The State Of
Mobile ‘14 In The Pocket’s Annual Report on Trends & Technology in the Mobile Space
1 THE STATE OF MOBILE ’14
Welcome to In The Pocket’s annual report on trends and technology in the mobile space. The State of Mobile is an update for the digital professional who wants to stay educated in the fast-paced world of smartphones, tablets and connected devices. Through own data and research, articles from our experts and a curation of statistics, we hope this document helps you prepare for another exciting year in mobile.
“In a few years, mobile will be bigger than the desktop internet”. We used to pitch this to prospects a couple of years ago. Not everyone believed us. Smartphones were a bit smaller back then. They didn’t have the computing power and the sensors of the Samsung S5 or the iPhone 6. Websites were not adapted to mobile and some of the best apps we have today did not exist yet. But the companies that didn’t see it coming are now struggling to catch up. As mobile is evolving at an accelerating pace, “catching up” is tough. This annual report on the state of mobile is an overview of the current trends and technologies that matter, as well as a look ahead. We want to share our experience, our data and our research. We want to get companies from catching up to taking control. From this year’s report, you will learn that mobile is outgrowing the smartphone and the tablet. Prepare for a connected world of wearables, beacons, connected homes and more. That’s going to change a lot, we are only beginning to see the
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possible innovations coming from this “Internet of Things”. Another major trend is that mobile is growing fast in traditional industries that were able to keep from seriously engaging with the mobile user – up to now. Health, enterprise, retail, education… just to name a few. Mobile has become our fundamental layer of digital interaction. For most companies, great mobile products are key to keep a competitive edge. Through digital agility and strategic commitment, the mobile opportunity becomes a path for growth. This is the best time to be a digital professional. New ideas can ride the rollercoaster of innovation, great companies can flourish and good products can find audiences in a snap. Enjoy the read, Jeroen Lemaire Co-founder, Managing Director of In The Pocket
3 Editorial 5 Looking Ahead: Mobile in 2015 13 Rethinking Mobile User Experience 21 iOS 8 Gearing Up for the Future 29 Android for the Connected World 37 The Rise of mHealth 43 The Agile Organization 51 Mobile Strategy & The Art of Simplicity
Looking Ahead: Mobile in 2015 Jeroen Lemaire, Managing Director - In The Pocket
20
15
Last year we predicted that bluetooth low energy beacons would become an important innovation in the mobile space, that mobile payments would find traction in the EU-market and that apps with “invisible” functionality would become more and more important. You should expect these important evolutions to continue in 2015, but we see new trends coming around the corner and another groundshaking year for mobile ahead.
THE ERA OF THE PHABLET We, the consumers, have chosen: we want big smartphones. Even if that means we can’t use the smartphone with one hand anymore and our thumb can’t reach the top of the screen. The bigger, the better. Samsung had a first commercial phabletsuccess in 2011 with the Galaxy Note. Since then, every smartphone manufacturer has been
6 THE STATE OF MOBILE ’14
pushing the limits of smartphone screen sizes. Apple held off with the iPhone 5 and 5S, but ultimately succumbed to consumer demand. The iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus are in fact two phablets, which marks the definite breakthrough for the +4,5” devices. That’s important because phablets are created to allow users to fulfill more complex tasks and to have more immersive media experiences. People will be using the smartphone more and more instead of using the computer. Phablets are a side effect of mobile becoming the primary digital channel.
EPHEMERAL APP USAGE We are downloading less apps than we used to, even though we use them more and more. Apps continue to eat away at mobile web usage and other digital media time, but that didn’t influence the number of apps that we use.
We have stopped downloading every new app on the block. We don’t see them as gimmicks anymore, but as essential tools and media products. By the end of 2015 we’ll see a division of our apps in three parts: 1. Apps we love Every app user has news apps, social media apps, games, photography apps… After a few months our usage starts to boil down to what we really love to do on our smartphone. We keep the apps we want to use and delete the others. App publishers are fighting to get into that space and to become a part of our digital lives. 2. Apps we need for work We download apps that help us to be productive. A great number of startups jumped into the opportunity with success: Evernote,
7 THE STATE OF MOBILE ’14
Mailbox, Showpad… Now companies are starting to integrate such mobile apps in their operations, making some apps required for their workforce. This is probably the biggest mobile opportunity for the next year. Soon, we’ll all be using apps for work. 3. Ephemeral apps Ephemeral apps are apps we use just for a while and only when it’s relevant. New technology allows this kind of app usage and it will be an important driver for app usage and downloads in the next few years. Some apps, such as festival apps, marketing apps, travel apps or venue apps are only relevant to the user at a specific point in time or at a specific location. These apps will be designed to surface to the user at that time and place. We will download the apps, use them and often discard the app afterwards.
