Conversational UX = Having a Dialogue

Part of a designer’s job is to tell a story to the user. In designing a conversational UX, you’re telling your story through a direct dialogue, whether it’s via voice with a virtual assistant or via text with a chatbot. You do that by creating a script in a developer-friendly syntax that defines the user experience. A few things to remember:

• Conversations aren’t straight lines. Gone are the days of touch-tone phone tree interactions—there is no single path to follow. That means you have to think about the different ways a conversation could go and anticipate as many variables in your design as you can.
• Responses will vary. No two users talk the same way, so your design should include some flexibility in how to respond. How this works depends heavily on the technology you use and how much natural language it can recognize. In the case of Astrology Zone, we were building specifically for Amazon Alexa, which has a particular structure and recognition pattern. Google Assistant draws upon more than a decade of search data to enable a deep natural language recognition system, so it will understand variations in phrasing more easily. (Siri performs similarly.)
• Users want to feel they are talking to a person. Think about it: Wouldn’t it be awkward if somebody you’re talking too suddenly sounded automated? Maintain a normal conversational tone across each interaction. Assistant even has the ability to add in smalltalk, which can keep the user engaged. With Astrology Zone, we added in messaging that Susan Miller uses to address her followers during sign-off.
• Remember, “Voice” doesn’t always mean just talking. Remember when I said that I don’t like talking? It turns out many people feel that way. Google, Amazon and Apple have responded by adding more visual components into their virtual assistants. For example, Google Assistant recently updated to allow for text input in addition to voice on the phone, which is very helpful when I can’t speak over my babbling baby. You still need to apply the same design approach, however, whether a user is literally speaking or conversing via text. On mobile, virtual assistants provide an opportunity to enhance the experience with visual elements like images, search suggestions, links and app content.

Conversational UX Guidelines Aren’t Fully Baked Yet

Read the guidelines, but bear in mind they may be incomplete. We’re in the early days of conversational design and documentation is still evolving. While my team was working on Astrology Zone for Alexa, we read everything we could get our hands on and spent plenty of time interacting with Alexa. Still, we quickly hit roadblocks with development. Why? I’d written our phrases according to what the guidelines said we could do—but those guidelines didn’t say what we couldn’t do.

I’m sure the conversational UX guidelines will become more thorough over time. In the meantime, if you have time to test and iterate, you can experiment with how phrases should be set up. If not, stick to the exact wording provided in the guidelines to be safe. Be careful with verbs and connecting words. There are only a limited number available right now (fewer than we thought). And watch out for possessives—they’re a pain. We never could get Alexa to understand “yesterday’s” correctly.

Further Exploration Reveals New Insights

As I got more interested in conversational design, I kicked the tires of multiple virtual assistant options. I had the most fun with Google Assistant. It’s by far the most robust of our new robotic-voiced friends. Its app development tool, Actions on Google, is amazing and enjoyable to use (I wish every tool worked the same way).

After being introduced to Actions at this year’s Google I/O, I dove in and was able to create a demo in no time. Actions allowed me to focus on writing interactions and possible responses rather than formatting and more technical aspects of design because the system trains the action for variants with every input. On the other hand, writing for Alexa feels like diagramming sentences.

This exploration led me to see how fast I could make a basic app to tell facts about my baby, and even add in some personality and expressiveness. I also tinkered with making a demo Guardians of the Galaxy experience—and learned that in the long run, you don’t want invocations and responses to be exactly the same. (“I am Groot!” followed by an “I am Groot” response…. And another “I am Groot!”… Trust me when I say this doesn’t work out well.)

Conversational UX Design Tips

Here are a few tips from my time on the Astrology Zone project and my other explorations:

• Provide natural guidance. Create an introduction that tells the user what the app can do and provides some simple suggestions for interactions. Users discover and explore conversational apps differently—they can’t just tap around a screen to find features—so you have to help them out.
• Keep it short and sweet, and let users be brief as well. For example, to initiate a conversational experience, it’s a good idea to allow users to say only the “invocation” (the app name) and some parameters. A user can initiate Astrology Zone on Alexa by simply saying “Astrology Zone Pisces Today.”
• Let the user mess up and guide them back. If an app only states that something went wrong, the user doesn’t know if it was something they did or something went wrong with the app. That’s frustrating. Instead, provide an error message with the reason for the error (wherever possible), along with options the user can select to get back on track.
• Test with multiple people who have different accents and speech patterns. You want to make sure users can comfortably converse with your UI.

Conversational Design Could Improve Accessibility

Users with blindness or visual impairments rely on screen readers to understand and interact with digital devices. On mobile, these readers are built into the operating systems—VoiceOver on iOS, TalkBack on Android devices. Conversational design can help enhance these current features by scripting the user’s experience with the app.

Last year, I worked on a proof of concept for a hospital mobile solution that would make indoor mobile wayfinding accessible for users with blindness or limited vision. I had to think through and write the experience—in this case, the user’s dialogue with the app was in the form of gestures. Imagine if this was pushed further with the use of a virtual assistant. Users would be able to navigate hospital facilities through natural conversation, without the cognitive load of dealing with a standard app UX.

We could also harness these discoveries and disciplines to design for any situation where visual intake of information might not be possible or advisable. For example, interacting with a visual UI on your phone is really not a good idea when driving—in fact, it’s illegal in many places. In the near future, apps may switch to voice-only conversational UI when driving is detected.

After all of this exploration and experience, I’ve come to believe that voice and conversational design will soon be an essential part of UX. I look forward to building even more in the future. In the meantime, check out Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone for Amazon Alexa.

LEARN MORE ABOUT ASTROLOGY ZONE’S ALEXA SKILL

The post Look Who’s Talking Now: Exploring Voice and Conversational UX appeared first on Phunware.

As a marketing tool, content is king—and video is increasingly one of content’s most powerful formats. For many brands, having a presence on YouTube is a no-brainer. But YouTube shouldn’t be the end of your video marketing strategy.

