Mobile Futures TodayGetting Mobile Right
Analyzing time-in-motion makes all the difference in life
April 27, 2012 by Brian Philbin
Have you ever driven a car that feels like it was made just for you? Everything is right where you think it should be. The controls seem to be exactly where you would have put them. Executing a task is effortless and easy. Nothing seems to be out of place and everything has a purpose. Now, have you ever used software that felt that way? Odds are you haven’t.
A case in point; I recently migrated from a Windows laptop to a Mac. The old adage, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks comes to mind but I have found it is even harder to teach a dead dog new tricks and I fall into the latter category. Change is not all that it’s cracked up to be and while a Mac is supposed to be “easier” to use it is different from what I’m used to and therefore introduces substantial challenges in the time in motion arena.
Macs use slightly different shortcuts, menu structures, window controls, etc. This is not a huge deal but if you have become accustomed to doing things a certain way and that way suddenly changes it requires thought. Thought takes time and must then be converted to motion. A high-jumper in the Olympics must maintain a very fluid run, plant, jump and clearing motion or they will not be successful. The same can be said for your software and mobile apps.
We’ve all used applications that require you to move from your keyboard to the mouse and back again. We’ve accepted these processes as part of the overall design, but imagine an extreme example to visualize my point. What if each time you typed a word instead of hitting the space bar you had to click the mouse to add a space. How many words per minute would you be able to type? How frustrated would you become with this kind of user interface? I bet it wouldn’t take you long to find a workaround. But why?
Time in motion is the art (and yes, it is an art) of looking at the dynamics of work being done and how to impact the user LEAST as part of that process. That’s right… The goal is to NOT impact the user. Not make it “better” or more snazzy. Just let the user do the maximum amount of work without any delays, impacts or “improvements.” I know this is counter to a lot of what I usually write but hear me out. Do the design right and you should be golden.
I’m sure we all have examples in our daily lives of things that just don’t make sense and there doesn’t seem to be a reason for it. The reason is simple; time in motion was not a consideration of the overall design. I don’t care if it’s ordering a coffee, putting gas in your car, buying stamps, etc. There’s always some better way to do it that would minimize the amount of time people spend doing STUFF that adds no value (or worse, detracts from what they are trying to do).
Keep this pearl of wisdom in mind when you look at mobility. Focus on effective designs (boy that sounds familiar) and consider how the user will be impacted whenever a decision is made and you will be on the road to success.
The Mobility World Goes On and On…
March 30, 2012 by Brian Philbin
I have been remiss in my blogging this year year. Those of us with limited creativity tend to run out of ideas fast and have to recharge our batteries once in a while. Ok, I’ll admit it. I was slacking off. There. I said it out loud. Are you happy?
Meanwhile… Mobility has trudged on with or without me. I finally made the big switch from a Windows Mobile 6.x device to an Android device and have been very happy. But of course, after owning my Motorola Droid RAZR for a few months they now offer one with a battery that will last a full day. I should have waited longer. Or should I?
Each day, week or month that goes by affords more innovation and more new gizmos that can help us in our daily lives. We seem to be losing track of the things we couldn’t do from our phones only yesterday and now they are the minimum stakes to get into the game. I had an interesting conversation with my daughter the other day about cars that mirrors what we see in the mobile market.
The first car I ever owned was a very used 1978 Chevy Nova. I loved that car. It had serious issues but it was my first car so I
Ain't she a beauty?
overlooked all of them (a non-functioning heater/air-conditioner was the biggest issue). That car had nothing special. I had to install my own AM/FM Cassette player (the stock AM radio was not cutting it). It had manual crank down windows, manual locks, no trunk release (without getting out and using the key), manual mirrors (requiring you to slide across the bench seat to adjust the passenger side mirror) and almost nothing you would recognize in a typical car of today. In my first car, cruise control involved wedging your foot just right between the gas pedal and the transmission hump. In short, it was awesome.
This all seems foreign to my daughter’s generation where automatic everything is included or available for even the lowest-end cars. Most people wouldn’t buy a car without air-conditioning let alone a decent stereo and automatic locks and power windows. And even heated seats are now standard on many vehicles, a luxury that would have been very handy back in the days when my heater didn’t work.
The point of this trip down memory lane is simple: we use our mobile phones for things that never dawned on us only a few months or years ago. And more importantly, much like with our car’s features, we cannot remember how we lived without these capabilities in the past. As the available horsepower in these little devices ramps up we see more capability that we just can’t live without. But there is a dark and sinister side to this progress.
I’ve whined in previous blogs that I was promised a flying car by the year 2000. That milestone year occurred more than a decade ago and I still don’t fly to work each day (at least not in a car). The line between work and non-work life has now been blurred by the encroachment of mobility into our DNA. It was easy in the old days (ok, maybe even 3 or 4 years ago) to have a BlackBerry device that was issued by your work but still maintain your own cell phone for personal use. You could easily (don’t tell my boss this) turn the BlackBerry off at night or on weekends to get some time off. That process is completely gone for most people now. You have a single device. It’s your work/life/home/friends/coworkers/family phone. One number, one device and only one way to get in touch with you either via voice or any number of electronic options.
