Trends, mobile will enable in 2012

Mobile Payments and Allied activities

Yes this has been a prediction every year and nothing substantial has happened till Square and Google Wallet got introduced. Its expected that the new Android devices will bring NFC devices to millions of users in 2012. Businesses will start pushing offers, coupons and recommendations electronically on mobile phones over the air using internet, NFC tags and QR code. Payments will be the next obvious thing they will do with their phones after redeeming the offer at the Point of Sale. Mass transit companies will also use NFC for ticket purchase, storage and validation. Mobile Payments will be enabled and driven by

• Google: Google checkout is now Google Wallet. All of google's payment services will be focussed on mobile now. Already deployed at their partner stores across US. They are working with Credit card companies and Public transit companies for partnerships; NJ transit to start with.
• Square: Biggest adoption seen till now. Mastercard's strategic investment. Their technology doesn't have dependencies other than internet connection. Most definitely Apple will acquire them
• Paypal: Already started out trials in Home Depot stores for mobile and Paypal credit card payments

Mobile payments will not become a norm in 2012 but users will start warming up to the mobile payment/redemption use cases.

Serendipity

The mobile device enabling you to encounter things as a pleasant surprise. Almost all the contenders are right now in the data collection stage to find out people's likes and dislikes and what all they do. Location based services will drive this as they go on a recommendation mode making way for mobile phones to be the best companion.

• Square: The Card case app has an explore feature recommending places. It alerts store keeper about your presence who in turn will call you by name, get your regular drink fixed, pushes rewards, offers etc.
• Foursquare: Gradually going away from the checkin model to a recommendation service as they have already collected enough information from the checkins. Radar on phones and the new Redesiged explore feature on web is a start.
• Google Places: Currently in data collection mode using Google plus checkins, Location history, Schemer and Google map maker. They are trying to acquire Pinterest (At the time of writing this).
• Facebook: Knows about you quite a bit. Bought Gowalla who was on the path of becoming a travel companion.
• Kevin Rose's Oink: You rate things and not places. Has good potential for Google acquisition.

Big Screens

Phones will get bigger screens. More Phablets will come to the market. Single hand operations will become more difficult, but no one is likely to complain. Mobile phone application navigation patterns will change to anchor more towards the bottom of the screen. OS providers will be forced to get their voice action capabilities right as typing and tapping becomes a two hands activity. Trousers will get bigger pockets. An entire ecosystem will be introduced to handle the user problems the bigger screens create.

Voice Actions

Voice will find more adoption on mobile but not as a virtual assistant. The curiosity Siri created will make users want more of voice interaction with their phones. This will be rekindled coz of the bigger device screens. More and more devices, mobile and non mobile, will start supporting voice. Google will come with a better version of their voice actions and will integrate to all their devices including tv. Siri will come out of beta. Nuance, who powers Siri has already announced Dragon TV a voice control platform for all TV makers. Kinect as a platform will be used in more use cases like retail. Cars will get integrated voice Actions to control media. Voice will be primarily used in relaxed use cases like to control media/games which will improve adoption which will pave for more adoption in the future.

Time, Effort and Quality

I recently noticed that my bathroom floor tiles were getting increasingly dirty day by day. I was not surprised as I clean it only once a month or so, but I quickly realized that its not enough. As usual I started thinking about a possible solution to this like a typical design problem.

I first identified the reasons that stopped me in doing a better job at cleaning

1. Cleaning the entire bathroom took some time. As I usually enter the bathroom at the last minute I skip the cleaning to another day
2. I had to dedicate some good amount of prime time for bathroom cleaning on weekends; which I didnt want to do.
3. I was getting lazy coz of the effort taken for bathroom cleaning. I started procrastinating
4. As I was forced to do it I was not doing a good job of it
5. As I was cleaning only once in a month or so and that too a bad job of it, most of the times the bathroom remained dirty. This brought down my spirits

The main issues that bubbled up from the above points were Time, Effort and Quality and that's what I had to crack; and i came up with this solution.

Clean daily but just one part of the bathroom, and do it well

This takes less time and effort and as a result I can do a good job of it. By the time I finish all the parts the first part would have become a bit dirty, so I start again. After the bathroom is considerably clean, then do it on a need basis, ie clean wherever gets dirty. Its also encouraging for me to see the cleanliness so that i'm more enthusiastic to maintain it.

I think I'm on the right track. My bathroom is a whole lot cleaner now.