If you’re ignoring the power of a branded mobile app to serve video, you are missing a huge opportunity to own the narrative, block competitive messaging and increase revenue. Here are some of the pros and cons of the most common approaches to video content marketing, along with some ideas for expanding them into strategies.

Why YouTube Alone Isn’t Enough

Many big brands put video content on YouTube. The platform already exists; there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. It’s also free, which saves money on expensive hosting and storage fees. From a marketing perspective, YouTube has a huge built-in audience and big SEO advantages (it is owned by Google, after all). YouTube suggestions also make it easy to identify potential partner brands and competitors.

But YouTube isn’t a perfect video delivery solution. As soon as your content is live on YouTube, it becomes open real estate for advertisers using Google’s platform—including your direct competitors. They can—and will—create campaigns that run before or even during your video. These campaigns may even promote content channels like your competitor’s app, luring viewers away from your video—and YouTube altogether—by using offers and promotions.

Besides these competitive disadvantages, a YouTube-only strategy is higher-risk. What if the algorithms change? What if Google starts charging for the service? Diversifying is good—just ask your Financial Advisor. And speaking of finances, another YouTube limitation is that it doesn’t allow commerce to take place on-platform.

Branded Video Apps: Control the Spotlight

Unlike YouTube, an app gives you total ownership and control over your content. You can choose to enable or disable monetization (advertising) and select the partners whose brands align with yours. Want to open an additional revenue stream with subscription video on demand (SVOD)? Go for it! Want to leverage location services to make video campaigns more targeted and relevant for your users? Do it! A good app makes good video content marketing even better.

Owning your video channel through a mobile app gives you more power to influence the user path, redirect viewers to a product purchase page, engage with push messaging and harvest advanced analytics to better understand user behavior.

YouTube and Your Mobile App = Perfect Together

Even with an engaging and popular app, it is probably not wise to ignore YouTube altogether. Find creative ways to use YouTube to drive your audience to your app, where you can engage, manage and monetize them.

You can also make your app and YouTube work together to expand your audience. Your mobile app users might not realize you have a YouTube presence, and your YouTube fans may not realize you have a branded mobile app. Use compelling content to cross-pollinate between platforms and increase user engagement.

The trend is clear: mobile video consumption is on the rise, and you can’t afford to miss out. Keeping your brand marketing up-to-date and nimble is just as important as protecting and growing your bottom line. When it comes to video, pairing YouTube with your own mobile app is a smart way to create campaigns that are greater than the sum of their parts.

To learn more about how Phunware can upgrade your mobile video marketing initiatives, explore some of our ready-to-launch solutions by industry, or explore a more customized approach, contact us.

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Businesses don’t ask for proposals for point solutions or products they can buy off the shelf. By their nature, RFPs are strategic—they’re for finding custom, long-term solutions that fit in with the soliciting company’s larger vision and goals. If you’re structuring an RFP, do it thoughtfully and carefully. The requirements you put forth can significantly impact the quality of the mobile solution (and partner) you end up with.

I have already discussed the importance of understanding mobile as an iterative cycle and suggested ways to structure your org and team for success across that cycle. Given that branded mobile application portfolios tailored to richly defined mobile application experiences have the power to drive enterprise-wide digital transformation, let’s discuss how your procurement group can structure RFPs to facilitate that transformation.

If you plan for the full mobile lifecycle at the RFP stage, you will be able to find a mobile partner who doesn’t just build your app, but can help you acquire, engage and monetize your mobile audience in line with your business goals.

Mobile RFP Requirements for the “Strategize” Phase

In the mobile application lifecycle, the “Strategize” phase involves defining the amazing experience you want users to have with your app, then outlining use cases and feature sets.

If your project is complex enough to necessitate an RFP, it’s important to select a partner with proven success in similar, equally complex projects.

To uncover indicators of a bidder’s experience and capabilities, ask for examples of:

• Custom flagship applications / application portfolios for known brands. This demonstrates credibility, along with creative and technical expertise.
• Live event applications supporting live-streaming video and other real-time content. This demonstrates that the bidder has robust, stable technology and the ability to integrate with third-party providers.
• Successful in-venue mobile experiences at stadiums, hospitals, etc. This demonstrates the technical capabilities required to integrate with a host of hardware providers to create a seamless, engaging mobile user experience. Bidders should be prepared to support location technologies including high- and low-density Wi-Fi and both physical and virtual beacons.

You will also want to define functionality and feature set requirements in this part of your mobile RFP. As applicable, request the following:

• Simple app content management
• Context-triggered user engagement via push notifications and mobile engagement
• Indoor wayfinding and navigation
• Video streaming
• Campaign and app analytics
• The flexibility to integrate with multiple third-party software providers (such as customer relationship management [CRM] platforms, electronic health record [EHR] systems, loyalty, commerce, etc.)

Mobile RFP Requirements for the “Create” Phase

During the “Create” phase of the mobile application lifecycle, you bring your app to life in the way that makes the most sense for your budget, timeline and in-house capabilities. Depending on your unique timeline and goals, you can expect a mobile solution to cost anywhere from $100K to $500K (if you’re licensing software), or $1M to $5M (if you’re building a completely custom application).

If these numbers seem high, think about how much you allocate to other channels (email marketing, field marketing, etc.). Now think about how much time your target customers spend in those channels relative to how much time they spend on mobile. This simple exercise in perspective will help you see how worthy of an investment you’re making.

A word to the wise: avoid the temptation to go with the cheapest technology option, which may come disguised as a so-called “write once, run anywhere” codebase. Non-native development is a shortsighted non-solution to a very real problem, and bidders who propose HTML-based or other non-native development will not be equipped to support you through the mobile lifecycle. Look for a bidder who proposes a native mobile solution, built to the design standards of each platform and leveraging the uniquely mobile capabilities of each operating system and device. (Here are those design standards, if you’re interested: Apple Human Interface Guidelines, tvOS Human Interface Guidelines, Google Material Design, Android TV Guidelines.)