So now my phone, like everybody else’s, is on 24×7. I was used to being on call in a former life. I had a work phone and pager and got called out to find criminals at all hours of the day and night. That was “normal” for me. But when I went on vacation, I transferred the duty to my pal and never looked back. I’m not sure how that works now in the world of constant communications. I guess you never really go “off the clock” these days.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. This is just an observation. After all, I make a living in the mobility market and see the value it can bring, so it’s all good as far as I’m concerned. However, it does make me wonder if when my daughter is my age she will be looking back and longing for the old days. The days where you could get away and not communicate and nobody thought you were odd if you did. Who knows? By that time she’ll probably have a surgical implant for her phone and I’ll bet she’ll have that flying car too.
You never know what heights we'll soar to, with cars or mobile devices.
2012, A Space Odyssey?… The Future From My Perspective
December 20, 2011 by Brian Philbin
As the US tries to cope with the lack of a Space Shuttle (or any other reusable space vehicle) we look to the future and wonder what will be. I’m sure JFK didn’t envision our astronauts hitch-hiking a ride on a Russian rocket to get into space these days, but he probably didn’t envision the massive shift to handheld devices either.
I remember, as a boy, sitting on the floor in my parent’s living room watching the Apollo 11 Lunar Module land on the moon and two astronauts wandering around on the surface of the moon. My grandmother was sitting with us and with a tear in her eye remarked that she had now seen everything. I didn’t realize at the time how profound this experience was for her (after all, I was only 7 years old).
Years later I asked my grandmother what she meant and she explained that she was born when many houses didn’t have electricity, indoor plumbing wasn’t widespread and there was no such thing as a TV. Radio was in its infancy and telephones for homes were unheard of. Horses still pulled the wagons that people used to buy ice from to keep their food cold. Cars were around but rare and highways were non-existent. Now she sat watching a man walk on the surface of the moon some 238,856 miles from Earth. The fact that we put men on the moon AND the common folk were able to watch it on a box in our living room was almost too much for her to comprehend in the span of her lifetime. It was the first time in my life that I experienced a true generation gap.
As 2011 rapidly comes to an end and we hurl forward toward 2012, technology is changing in leaps and bounds. Landing on the moon (or watching it on TV in our living room) seems blasé compared to a Smartphone that we can’t live without (and could now watch the lunar landing live video feed on while away from home). There really isn’t a comparison in my lifetime that I can gauge my grandmother’s awe against. Partly because I have been in the technology space since graduating high school and partly because all these changes have been evolutionary steps on a series of related fronts.
The biggest change I have seen in my time on the blue marble is the convergence of various communications, photography and entertainment capabilities into a single device. These devices are now small enough to be held in your hand and have enough horsepower to do practically anything (and not require a tripod or a trailer full of batteries to support). That alone should inspire awe, but it seems we take it for granted.
I often tell people that I started in the communications industry back when we used to call it two-way radio (people who called it “wireless” back in those days actually knew Marconi), or as I like to call it BC: Before Cellular. When I started playing with cellular technology it seemed like a logical progression of the existing radio systems I was used to. As we transitioned to digital cellular, again, it was a logical progression. Phones that started with the ability to only store ~20 phone numbers (without a name attached) progressed to alpha-numeric phone books and then to caller ID and texting. Now we have the convergence of phone, text, contacts, e-mail, calendars, photo albums and cameras, video capture and view, etc. Where does it end?
I think we are a few years away from “beam me up Scotty” capabilities in a Smartphone but that would probably be an awe-inspiring experience for me that equates to my grandmother’s lunar landing experience. I’m not holding my breath but I’m sure Gink (as my dad and uncles used to call my grandma) never imagined men in spacesuits leaving footprints on the moon so, at this point, I’d be happy to be awe-struck. Wishing you all a happy and prosperous New Year in 2012.
Where is the Rugged Device Revolution?
December 14, 2011 by Brian Philbin
As Microsoft continues to stumble around in the dark many of the customers who have committed to Windows Mobile applications running on rugged devices are asking, “What about us?” These companies made fairly substantial commitments by purchasing rugged devices with price tags ranging from $800-$2,500. Many now feel like they are being taken for granted or ignored completely and simple assurances that the rugged device manufacturers will support Windows Mobile 6.x devices for the next five years points out the key problem: What about the future?
There isn’t a week that goes by when I don’t have one of many conversations with customers and prospects who are asking what the next platform will be for rugged devices. Many of these same customers express frustration with the lack of available alternatives to the Windows-based handheld devices. Some have gone as far as saying that if there was ANY alternative they would jump ship immediately because they are tired of being held hostage to the Windows Mobile platform.