“Phablets are a side effect of mobile becoming the primary digital channel.”
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In the lock screen of an iPhone with iOS 8, you will see app icons appear from time to time in the bottom left corner. A nearby beacon will have triggered this event. This way you might download some hotel application while you’re checking in. It’s not an app you’ll be using for the rest of your life, but you’ll be happy to use it during your stay. Google allows search on Android devices to show results from within applications, alongside website results. Searching for a restaurant review, you might be led to an app that has that content. This will lead to an impulse download, because you need the app then and there.
DAWN OF THE SMARTWATCH At In The Pocket we have been talking about smartwatches for years. They’re every geek’s fantasy. But do regular consumers want them? With dozens of Android watches available and the Apple Watch primed to be released in spring 2015, it feels as if the smartwatch is starting to gain traction. Today however, that market is peanuts. A drop in the ocean of smartphones and tablets. Few analysts doubt the smartwatch opportunity is real, especially since Apple entered the space, but no one is making any money. Don’t expect everyone to be wearing one next year, but do expect a steady uptake in the consumer market. The devices available today are still a bit clunky, the use case is vague and they’re pretty expensive. All of that will change: some Chinese manufacturers will drop prices to below $50, the developer community
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will create great apps that we’ll all want and the hardware will become thinner and more elegant. The smartwatch has the potential to replace the smartphone as our first screen, but that will not yet happen in 2015.
CONSUMERIZATION OF ENTERPRISE Employees are people too. It’s not because we’re at work that we enjoy using outdated and complicated interfaces. We use great apps like Instagram or Google Maps all the time. Purpose-built experiences that don’t need a tutorial guide. Our tolerance for crappy software is fading fast. Enterprises have discovered they can boost employee as well as customer satisfaction by building in-company or B2B apps that are well-designed and easy to use.
On top of that, mobile apps can leverage the camera, microphone, location services, motion sensors and more to develop new use cases that increase efficiency in the company.
slow to adopt the new technology. Today, most venue-based companies (retail, hotel industry, sports venues… ) are at least experimenting with the technology. We’ll see these setups move to production over the course of 2015.
BEACONS, FOR REAL Beacons have reached maturity. With 14% of US retailers hanging the bluetooth chips in their stores, it’s no longer an experimental technology. The chips send out a signal that your smartphone can pick up, even when it’s in your pocket. If an app is subscribed to that beacon, it can respond by triggering a notification, by sending data to the cloud or by determining location (the smartphone can precisely measure the distance to the beacon). Not many people received beacon-triggered notifications this year. It’s not that beacons don’t deliver on the promise - industries were
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INTERNET OF THINGS Estimote, a first mover in the beacon space, recently announced their “nearables”. These are beacon stickers that contain an accelerometer and a temperature sensor. So, you can attach a sticker to a bottle of wine in the fridge and get a notification when it’s cold. This is an example of an ordinary object entering the connected space. Your smartphone will be able to track the temperature and the movement of the wine. Home automation innovations like Philips Hue, connected lighting, will eventually make
your entire house connected. Sensors are popping up everywhere, making our physical surroundings sentient and smart. And what about our bodies? OMsignal manufactures shirts that measure your breath and your heart rate, sending the information in realtime to your smartphone. The Internet of Things is a hugely disruptive evolution. It’s an emerging network of billions of sensors and devices talking to each other and converging around the apps on that device in your pocket.
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“Employees are people too.”
The Smartphone is Growing … Literally W: Width • D: Depth • H: Height
H 126.4
H 122.9
H 115,9
D 9.5
D 8.7
D 8.3
W 59.5
W 61.3
W 62.7
2012
2013
2014
Smartphone Size Evolution in Belgium (by downloads) Source: In The Pocket Published Apps, 2012-2014
Rethinking Mobile User Experience Hannes Van de Velde, Product Manager - In The Pocket
The rise of the big smartphone screen and the emergence of the Internet of Things will make us rethink mobile user experience. These technological trends provide us with the opportunity to build products that are more subtle and more impactful at the same time.
MOBILE IS GROWING, SO ARE ITS SCREENS Mobile design has long focused on screens in the range of 3.5” (the original iPhone) to 4” (the first Samsung Galaxy S and the iPhone 5). The choice for these screen sizes was no coincidence. The 3.5” to 4” smartphone was perfect for how the smartphone was used: one handed, using the thumb to move around the screen. A regular thumb could reach the entire screen in a fairly natural way. As mobile became mainstream and users started relying on their smartphones for more
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and more of their digital activities, they started looking for bigger phones that could cater all of their mobile needs. In 2012 already, Android smartphones started growing to the range of 4” to 5”. And with Apple’s introduction of the iPhone 6 (4.7”) and 6 Plus (5.5”), the era of the Big Smartphone (the so-called “phablet”) has unmistakably begun. The 4” and up smartphone is here to stay, and will soon become the standard. Designing for these bigger smartphones comes with its specific requirements and challenges. On the one hand, users will start holding their smartphones in different ways. With its tabletlike interface, the iPhone 6 Plus will have more landscape orientation usage than is custom with smartphones. And as it will be harder to hover the entire screen with just a thumb, more users will start holding their devices with two hands when possible.