Mobile RFP Requirements for the “Launch” Phase

During the “Launch” phase of the mobile app lifecycle, you work to get your app noticed and build the audience that will use it. This requires a partner with robust performance marketing and data science capabilities. Make sure that your RFP requests detailed information on how the bidder will support app discovery and user acquisition, backed by real-world examples of launch and audience building success with other apps.

Also make sure to request a thorough explanation of the bidder’s customer support approach during and after the launch period. The more complex the project, the more support you should expect and request.

Mobile RFP Requirements for the “Engage and Monetize” Phase

In the “Engage and Monetize” phase of the mobile application lifecycle, you map out how you intend to keep app users engaged and drive revenue through your mobile efforts. There are many options—from a simple download charge or subscription model for your app to in-app purchases, in-app advertising, driving sales and foot traffic via contextually relevant messaging and more. And all of it generates troves of valuable data that you’d be foolish not to leverage.

To identify a prospective partner who can appropriately support this phase, your mobile RFP should ask that bidders describe their background in supporting:

• In-app monetization with various ad formats as well and a top-quality network (if relevant)
• In-app purchases and loyalty program integrations
• SMS-based marketing campaign planning and execution, as well as the features and capabilities of any contextual marketing tools offered
• Leveraging contextual data to impact marketing, operations and other business-critical initiatives

As you can see, the earlier you start planning for all phases of your mobile application lifecycle—particularly by addressing them up front in your RFP—you not only streamline the process, but increase your chances of driving real returns on your mobile investment.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series on how to position your organization for success across the mobile application lifecycle—in essence, get your head right, get your team right and get your RFP right so you can find the right mobile partner. The mobile space is inherently partner-driven and collaborative, but there’s nothing worse than being stuck with a mobile provider who can’t (or won’t) act as a strategic partner.

For more tips and insights, feel free to get in touch. In the meantime, why not learn about the ins and outs of the mobile app lifecycle? Download our eBook on the subject below.

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The post Best Practices for Writing a Mobile RFP appeared first on Phunware.

Increasingly, the only way to deliver that in-demand experience and journey is through “authentically mobile” experiences—those that are only possible on a mobile device. That means your organization must take a mobile-first, native-first and fully integrated-first approach to the mobile lifecycle. Mobile is the first screen today—not the second, the third or the companion screen—and experiences that fail to leverage the unique native capabilities of mobile fall short of user expectations. Mobile internet traffic has surpassed desktop traffic, and 85% of it is in native applications—not mobile browsers such as Apple Safari or Google Chrome. Your focus should be on native mobile applications first, mobile web second and traditional web last.

Because mobile has such transformative power, all functional areas should have a role in the success of mobile application portfolios—from Marketing to Facilities to Finance. Let’s explore where those functional areas fit into the mobile application lifecycle and what you could gain by structuring your organization for success in the mobile era.

Who to Involve in Mobile Application Lifecycle Management

In the early days of mobile applications, it was possible (not advisable, but possible) to treat mobile as an isolated tactic and channel. Before mobile use was ubiquitous and brands really understood how to make mobile data actionable, you could get away with treating mobile as another marketing avenue like PPC or direct mail.

Those days are long gone, however, and mobile applications are no longer siloed or set-and-forget. Even the simplest mobile application lifecycle now involves a complex interplay of mobile technology, media strategy and data science, and can impact areas of the business from marketing to operations to facilities planning alike. Here’s who you should always involve in your mobile planning and initiatives to ensure that you are always surfacing—and able to act on—all of the insights mobile can power.

Group 1: Mobile Team

Your Mobile team (it may be called the Digital or Virtual team at your organization) will define the value your brand will deliver to users through its mobile portfolio—entertainment, utility, information, etc.—and how that value will be brought to life in a mobile application experience. They will determine the devices (smartphone, tablet, watch, TV, etc.) and operating systems (iOS, Android, both, something else) your application should run on. Presumably you plan to achieve some business goal with this mobile initiative, such as generating revenue, increasing brand awareness, driving foot traffic, engaging Millennials, etc. Your Mobile team will be responsible for figuring out how your application will achieve that goal.

Now, you could feasibly stop here. It would be woefully misguided to do so, but you could actually build and launch an application with only your Mobile team. How would you build, engage and monetize your audience, though? How would you develop and act on the insights and data available through your application, both indoors and outdoors? By involving your Media and Data teams from the outset.

Group 2: Media Team

Your Media team should be there from day one to make sure you have appropriately strategized how you will build, engage and monetize your application audience. With literally millions of other applications to catch their eye, you can’t depend on your users to randomly discover your app on their own. Organic, viral application discovery tends to happen by accident. You should assume that mobile audiences are overwhelmingly built through paid user acquisition (UA) campaigns and tactics and expect to invest in performance-based audience building campaigns to acquire your app users. It will be critical to understand the lifetime value of each user so you can determine what you are willing to pay per user for your expected return on investment (ROI).

Post launch, it will be up to your Media team to monitor which of these campaigns is performing best so that you can then optimize your ongoing spend accordingly. You don’t just want to drive app downloads or brand awareness as part of this process—you want to acquire the users most likely to engage and spend in and through your application.

Group 3: Data Science Team

Your Data Science team should be there to plan what data you will collect through your application and how you will use it not only to optimize future versions of the application, but also business processes, marketing strategy and a host of other initiatives not traditionally thought of as “mobile.” Data is key to preserving and expanding the mobile revenue streams associated with your application audiences over time. Your ultimate goal for these mobile engagements and interactions should be to deliver the right action at the right time to the right user based on who and where they are and what they like and don’t like, on a 1:1 basis, indoors or outdoors, in real time. The key to these insights is data: their usage behavior and value to your brand.

