for Apple’s strict no-nudity policy, for FT, in their own words –

Firstly, the HTML5 FT Web App means users can see new changes and features immediately. There is no extended release process through an app store and users are always on the latest version.

Secondly, developing multiple ‘native’ apps for various products is logistically and financially unmanageable. By having one core codebase, we can roll the FT app onto multiple platforms at once.

Well Playboy’s and FT’s reasoning does seem to be sound from the user’s perspective too. While with the use of HTML 5, there is close to no compromise on the experience of the app – you can still touch,  swipe and flick your way through the app – the user is also not forced to get tied down to a medium and can access the same content on any device via the mobile web app route. This is also perhaps clear writing on the wall for Apple on exactly what they are doing wrong by having such a strong control over their app store. Clearly where Android seems to be scoring higher points.

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Smartphone Wars

Wanting to buy a touch-screen smartphone, I asked the good people on Twitter for their help in choosing between an iPhone 4 and a Galaxy S 2 and was overwhelmed by the number of responses in favor for Android! There is no denying the kind of support / backing Android has managed to get over such a short period of time. Surely they must be doing something right. Was discussing this with boss-man and I got a smile as an answer. He had of course, yet again predicted this a while back.

So what is it that Android is doing so right, or Apple doing so wrong? The 2 very strong viewpoints I got were –
1. Android is much more configurable. It gives the power in the hands of the user. AND it’s cheaper! “Why throw away your money on iPhone when you can get something just as good much cheaper.”
2. While there is no denying the User Experience of the iPhone devices, a lot of people seem to find the Apple way of working rather restrictive. Even the store manager at a store in Saket said (and I paraphrase) – “iPhone does not give you the flexibility of sharing data. No bluetooth. You can only transfer data to your device using iTunes. And you can sync your device with only one pc at a time or risk losing all your data.”

The restrictiveness of the Apple-way also comes to the fore when we see their strong control over the app store and their continued resistance towards Flash (Adobe). App publishers like Playboy and Financial Times are now coming up with innovative ways of bypassing Apple’s restrictiveness – which may also be quite beneficial for the end users actually. I will try and cover that in another post though.

Lifehacker has also compared the 2 OS from the perspective of a ‘Power User’ in this post.

Apple vs Android (source: Lifehacker)

While the Apple vs Android debate may continue, Ideafarms is backing Android for now. We also welcome your opinion on the topic. Do let us know which phone / OS you prefer and why. You can also join the discussion here –> https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=179127528783537&topic=568

[As for me, I might still end up getting an iPhone but that’s because it’s an old itch I have to scratch. Although I must admit I almost changed my mind 5 times while writing this post :D]

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Use of Augmented Reality for marketing – still a long way to go for India

At Select City Walk (A mall in Delhi) in the main atrium where the regulars would know that they tend to have cars on display, yesterday the car that was displayed was the Ford Fiesta. But there was something different this time and what caught my attention were these big round red booths with an iPad attached to each. Excited to get a first-hand taste of Augmented Reality, all thoughts of meeting my waiting friends escaped my mind and I decided to give this a shot, only to come out extremely disappointed.

Ford Fiesta iPad Booth at Select City Walk – No magic happening here!

So the red booths were spread in a circle around the car displayed in the centre and the iPad in each was pointing towards the car. The so-called iPad app in the car was nothing more than a website adapted for the iPad’s interactions [iPad 1.0 if I may] which was in no way whatsoever utilising the vehicle kept right in front of it. The maximum extent of interactivity available in the app was that you could rotate the car 360 degrees. (I wonder which genius thought that one up since the car was right there in front of you to walk around.) The feature listing was again in a very website format and I was very disappointed because what I had imagined was that you could walk around the car with an iPad in your hand and some “magic” would happen. I asked the guy who was helping you interact with the app there (can you imagine an iPad app that someone has to help you use?!) if the iPad had an Augmented Reality app. He goes, “Ma’am I’ve never heard the term!”

Wondering which company had developed this app, I headed to Google and what I found instead was this video link to another Ford Fiesta iPad app.

Now even this app (not AR) by the same company, is far more interesting and better executed than what I saw yesterday.

And of course we have all seen the oh-so-many marvelous examples of how Augmented Reality is actually used to boost the experience at a car booth.

A few thoughts that come to mind with which I will sum up –

1. Marketers need to understand the real potential of the devices and the technology they are using to be able to come up with truly valuable ideas. Anything else is just a gimmick and more often than not would leave the user feeling irritated thus negating the entire experience that you so painstakingly created for them.

2. India still has a lot of catching up to do as far as tech innovation is concerned – especially in the advertising and marketing space. Infact I wonder if we will ever get there. I don’t know whether the blame lies on the “idea guys” who are pretty much still clueless or the marketing folk who remain tight-fisted and are not willing to part with the moolah. My guess is that it’s a bit of both.