With the advent of iPhone and Android phones, and the proliferation of apps for these devices, “good enough” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Having a Windows Mobile rugged device that has a dim outlook for future enhancements isn’t new, but it continues to trouble companies that want to future-proof their investments. On the flip side of that coin, product cycles for rugged devices tend to be very long, making it easy for a company to commit to a hardware platform that they know won’t be obsolete before they deploy it. The dilemma comes when companies have no alternative and no solid assurance that the rest of the industry advancements will not be lost on users due to limited OS support.
Contrary to popular belief, there are still situations that require a rugged device and an iPhone with a “sleeve or 
cover” won’t cut it. Imagine mining, oil and gas exploration, trucking, warehouse or other users trying to do their job in a “hostile environment” with a less-than-durable device. Better yet, what if they need high-volume bar code scanning under any lighting conditions? And don’t get me started about intrinsically safe device requirements for the oil refining and delivery industries. These users groups do exist.
One of the attractions of rugged devices is the simplified support processes they offer a company. I’ve heard hundreds of people say, “For the price of a rugged device I can buy four consumer devices.” The problem is that they don’t actually buy the extra devices and with a consumer product life cycle of only a few months for most phones, you quickly can’t find replacement devices, batteries or accessories and are forced to deploy multiple devices. The iPhone is a bit of an exception to the life cycle woes but it also isn’t exactly cheap or rugged.
Android would seem to be the choice for folks that want to build the next generation of rugged devices. It’s an open standard, multiple manufacturers are building them, there is healthy competition, etc. The problem is that the OS also has a rapid life cycle of evolution making it a moving target. Any device manufacturer considering Android as the alternative to Windows Mobile-based rugged devices will need to address the future proof concerns of the customer prior to pushing their wares. It only makes good sense.
In this day and age of rapid change and ever evolving requirements it seems odd that a device OS that seems to have stalled has become the poster child for long-term stability. How did we get here? And more importantly, how do we get past this point and look to the future?
When User Acceptance Testing Should Become User Exception Testing
November 28, 2011 by Brian Philbin
Many years ago I was performing a QA test suite on some software. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly well until I started to test “outside the box.” I had completed the standard test fare and had begun what I like to call “adversarial testing.” More accurately it could be described as “what if” testing.
Following this process I found a bug that seemed pretty severe to me. If a user entered a valid username but an invalid password the application would crash and burn. The same held true for valid password and invalid username. But when you entered gibberish in both fields you received a lovely pop up stating that your username and/or password were incorrect and to try again. Huh? What’s that all about?
I reported this as a Severity 1 bug (since it stops a user from using the application, at least temporarily) and went about my business trying to break something else. It wasn’t until our weekly bug review that the humor really started. During our review call the engineering team said they didn’t accept my bug as a valid test case and therefore were closing it as invalid. I protested vehemently. “You can’t close that bug, you need to fix it!” Since this was my first time to this rodeo, I was a bit shocked by the reply.
The lead engineer simply said, “That’s stupid. Just tell the customer not to do that.” He went one step further asking, “Why would the customer want to enter the right username and wrong password anyway?” Had he never heard of a typo? What about fat-finger syndrome on a keyboard? Was he kidding?
I quickly learned he was not kidding and had no clue where I was coming from. To be completely fair, I had no clue where he was coming from either, but assumed he was ignorant of what happens to his work when it hits the real world. He wasn’t moved by impassioned speech about customer experience and our reputation, but fortunately our engineering VP was and ordered them to fix it (prior to delivery).
What’s the point?
When it comes to your mobile project you need to use your User Acceptance Testing (UAT) process as your opportunity to mitigate your risk once your solution hits your full user community. Start by testing the proper way to use the application. Ensure it does exactly what it needs to do (and you should know these requirements from your detailed requirements sessions that I have pounded on you about in previous blog posts). Once you have validated that the solution works as promised start the adversarial testing. Test like a user. Find out what happens when somebody enters a typo. If the user is impatient and tries to hit a button 27 times because it doesn’t react fast enough does the app crash? What happens if you remove the device battery in the middle of your test suite? Does the application recover elegantly or is it an ugly scene? Use your imagination. Make mistakes you would never make but real users might, and see what happens.
All of these scenarios will occur with frightening frequency in the field and knowing what happens BEFORE you send the app out to the masses will allow you to either correct the bug and prevent it from happening or prepare your support team for the troubleshooting task. And, remember, “Just don’t do that” is not an acceptable response to any user no matter how silly the issue may appear on the surface.
Brian Philbin
Brian Philbin is a Senior Sales Engineer at Antenna Software. Before I got into the software game 10 years ago, I spent 20 years in field service - field service technician/manager, quality assurance manager, business process consultant, and electronic surveillance and intercept specialist. (That last part is none of your business, so don’t even ask.) I've been in customer-facing roles in some extremely challenging environments across several continents for years. Unfortunately for you, I also have a background as a business process geek and have helped many friends, coworkers and customers see the light when it comes to looking at your current and future processes with a critical eye. A mobile eye. I hope you enjoy my blog. Let me hear from you if you do. If you don’t, well, speaking as a typical field service dude—that’s O.K. too.
More Posts by Brian Philbin
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