Learn more! Download the eBook Mobile Data: the Missing Link in Your User Acquisition and Engagement Strategies.

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A smartphone is a digital device, but it moves through the physical world and is embedded with technologies, like GPS and accelerometers, that mobile apps can leverage for richer experiences. Additionally, mobile apps generate valuable data as users interact with them. Each interaction (or “event”) results in a data point—complete with location—you can use to improve and tailor the mobile experience. The Phunware platform, for example, grows by 40 billion events per month, thanks to the 700+ million unique devices touching it through more than 5000+ application portfolios.

These mobile events and data points are actionable far beyond the mobile channel. They can (and should) impact marketing strategy as a whole, media investment, operations planning—even real estate decisions. For example:

• Operations. Leverage data from mobile location-based technologies like beacons to streamline inventory control in a retail environment, monitor and manage patient traffic patterns in a hospital, or speed the flow of passengers through an airport or cruise terminal.
• Marketing. Use data from your mobile campaigns and app engagement to understand what offers your users care about, what app features they value, and where they live, work and play. Optimize your entire marketing approach based on these deep insights.
• Revenue. Mobile is a powerful channel for e-commerce, of course, but can also serve as revenue-generating platform through in-app media monetization and mobile engagement campaigns that drive real-world purchase conversions with full attribution at retail point of sale (POS).

Finally, your Legal team plays a role in brand protection, privacy and intellectual property enforcement, while your Facilities team plays a role in physical infrastructure investments needed to support authentically mobile user experiences—such as high and low density Wi-Fi, virtual and physical beacons and bandwidth.

Mobile as a channel goes far beyond the device in your users’ pockets…but it’s up to you to make sure you are tapping the right teams at your organization to take advantage of mobile’s reach.

Structuring Your Team for Mobile Application Lifecycle Management

Now that you know which groups to involve in mobile application lifecycle management, let’s take a minute to discuss org structure. Your Mobile, Media and Data Science teams are likely separate and siloed under these leaders:

This is normal—companies don’t set out to exist in silos, but unless you make a concerted effort to merge them, application, media and data science teams will likely remain separate. This separation is something you will want to address quickly, however, if you want to create and maintain a competitive advantage at that high value touchpoint between your brand and your anytime, anywhere audiences and communities on mobile. Importantly, the companies seeing global, enterprise-level success in mobile have these same three teams, but roll them up under one person who oversees and manages them as an integrated unit:

Every company aspires to have a CDO, CMO and CRO, but even without these roles, it’s critical to have one executive at the top of your organization with direct or dotted-line oversight of those controlling mobile, media and data. If you’re not working in synergy and driving towards the same goal through every stage of the lifecycle, you’re leaving significant money on the table.

Check back soon for the next installment in my blog series, where I’ll cover how to structure an RFP to find the best mobile lifecycle management partner.

To learn more about best practices at every stage of the mobile lifecycle, check out this eBook: Mobile First: Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success.

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The post Organizing for Digital Transformation: The Role of Mobile Application Lifecycle Management in Maximizing the Customer Experience and Customer Journey appeared first on Phunware.

Across the U.S., mobile app usage continues to expand, accounting for the majority of internet users’ digital media consumption (comScore). Brands are starting to get on board—73% of U.S. marketers surveyed in August 2016 said they plan to increase their spending on mobile within the next 12 months.

Unfortunately, investment in mobile still fails to match consumers’ interest in the platform, a gap that represents a $22 billion opportunity in the US alone.

As mobile reaches maturity, organizations must stop thinking about it as a menu of isolated tactics like monetization, mobile app engagement, location-based marketing and so on. Instead, by thinking about mobile in terms of a lifecycle, we can understand and capitalize on it much better. Let’s explore why that is, what the mobile application lifecycle entails and how you can take control of it at every stage for maximum benefit.

A 1000-ft View of the Mobile Application Lifecycle

Regardless of the purpose it’s intended to serve, every mobile initiative has a four-stage lifecycle. The sooner you can understand these stages, embrace them and begin to organize your team and processes for success in the era of mobile (more on those topics in my next blog installments), the more handily you will be able to crush your competitors. The four stages of the mobile application lifecycle are:

1. Strategize

In this phase, you define the amazing experience you want users to have with your app. You outline use cases and determine the feature sets your app should offer.

You decide which devices (Smartphone? TV? Watch?) and operating systems (Android? iOS? Other?) you want to serve.

It’s also important to identify early on the infrastructure and bandwidth needed to support the experience you want to create. For example, if you know you want to build a patient wayfinding application for your hospital, do you have the wireless infrastructure in place to support this experience? If you want to provide proximity-triggered in-app promotions to users at your retail store or stadium, do you understand the hardware requirements for these use cases?

Finally, it’s critical to involve the right groups from across your organization as early as possible.

• Your Mobile team (it may be called the Digital or Virtual team at your organization) should drive the definition of the mobile experience and how it will be brought to life in your app.
• Your Media Buying team should be there from the outset to make sure you have appropriately strategized how you will build, engage and monetize your application audience (more on this below in Step 3: Launch).
• Your Data Science team should be there to plan what data you will collect through your application and how you will use it not only to optimize future versions of the application, but business processes, marketing strategy and a host of other initiatives not traditionally thought of as “mobile” (more on this below in Step 4: Engage and Monetize).

2. Create

In this phase of the mobile application lifecycle, you bring your app to life in the way that makes the most sense for your budget, timeline, inclinations and capabilities. At a high level, these are your options:

• If you have the capability to build your app in-house, you will likely want to license app components (usually in the form of SDKs, APIs and portals) and use your own engineering team to incorporate them into your application. Licensing application components is also the most budget-friendly option.
• If you don’t have the inclination or capability to build your app in-house, licensing a pre-built, brandable application is an excellent choice. Customizable app solutions are relatively inexpensive and offer quick time to market and low total cost of ownership. And if you choose the right partner, they don’t look pre-built at all.
• Of course, if you have the budget to do it, you can work with a partner to build a custom app from the ground up, with all of the bells and whistles you desire. At this point, it’s only a matter of picking a partner with proven expertise, stability and scale. (More on this topic to come in a future blog post about best practices for writing mobile RFPs.)