Product Lessons Learnt

Don't attempt to design and build a product in its entirety on day one. Have the bigger picture in your mind but take the most important/basic feature and build it with the right depth, quality and polish. Add the just enough ancillary features to make the basic stuff look complete. This will also help to channelize the energy of your resources. Once the first set of features are done well, take the next. Once every feature is done with the desired quality, revisit the first feature and continue the cycle. This will make the product live and remain clean.

Is Google Plus for me?

If you are a regular reader of this blog, use Google reader, attend unconferences; basically a tech fan, then chances are that you will like google plus. But only if you use it the way it should be used.

I made my circles. Now what?

Agreed that the most important thing Google Plus talked about when they started off is the circles. The first thing even i did was to put my friends and family (same FB crowd) in creatively named circles. And then I had the same question. Now what? I waited and waited. Nothing happened. Then i started searching for twitter crowd on google plus added them to a circle called Twitter crowd. Now my stream was full of updates from a regular set of people but not all of the Twitter crowd. All their updates and conversations were around tech. I now gained some ground and started posting tech stuff there and started getting a lot of traction. It was working. At the same time Facebook was full of updates to the effect of calling Google plus a burial ground.

A Social Network is all the about the network of people you have there

I quickly understood that the people using Google Plus are early adopters. And early adopters of technology are of course people who love technology. Previously there were Twitter and Facebook. I used Twitter for crowd sourcing and FB for friend sourcing. I also linked Twitter to FB so that my tweets automatically got posted on FB. The reason being most of my tweets to the open world were good enough to be shared with my friends who were not on Twitter. But when it came to posts on tech and design (google and twitter) i never got much traction in FB. Most of my friends on FB even said they dont understand most of my posts. Also its difficult to have a good conversation on Twitter. Twitter is not designed for meaningful conversations; its unstructured micro broadcast. And that's the beauty of it. And ofcourse the noise rate of Twitter is more. So even if my tech tweets had takers, I didnt know about it or couldn't have a meaningful conversation around it.

So here is the deal. Twitter has general crowd who I cant really categorize into relationships or interests. Facebook has my friends. People on Google Plus are tech.

So add the right kind of people to your circles so you will see meaningful posts in your stream. Don't add people whose last update is about their new display picture.

I have you on Twitter and FB. Shouldn't that be enough?

A friend once told me that he is inundated with my same posts on Twitter, FB, Buzz and Linkedin. Its a valid problem. But I've fixed it. Right now I dont post anything tech or design related on Twitter or FB. They are on Google Plus for the same reasons described above. Also one good thing Google Plus did was to not allow linking of Twitter feed. Which means it has original content. So if you are a tech fan it does make sense to have me in your Google Plus circles and check my updates that are original.

Which circle do I share to?

As I'm talking tech and nothing personal it makes sense to share things Public. The idea is to make my posts available in the open so that someone who is adding me to his/her circle knows what I'm talking about. Also it will be available on Google Search. Google Plus is a combination of the best features from Twitter and FB. It works on a Follow model with a FB style algorithmic Stream/Wall of conversations. I dont add random people into my circle unless i know what they are talking about.

So why should I have family and friends circles?

Going forward all Google products will be integrated with Google Plus. It makes sense to maintain your contacts on Google Plus centrally and not on Gmail. It reduces Google's loose contact problem. If you are a heavy user of google's products you have to be on google plus as early as possible. Google plus is also going to influence Google search in a big way.

Will I stop using FB and Twitter?

No. I will continue using it for the network i have there.

I want some tech fans to follow

The Twitter crowd circle

Android Fans Cirle

Other Interesting People

Square vs Google Wallet

Somehow I have suddenly become a big fan of mobile payments especially because of the cool quotient of how they are being implemented.



I like Square coz they are the best example of being innovative and disruptive at the same time. They identified a problem, ie the inability of smaller businesses to accept credit card payments and came up with a mobile phone based credit card reader, which is cheaper, more handy and easy to use; a solution no one else could even imagine. Once they disrupted the payment segment, they slowly started getting into Point of Sale applications and made them tablet based. The next obvious step was to get onto the customer's phone who pays the bill. Once paid The Square card case app allows customers to pay any Square merchants hands free.



I like Google wallet for being the fun way to pay as they dont really solve any major problem. They are just making it easier to make payments and eliminating the need to carry wallets.

I'm now inclined to compare both the services as they both are trying to revolutionize payments using mobile phones.

1. Square enables small merchants to accept real world payments using mobile phones and not having to go for a more expensive conventional Point of sale systems and credit card readers. It also allows customers to pay using mobile phones.