3. Launch

This phase of the mobile application lifecycle is where you facilitate application discovery and user acquisition to build the audience that will consume your mobile application. Your Media Buying and Data Science teams will play critical roles here, as performance-based audience building campaigns will be one of your main tactics. Finding the right—read: high-value—users for your app requires a thoughtful, data-backed media buying strategy.

4. Engage and Monetize

Finally, plan for how you will drive revenue with your mobile efforts. This may be as straightforward as charging for your app or offering in-app purchases of physical or virtual goods—but you should also plan to explore other techniques as appropriate, such as:

• Monetizing your app’s real estate through banners, interstitials and other paid media units.
• Leveraging the native capabilities of users’ smartphones to power contextually relevant messaging that drives foot traffic and purchases, both online and off.
• Using the data that accumulates as users engage with your app to inform and optimize engagement, integration and monetization approaches as well as future iterations of the app.

Many businesses successfully complete steps 1-3, but stop at step 4 because they think the work is done after the app is in the app marketplace and downloads are trickling in. This line of thinking is akin to devoting significant time and resources to design and build an automobile and get it to the dealership, then neglecting to service or maintain it after the buyer drives it off the lot. Will that buyer feel compelled to purchase a vehicle from you again? Will they get as much out of that car—and feel as positively about your brand—as they would have if you had helped them maintain it? Probably not.

Thinking about mobile in terms of a four-stage lifecycle will set you apart from your more shortsighted competitors and prepare you to play—and win—the long game.

What Makes the Mobile Lifecycle Unique?

The idea of a technology lifecycle is not new—it comes to us from the software development world. What makes the mobile lifecycle different is the hybrid digital / physical context in which mobile operates.

Think about it:

• Mobile bridges the physical and digital worlds. A smartphone is a digital device, but it moves through the physical world and includes highly specific geographic location technologies that mobile apps can leverage.
• Mobile straddles the line between customer experience and business solution. An app can serve users with entertainment, wayfinding, shopping, etc. while also delivering value to the business through third-party monetization, process optimization, user data collection and driving real-world outcomes like foot traffic or appointment compliance.
• Mobile use is immersed in the very personal context of the user’s daily life. People carry their phones wherever they go and they interact with apps throughout the day. Each of these interactions results in a data point—complete with location—brands can use to improve and tailor the mobile experience.
• These mobile data points are actionable far beyond the mobile channel. They can (and should) impact marketing strategy as a whole, media investment, operations planning—even real estate decisions. Mobile is not a digital-only channel. It’s an everywhere channel.

Learn more and download the eBook Mobile Data: the Missing Link in Your User Acquisition and Engagement Strategies!

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

How Mobile Permeates the Business

Because of the context inherent to mobile data, the mobile lifecycle can positively impact multiple aspects of your business. Here are a few examples:

• Operations. Leverage data from mobile location-based technologies like beacons to streamline inventory control in a retail environment, monitor and manage patient traffic patterns in a hospital, or speed the flow of passengers through an airport or cruise terminal.
• Marketing. Use data from your mobile campaigns and app engagement to understand what offers your users care about, what app features they value, and where they live, work and play. Optimize your entire marketing approach based on these deep insights.
• Revenue. Mobile is a powerful channel for e-commerce, of course, but can also serve as revenue-generating platform through in-app media monetization and mobile engagement campaigns that drive real-world purchase conversions.

Learn more and download the eBook Bring New Life to an Underperforming App with Location Technology!

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

Mobile affects many parts of your business, so you can’t keep it in a silo. Mobile strategies must be integrated with the rest of your marketing and digital efforts and managed accordingly. Those who still approach mobile on a per-project or per-feature basis are missing out on the full benefits—and are leaving money on the table.

Discover what it takes to close the mobile opportunity gap. Download Mobile First: Harnessing the Mobile App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success for a strategic and tactical model with actionable items at every stage.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

At Phunware, we understand mobile application lifecycle management intimately. We’ve been working in this space since 2009, with deep experience and expertise in leveraging mobile context for business gain. Our Multiscreen as a Service (MaaS) platform is built to provide effective solutions across every stage of the mobile lifecycle.

For more information about how Phunware provides strategic partnership across every stage of the mobile lifecycle, contact us. And don’t forget to check out the next installment in my blog series: Org Structure in the Mobile Era: How to Organize Your Team for Success.

The post Why You Should Be Paying Attention to Mobile Application Lifecycle Management appeared first on Phunware.

We’re proud of our partnership with renowned astrologer Susan Miller and the work we’ve accomplished together for her app, Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone® (available for iOS and Android). She identified a need for a modern, mobile-friendly solution that would allow her most avid readers to engage with her acclaimed astrological forecasts whenever and wherever they wanted—and then identified Phunware as the right partner to help realize her vision of an elegant, unified solution across mobile and web.

Don’t just take our word for it, either: the Astrology Zone app was recognized as a 2017 Webby Award honoree in the Lifestyle category!

To learn more about how our custom solution came to be and what makes Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone® one of the 100 top-grossing lifestyle applications in the App Store, check out the case study. When you’re ready to learn what Phunware can do for your brand or business, let’s talk!

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The post Perfectly Aligned: Phunware’s Powerful Partnership with Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone® appeared first on Phunware.

VR has finally progressed to a point where we’ll be wearing headsets to take in content. Luckily, this isn’t the cyberpunk dystopia we’ve read about for decades, but an environment where we can binge-watch our favorite shows in a comfy spot. VR is all about long moments, taking users in and letting them immerse themselves in content—not just the bite-sized moments we designers have become accustomed to creating. So what will user experience design for virtual reality look like?

Responsible UX Design in Virtual Reality

VR requires building (and keeping) trust with users. Unless it’s on purpose and the user is aware, responsible VR design means not scaring the user or causing motion sickness. It means considering that the user is likely sitting (Google’s research indicates that users will spend 30 minutes or more with a compelling VR experience), and what that means for design: restricted movement and range, limited field of view and so on.

Empathy is already critical to UX design—we’re always thinking about how the user will interact with our apps. In VR, we’ll need to focus even more here to consider VR’s immersive nature and how long users interact. It can be more than quick swipes on a phone for a few seconds—they’ll have sight and sound inputs as well. If the user is surrounded by a scene of family or another calm setting, interrupting the experience with sudden or loud transitions would be jarring, to say the least (I’m looking at you, pop-up ads).

Watch the overview of VR at Google from I/O 2016 to learn more.

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Looking to Games for Cues

For virtual reality user interface, we may take a page from skeumorphism, video game design and even wayfinding. The user needs to feel grounded, so the UI must work with the surroundings, keeping in mind which objects are in different planes. Principles from real-life signage and wayfinding also come into play, like leading the user through an experience and adjusting type size related to distance from the viewer.

Designing a virtual reality UI requires considering the user environment holistically—not only the range they’ll view but the sounds they’ll hear and how to make your brand work in this space in a delightful manner. Using subtle textures, shadow, lighting and movement will help.

Daydream Labs: Lessons Learned from VR Prototyping at Google I/O 2016 to learn more.

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Looking at video game design, there are a few main types of UI to consider for VR:

• Non-diegetic design is often seen as HUD interfaces where the UI sits on top of the scene. Placing elements too close to the viewer’s eyes can create a problem, however, so this approach is not advised for VR.
• Spatial UI incorporates the UI into the environment instead of on top of it.
• Diegetic UI is also part of the environment, whether attached to an object or in the scenery. Both spatial and diegetic UI present opportunities to incorporate more delightful and immersive interactions.

VR is exciting, if also a little intimidating (I’ve never made an immersive 3D world before). But it will empower people to have new experiences traveling, learning and even shopping. Of course not every experience will work as VR, but the experiences that do translate well will be extremely powerful. VR represents a great opportunity for brands to teach their users something with “hands-on” learning or to experience their favorite content in a whole new way. As with any new design field, it will bring lots of changes. Just remember not to make your users nauseous while exploring.

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The post Diving into Virtual Reality with UX appeared first on Phunware.

If you haven’t noticed, the way Americans consume TV and video content is changing wildly. While some of us are upgrading our internet broadband connections to take advantage of every level of resolution offered by a 4K/UHD TV, the younger among us would argue that Wi-Fi and a minimal 4’’ iPod screen are all one needs to enjoy TV (they’re all we need to watch our Netflix shows, after all).  The situation is complicated, involving new and legacy programming models, the expectations and habits of different generations, hardware that never existed before…the list goes on.

First, there are the content providers:

• Traditional cable and network TV
• Subscription services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime
• TV Everywhere services like HBO Go and CW Seed
• User-generated content like YouTube, Periscope and Meerkat

Then, the devices:

• TV
• Desktop / laptop
• Tablet
• Smartphone
• Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Chromecast…

With all of these options available, Americans are beginning to divide into three camps:

• Cord nevers have never subscribed to a multichannel video service like a traditional cable channel lineup and have only consumed video content via subscription services, TV Everywhere or user generated content
• Cord cutters subscribed to cable TV at one time, but have since cancelled
• Cord shavers have one foot in both worlds, subscribing to a reduced number of traditional cable channels and binge-friendly services like Netflix and Hulu

According to a recent study by Digitalsmiths, the number of  cord cutters in North America is growing. In 2014, 8.2% of former pay cable TV subscribers cut the cord—a 1.3% increase over the previous year. At the same time, awareness of and loyalty to cable alternatives is on the rise. The Digitalsmiths study also found that 54.4% of respondents used monthly subscription services like Netflix and Hulu, and they were willing to pay more for these subscriptions than they had been in previous years.

So what’s driving this trend away from traditional TV? The study looked into that, too. Unsurprisingly, cost, customer service and content viewing flexibility were top influencing factors.

Engagement Opportunities for Media & Entertainment

For media and entertainment companies, this is definitely a case of “when one door closes, another one opens.” Viewers might be migrating away from traditional media—but in doing so they are creating a whole new realm of engagement opportunity for brands.

TV Everywhere is a great example of that: as viewers increasingly consume content on handheld devices, TV networks are meeting them there, offering subscription-based programming to be consumed anywhere (under controlled network conditions), from computers to tablets and smartphones to streaming boxes. The projected ad revenue from TV Everywhere and other “over-the-top” (OTT) services is on the order of $40 billion by the end of 2020.

To understand your audience, you need to understand their digital habitat. Here’s some insight into what viewers are thinking about as they deliberate which camp to join (cord nevers, cord cutters or cord shavers):

• There isn’t a perfect alternative. You may need to combine several services to guarantee access to your favorite show.
• Are streaming alternatives really cheaper than cable? Monthly subscriptions are cheaper for sure, but after combining your services a la carte, you may spend just as much (or more) as you did on your old cable bill.
• Oh, live events! Live events are not easily transmitted via services like Netflix and Hulu, so your only options for viewing your favorite games live may still be on a local / cable channel or at a sports bar.
• Do you have the power? You may need to upgrade your bandwidth to ensure that your household has access to high-def content.

As complex as the situation is, we may need to add a fourth consumer type here: the smart viewer. These folks know their options and have chosen the best one to meet their lifestyle needs and preferences. The availability of content, providers and mobile technology is forcing this change—now it’s up to brands to keep evolving in ways that clearly benefit their viewers.