Google wallet enables customers to make payments using their mobile phones at any merchant who uses the conventional Point of Sale systems. It also allows users to make online purchases (Google checkout is merged with Google wallet now).

2. The Square card case app allows customers to use them only at Square merchants.

Google wallet allows user to pay at any merchant who uses a Pay Pass credit card reader, who is more common.

3. Square applications can be used on any iPhone and Android devices with an internet connection.

Google wallet is currently only available on Android and also on devices with an NFC chip.

4. Square lets merchants to know about their regular customers being present even before they come for paying so that they can given them personalized offers while in the store.

Google wallet only gives the information of the user to the merchant while paying but it can capture and save (google) offers online, even while outside the store.

5. Square applications and the way they work is more cooler than Google wallet. Square allows users to explore stores and pay hands free. Whereas Google wallet looks more like a practical solution.

Is there a winner yet? I dont think so. Both are working to solve different problems and they will definitely get better at it. Square has taken off really well in the US as a credit card reader for smaller businesses but Google wallet is still in its nascant stages as there is a big technology adoption barrier for its usage; NFC.

Updated on Dec 1st

But according to me who will win?

I think Google will win provided more NFC based devices come out. Here are the reasons.

1. Google has a bigger foot print than Square. Google can be quicker in getting their integrations done in countries like India.

2. Even though Square is indeed a better solution for small merchants the customer solution is too cool and dependent on internet for users outside US/UK/Australia to use it.

3. Can my NFC Android phone with Google wallet use the new Beam feature to act as a Pay Pass like thing? ie accept payments by tapping a credit card onto the phone?. That will make a killer feature.

A public Twitter timeline will kick ass

What is Twitter timeline?

If you are a Twitter user, you see a stream of your Tweets and from people you follow listed in real-time order. Twitter calls it the Home Timeline. When you go to another user's profile it shows the User Timeline.

Public Timeline

There is no general public twitter timeline showing tweets from EVERYONE. Twitter had this long back but not anymore. It doesn't make sense. But what makes sense is a public timeline which is curated by trending topics. All the major trending topics mapped against a timeline. Something using which i can search for topics or explore by zooming in into geography or slice and dice by say nature of topic (sports, entertainment) etc. If this happens the Twitter public timeline will be looked up as the World History Wall. If you want to browse through the history and not only know the events, but also read through what the world thought about them and have an in depth analysis. Twitter has a huge wealth of data in their data bases. Its time for them to do something with it. However its not an easy job. The key is in how they are going to visualize the data and make it interactive for people to make read sense out of them.

So what will we achieve?

I will never need to search on Google when and where was the last Olympics held and get a Wikipedia link on it. If I want to quickly know the important events happened last month or during last 6 months which will help me in some decision making this will be the place to go. If i want to know the major annual events of Australia to plan a trip I can come here. And its public, I don't have to be a Twitter user to look at the timeline.

What more?

OK this can be a stretch but Twitter will be in a good position to find patterns and may be predict the future. Or at least it will enable people to do that.

Are you listening @biz?

Bye bye wallet. Well, not yet!

I'm so kicked about Google wallet. Readers of this blog may not be surprised as I get kicked about everything google comes up with. Its disruptive and its also cool. Google describes it as the fun way to pay. Well, i dont think paying can ever be fun :) but I like the fact that i can finally use my phone to make payments by just simply touching on some gadget (the pay pass thing). I'm excited the same way I was when i got my first debit card and went out shopping with it.

The Google wallet app can hold my credit cards virtualized and then i can pay at any store that supports Pay Pass by simply pointing or touching my phone to the payment reader device. Done. No credit card handing, waiting for it to come back and no signatures. In the US you swipe your credit card yourself on this machine and do a virtual signature using a stylus. From now on you just touch the machine with your phone. Of course Google will have to integrate all the credit card companies all over the world to have their virtual cards addable to Google wallet. The have started with Citibank credit cards and soon will be Amex ready. Till then should i wait? No. Google wallet comes with a virtual Google prepaid card to which i can fill money using any credit card.

I have no idea when its going to be available in India. I have seen Pay Pass credit card readers in Shoppers Stop. But never used it. Google India should be proactive in getting Citibank India integrated which will enable Android (with NFC) users at least pay at Shoppers Stop. By then all other stores will be able to keen to get this done at their counters. India is big on Android but not all Android devices have NFC. Thats one more hurdle. The device manufacturers are reluctant to invest in NFC as they dont see people benefiting from it yet. Someone in the line has to take a step forward for others to move. Its a chicken and egg problem. NFC can be used for other purposes also like sharing and checking in. Device manufacturers please do something about it... make people comfortable using NFC. Android Beam is Google's next step at making people use NFC for other than payment.