The post Cutting the Cord: What the Shift Away from Cable Means for Media and Entertainment Companies appeared first on Phunware.

Here’s the problem: You’re not in the business of building and scaling mobile apps. Neither is your IT department—they have plenty of other issues to address.

What usually happens: mobile app mishmash

Many live-streaming mobile apps are simply cobbled together with in-house content, along with streams from various live stream, media on demand, live replay and highlights vendors. The problem is, these solutions generally don’t perform to the organization’s standards—or the audience’s expectations.

• 1. Scalability capabilities and cost
• The scalability issues come down to capabilities and cost. The fundamental challenge is that scaling streaming content simply isn’t a core competency for most vendors—or for most media / sports / entertainment companies either. Most do not have the necessary expertise, architecture, resources and infrastructure stability. In many cases, they’ve never actually done it before. Launching a streaming mobile app isn’t the time to “try things out,” with fingers crossed that everything works as promised.
• Plus, when you ask multiple vendors to scale for you, you pay multiple vendors to scale for you. Therefore, your costs spike exponentially. For example, let’s say your app home page features five different streams in a carousel. In this case, a simple “get home page” request translates to five different requests—one for each feed vendor. One million requests X five vendors X the cost per request = your budget goes out the window.
• 2. Poor fault tolerance
• In our cobbled-together scenario, whenever a vendor changes something in its code—such as the object structure or rules in a single replay stream—the app is likely to fail. This change actually requires a change in the app’s code, which means the developers will have to submit updates to the app marketplaces (the App Store, Google Play, etc.). Then, you either have to hope that people download the update or force them to update in order to continue using the app (a last resort which generally irritates users). There is no built-in failsafe to prevent small issues from becoming big ones.
• 3. Too much client-side burden
• When you develop a live-streaming app with multiple different data sources, there’s no standardization in the meta-data about the video. Each vendor does it differently. Handling all of this variation demands a lot of client-side logic. That’s okay when you’re dealing with a multi-core personal computer or digital TV, but mobile devices are not designed for heavy logic processing. Performance will suffer.
• 4. No centralized manageability
• When you’re wrangling multiple stream vendors, each vendor has its own approach to management. To edit which content appears within a home page carousel, for example, you might have to log into each different vendor’s management interface, make changes, and then make the related changes to your own content. In other words, one change can be multiplied by the number of vendors.
• All of these manual steps are exceedingly painful, time-consuming and inefficient. Your team has to be trained on every different interface and management approach, and they must remember what to do each time. Plus, the more steps involved, the more opportunities there are for someone to make a mistake.

The solution? Get it all together.

For maximum results (and minimum pain), turn to an expert development team that has deep experience with live streaming. At Phunware, we’ve learned a lot from working with the world’s largest media and sports properties. Our unique approach eliminates the challenges of dealing with multiple vendor streams by integrating and regularly caching everything in the cloud. Essentially, the Phunware platform makes multiple disparate content sources play nice with each other and with mobile devices. It transforms all of the inputs into one consistent normalized format, available to the app from a single cloud-based source.

Phunware’s approach delivers:

• 1. Affordable, proven scalability
• Our platform was built specifically for scalability, with all the necessary infrastructure and resources. It has proven successful across worldwide streaming apps with millions of requests.
• And because the Phunware cloud integration layer acts as a proxy user, our live streaming apps make significantly fewer requests to the different vendors, thereby dramatically reducing cost.
• 2. Maximum fault tolerance
• Live event delivery systems can and will fail from time to time. With Phunware’s integration layer in place, this failure does not have to break the app. In the case of failure, an automatic alert is sent to the appropriate people who can fix it. In the meantime, the app simply serves the most current functioning stream as a fallback. The user would never even know there was a problem. One of our most successful worldwide sporting event apps experienced 99.9 percent uptime, even with different live feeds failing roughly ten times per day.
• 3. Minimum client-side burden.
• Phunware’s cloud-based approach enables our apps to be much thinner in terms of logic by removing the need to maintain state and knowledge of upstream service layers. For example, in the event that a configuration or structure changes in a critical service, our cloud solutions allow that change to be absorbed by the middle tier and not introduce breaking changes to the client layer. In not so many words, the middle tier acts as a levee for the application from the many upstream services. When issues arise that would normally have resulted in a client-side failure and an app update, all of that can be handled at the service layer in a graceful manner that is invisible to the end user.
• 4. Robust, user-friendly, centralized manageability
• Again, thanks to Phunware’s integration layer, all of the different content feed can be managed with one workflow. Our team can also build customized management interfaces with a convenient dashboard, automated processes, and point-and-click simplicity.

Predictions indicate that video content will make up two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic by 2018. Now’s the time to develop a clear and comprehensive strategy for mobile live-streaming—so you won’t get left behind.

The post Live-Streaming Mobile Apps: What We’ve Learned Working with the World’s Biggest Media and Sports Properties appeared first on Phunware.

The AMC Story Sync Phunware team, including Liz DeMartino, Amy Garrett, Michael Vo, Mamta Bakliwal, Andrew Nunez, Ben Kettle and Jeff Dickey have been working hard to fight off walkers and submit weekly updates.

The application is now featured in the Microsoft Store Spotlight and AMC showed their enthusiasm by sending our team some awesome swag, like The Walking Dead t-shirts, trading cards, action figures and comics!

The AMC Story Sync for Windows is available to download at the Windows Store.

The post Are You Caught Up On The Walking Dead? appeared first on Phunware.

• New Design: Navigate throughout an enhanced visual experience and enjoy the best mobile video player optimized for your mobile device.
• Second Screen: Sync with your favorite shows in real time and interact with this companion app while sharing exclusive content with other users.
• Video Authentication: Register with your cable provider account and enjoy full episodes of your favorite novelas and shows.
• Social: Connect, comment and share videos in real time via Facebook and Twitter
• TV Schedule: Now you can see the daily TV schedule of Univision, Telefutura and Galavision so you don’t miss any show! These new features compliment UVideos existing synced experience, TV Everywhere and Social Integration.

The post Phunware Mobile Application Spotlight: Univision appeared first on Phunware.

Since the debut of Susan Miller’s mobile presence on iOS devices, she has maintained the top position in the ‘top grossing’ Lifestyle Applications. She also consistently ranks high in the Google Play store.

Designed and developed by Phunware, the application provides consumers with their daily horoscope, text message alerts and various other tools to help in every aspect of a person’s life. The free version includes the AstrologyZone Daily Horoscope, access to columns from AstrologyZone.com and Susan Miller’s @astrologyzone Twitter feed.

For consumers interested in more in-depth information, the in-application subscription option to the Susan Miller AstrologyZone Daily PLUS application provides access to premium content. Features in this version include a more detailed daily forecast, important dates to watch in coming weeks and tools to learn about astrology. In addition, the personality section, which aligns a person’s sign to specific aspects in his or her life, includes vacation tips, stress tips, an AstroCar Style guide and advice on fitness routines that align with a specific sign.

“As the population shifted to a more mobile lifestyle, there was a need to engage with my followers on the new devices and platforms being used. My fans are mobile, social and interactive – I needed to be the same. This meant I needed a mobile partner that was knowledge and reliable,” said Miller. “Phunware was the ideal partner, as the company’s platform and expertise was exactly what I needed to spearhead my mobile presence.”

The AstrologyZone application leverages several of Phunware’s 12 modules, which provide any brand with everything it needs to succeed on mobile. These modules include Analytics, CMS (content management system) and Push Notifications.

“For our customers, a mobile presence is a crucial way to engage with consumers and monetize their intellectual property. In Susan Miller’s case, her astrology insights are her most prized component and she needed a way to share this information while ensuring her fans receive the best user experience,” said Alan Knitowski, President & CEO of Phunware. “The Phunware platform ensures the experience her fans have with her application keep them coming back on a daily basis. The reoccurring engagement and daily use of the app is the best proofpoint as why the application saw a huge spike in gross revenue on our platform.”

Phunware’s MaaS platform empowers brands to easily deploy integrated, application-specific components, including advertising, content management, alerts and notifications, location-based services, loyalty and rewards and business intelligence. For more information, visit www.phunware.com.

Supporting information:

• The new application replaces the old Astrology Zone Premier application.
• Users seeking to download the application can search by ‘AstrologyZone’ in the iTunes store.
• The annual subscription for the Susan Miller AstrologyZone Daily PLUS application is $50.

About Phunware

Phunware is the global pioneer of Mobile as a Service (MaaS) — the only fully integrated services platform that enables brands to engage, manage and monetize users on mobile. Phunware has introduced category-defining experiences that have challenged the outer limits of the most advanced mobile devices for the world’s most respected brands. Phunware is headquartered in Austin, TX, with offices in Santa Ana, CA, Irvine, CA, San Diego, CA and Rockville, MD.

For more information, visit Phunware at www.phunware.com or follow us on Twitter at @Phunware.

The post Susan Miller’s AstrologyZone Mobile Application appeared first on Phunware.

Whether you’re on the go with your mobile device or computer, WATCH TCM is now available when you want, where you want, and with the same great attention to detail and passion around the history and legacy of movies you expect from Turner Classic Movies.

Features:

• Two Live Streams: a East and West Coast feed of Turner Classic Movies. Watch 2 different movies LIVE at any time, UNCUT and COMMERCIAL FREE.
• Hundreds of On Demand Moves! That’s right, nearly every title playing on TCM is available to watch On Demand. Includes our introductions from TCM hosts Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz. UNCUT, COMMERCIAL FREE, and presented in their original aspect ratios, preserving the film’s presentations the way they were meant to be seen.
• Gorgeous, responsive design, featuring a slate black color approach to enhance viewing on portable devices.
• Interactive Schedule: 2 month schedule (!) to help you plan your viewing, with information accessed from TCM’s critically acclaimed Movie database. Also includes listings for Short Films playing on TCM. Look for Movie Shorts coming to On Demand soon!
• Movie Alerts and Actor Subscriptions: Subscribe to Movie Stars you love and get notified when they are available in WATCH TCM. Get alerts on films in our upcoming schedule when they are available to play ON Demand.
• Watchlist: Add any movie to your queue to watch later
• Browse by TCM Themes: quickly access On Demand films by popular themes such as THE Essentials, Star of the Month, Silent Sunday Nights, and more. Sort films with additional helpful filters.
• Fan Feed: Sign in with Twitter or Facebook and leave your comments on any film playing On Demand! Add to comments from others, or just enjoy viewing the fan comments on the film yourself – it’s whole new exciting way to experience classic movies.
• Access 1000s of short form clips and trailers to preview titles and see what’s playing or upcoming
• Stunning, exclusive, many never-before-seen image galleries from titles playing on TCM in the month. Post them to Instagram!.
• Share Images and other content via Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
• Introducing the TCM BLOG READER: explore great blog writing from across the web featuring the latest news and great writing on Classic Film, personally selected from TCM staff writers.
• In-Depth information on every title playing on TCM right at your fingertips: feature length articles, cast & crew, stunning image galleries, background information, complete synopsis and more.
• Shop.tcm.com highlights and features. Get movies playing on TCM in our store and more.
• Search across the entire 2 month schedule for favorite stars, films, clips. Access titles and set Reminders.
• Retro TCM Clock

Watch TCM is free. To view LIVE broadcasts and On Demand titles, you’ll need to login with your cable or satellite provider user name and password. Please note: not all cable and satellite providers are currently available with Watch TCM.

iTunes
Google Play

The post Launch Announcement: Turner Classic Movies appeared first on Phunware.