Google is taking all the steps to make this happen. Google brought out there own phones with NFC built in. They have integrated with Citibank master card but also came up with the prepaid card. They worked with pay pass to make the point sale compatible. They tied up with merchants in the US to ready them to use the latest version of pay pass gadgets. Their volunteers are going to these stores and demonstrating google wallet to the customers. They are working with other credit card companies for integration. They have now acquired Motorola and its a given that all their new phone will have NFC. And this is happening in US now. They have long way to go before making this happen around the world.

So is your wallet (the real one) only about payments? Well i have my movie tickets, loyalty cards, discount coupons, gift cards, metro pass and flight boarding pass in it. Google wallet will eventually have all of them too. Of course your family's picture is already there on the phone. Google literally means it when they say "Bye bye wallet, we will take it from here".

I'm so excited about Google wallet. Next time I go to US, i'll make sure that i go to all the stores where I can pay with Google Wallet and experience it first hand. I can only pray that it should come to India soon.

Steve and my job

The career timeline in my resume is divided into pre iphone and post iphone era. I'm an Android fan but if it weren't for iPhone, Android as we know it today wouldn't have happened. Thanks Steve Jobs for changing my career, teaching me some lessons on user experience and ownership, making my life easier and also making my workplace more happening. You will be remembered.

Why Google TV makes sense to me

My work timings tend to stretch more into the night nowadays and I totally miss the prime time tv programmes. I do manage to catch up some of the re runs of my favorite shows late night or I wait for the weekend. Again I'm completely at the mercy of channels' timings to catch them. I'm more and more becoming unsuccessful at watching tv shows and all the latest movies. #fail

I want the tv shows to apear whenever I want them to happen. By this I dont mean I want all of them to be on You Tube. Today almost all businesses, even movies to an extent, have gone on demand and there is no reason why TV channels cant. Imagine Star World working as it is by default but also works on demand as per our convenience.

I think this is possible if I have access to apps like Hulu (I dont get it in India) or to an extent on You Tube. But then I have to watch them to my laptop or tablet or do some dance to connect it to my television to watch it on bigger screen.

Google TV is trying to help me out here. I will be able to watch live tv as it is or if I want to watch something specific i can search for it on the web or open the channel's video app and watch the show. I can even use it in India too. Logitech Revue is available on Amazon.com for $99 and you can get it delivered in India for $26. I'm seriously thinking of buying this.

Why am I not buying it? Well I have an old tube tv right now, will have to upgrade it to a nice LCD tv and then go for it. Its Ok to wait for some more time as Google TV is currently little low on content. I'm sure it will pick up soon after Ice Cream sandwich release in October after which it will be easy to develop android apps for different screen sizes. There will be more apps for Android tablets and Google TV by next year. Plus Google is currently working with every video provider on the web to make their interface friendly for Google TV. They are also working with every tv channel to make their content available on Google TV as on demand. Content is the big adoption factor right now for Google TV coz I think most of the TV channels dont understand this business model.

I know its a long way for Google to convince every content provider to be on board, have apps, and again they will have to repeat the integration efforts in India for it to make sense to me completely. Currently the problem is that Google doesn't have a lot of users to show the content providers to convince them. Its again the chicken and egg problem. As as Google fan and an early adopter I've decided to be their user as it will only help me in the long run. I can at least browse the web and watch online videos on a bigger screen as of now.

4sq checkin is not just sharing

The other day my friend and me had an argument over foursquare check ins.

Friend: Why are there no foursuqare checkin buttons for the web? Store websites can show it on their mobile sites.

Me: huh dont you know Frousquare doesnt encourage check ins on web?

Friend: Why is that?

Me: For foursquare location is foremost important and they have a very tight control over it using their mobile app. May be the day the entire world moves onto smartphone with html5 browsers they may have check in button on their website. Also may be an external checkin button but they should take care of the location carefully.

Friend: What is there to take care of?

Me: ie the button shouldnt allow the user to checkin unless he is atleast near the store. Also most of the store websites doesnt really have separate websites for different locations. And also oauth etc. It will be messy. It will be easier for users to open the 4sq app and checkin rather than using the web checkin button.

Friend: I dont think the stores are really worried about locations. They just want people to check in

Me: Huh how does it make sense? Their check in based offers are to bring the user to the store. Also semantically a checkin is a way the user confirms his presence in a particular location.

Friend: I dont think so. The stores just want their names to come on the user's Facebook wall.

Me: Actually a checkin doesnt show up on FB. You are manually or automatically SHARING your checkin on FB. Thats optional.

Friend: The 4sq app does allow you to checkin to any place. Then why is that?

Me: Ideally they shouldnt.

We then try to check in to Bangalore International Airport on 4sq and it doesnt show up in the search results. We try again with some far way stores and some of them show up as anomalies.

Me: See what i said. I think the ones which are showing up are just bugs. Its a matter of time before they fix it.

Friend by now goes to his check in history, clicks on a location and fake checks in there.

Friend: See I can

Me: Its called breaking the system. I didnt say you cant do that. But stillit is not going to help the stores

Friend: Why not?

Me: Normally when i share my 4sq check ins on Social Networks, good conversations get sparked on; I genuinely want my friends to know i was there and the stores also want that to happen. If I fake check in, I wouldn't share it on social networks as I have to behave well in the network. So its not helping the store like you said.

Friend: I really think foursquare is just a sharing mechanism. It just have your location with it. Like how you can tag your location with every tweet or FB update.

Me: I dont think so. As i said before, a check in and its sharing are two different things. Foursquare wouldnt want to be just a sharing mechanism like you said as they would then run the risk of losing their credibility and utility.

The day Foursquare loses its control over the user's behavior they are dead. They need to bring in some credibility and authenticity to the user's action. They have the social network etiquettes users follow to help them half way and the rest of the things should be taken care of by technology. In simple terms the whole point of Foursquare is to make people visit places.

Btw I like the idea of displaying QR codes on Store doors, when scanned would check in the user on Foursquare.

The road to disruption

At work my team regularly get together and talk about things happening around us, in the industry, design, technology and business. We call it UX Masterclass. Every member of the team volunteer to talk about something, share an idea, videos or some links. In one of those meets the topic of discussion was how does Apple manage to make every product of theirs a hit with the users. The topic was started with the mention of someone in London already waiting in the que to buy an iPhone 5 which is not yet announced by Apple. We took iPhone as the example (obviously) to get deep into this and the finding was that iPhone was disruptive and also marketed so well, like other apple products to make it an aspirational product.

Then on I was wondering whats the road to a disruptive product by some thinking, reverse engineering, reading and some good discussions.

Ask Why?

I think this is the most important question. The moment we decide to go with set rules and principles we stop thinking differently. The moment we decide to go with evolutionary growth we get idle. Ask "why" at every step. The moment you ask that question you will start thinking in a different direction and you may get a breakthrough. I never believed in blindly going with standards. But it doesn't mean we have to be ignorant about the rules. First know the rules and then break them.

I remember once i was part of a discussion where people were trying to come up with a better and more usable mobile keyboard. I listened to the entire discussion for an hour and the question i asked was "Why do we even need a keyboard? Why cant we talk to the phone and the make it type it for me?"

Solve a problem

The interesting thing about "problems" are that not all of them are visible to us. There are lot of things we do which we dont have to. If we can see them, a problem is born and then we can try to solve them. Asking "why" to everything we do is the best way to find that problem. Self indulgent egoistic solutions which is in need of a problem will definitely have a bad death.

I think iPad was a result of this kind of thinking.

Understand the concept; thoroughly!!

Dont just realize the problem, but also try to get insights into it. Its the insight that will give us the best idea to solve the problem. Its the insight that is more valuable than an idea.

The Square idea was born out of Jack Dorsey's insight into the complex credit card payment system. TESCO's idea of enabling people in South Korea to buy products when they wait for train is another example of an idea coming out of an insight. An idea when copied and implemented without proper insight into the problem you are solving may fail.

Have a strategy

Most of the times your ideas to solve a problem would be too futuristic or using technologies that don't exist or are too expensive. This should not stop you. Think of ways you can go towards your vision with whatever you have today. Set small milestones towards your final goal based on things that are feasible today and get things rolling. Parallely do everything to get the world working for you to achieve your vision; a new market, users, supply, demand, technology, cost, raw materials etc.

Come outside in

If you have an idea to solve a particular problem which you see at the extreme end of an already set system, just focus on that and try to solve that well upfront. Once you have solved that problem there are more chances of the already set system changing tracks to adapt to your solution which could disrupt them. You then may have an opportunity to redefine that space too.

See how Square simplified credit card payment first and is now getting to redefine the conventional point of sale system.