On the other hand, mobile designers will (have to) come up with new design and interaction patterns to create usable interfaces for the Big Smartphone. We see both Apple and Google already taking initiatives in this field. In Android Lollipop- Android’s newest OS version - main actions like creating a new e-mail or sharing an article will happen through ‘floating action buttons’. These buttons float above the user interface near the bottom of the screen, making them very accessible without having to stretch your thumb. Apple in turn has come up with a new feature for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus called ‘Reachability’. Double touching the home button will bring the entire screen down, so the navigation bar becomes reachable for your thumb. These patterns already show that, for big smartphones to be usable, more of the interaction with it will have to happen from the lower half of the screen.
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Therefore, mobile design in 2015 will be more about tab bars than about hamburger menus, and more about floating action buttons than about action bars.
DELIGHT AND CONTEXT AS THE DIFFERENTIATOR But don’t be mistaken, just applying these patterns won’t bring you anywhere near the cutting edge of mobile design. This level of usability is a basic expectation of users. Gone are the days where just ‘having an app’ or even ‘providing utility’ could mean mobile success. Users have become tough critics, spoiled by countless great mobile experiences. They will not hesitate to delete an app that doesn’t live up to their high standards. In line with Moore’s law, mobile devices are becoming twice as powerful each year. At the same time, increasingly more and better
sensors are making their way into our devices. These sensors are generating mountains of data about you and your surroundings. Processed and used in the right ways, this tandem of mobile innovation - processing power and smart sensors – are key to bringing products from good to great. The data coming in from the different sensors in and around our devices will increasingly be used to deliver relevant and contextual information. Our smartphone knows our location, movement and the weather; our smartwatch knows our heart rate, fitness and how well we slept last night; our Nestthermostat knows when to turn on the heating. While this may all sound very science-fiction, it’s actually not. Our vision of a technological future might have been slightly distorted by how it has been presented to us during the early 2000’s (think ‘Minority Report’ from
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“Apps will increasingly do their work in the background, without us being aware of it.”
Steven Spielberg). But if we take a look at how some of the concepts presented in those movies are being realised today, we are seeing a whole different reality (think ‘Her’ from Spike Jonze). As our devices are learning more about us, our interactions with them can increasingly become more personal and natural. But in order for interfaces to deliver that level of personal and natural interaction, they will need to step up their game on two levels: delight and context. Although we might actually be interacting with algorithms, we still expect the interaction to feel human, as if someone is actually on the other side. Someone who says the right things, at the right time and in the right way. Delight The key design element to deliver a delightful experience will be animation. Applying the
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right animations can increase the user’s value perception of your mobile app. These animations aren’t there to be just pretty, but to support the meaning and intention of the action the animation is responding to. Animations can keep the user’s attention focused and provide continuity in between actions or screens, assisting the user in completing his desired task. Combined with bigger screens, animation has the power to make mobile interfaces more delightful and immersive than ever. Context More data coming in and more power to process this data will mean that apps will increasingly do their work in the background, without us being aware of it. When the time is right, they will surface the right information and present it to us. As users, we will need less
steps and less interaction to reach the desired information. As designers, this forces us to rethink our interaction flows and the way we present information. Many of these contextual interactions will be instantaneous. An app will present itself with a relevant piece of information to then, quick as it came, vanish into the background again. Of course we don’t need a 5” smartphone to deliver just those flashes of information. Enter smartwatch. We might not all be putting one around our wrists today, but this market will take off in 2015. Of course, these devices also require their own specific design patterns in terms of information dosage, interaction design and visual design.
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Suddenly we will find ourselves designing for any screen from 1.5” to 12”, with users carelessly switching from one device to another while expecting a seamless crossdevice experience. After a year of endlessly debating whether our interfaces should be flat, skeuomorphical or somewhere in between, we are returning to the more fundamental aspects of solving today’s design challenges. In a mobile ecosystem that is expanding at lightning speed, it will be more important than ever to deliver the right information at the right time, in the right context and on the right device in order to deliver a meaningful, natural and personal experience.
Apps are Eating the Mobile Web Mobile websites Apps
2013
2014 14%
20%
80%
86%
Percentage of Time Spent on Mobile Web and Apps on Connected Devices Worldwide Source: Statista, 2014
More Than Half of Our Digital Media Time is Spent in Apps Desktop Mobile app Mobile websites
60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10%
Q1 ‘13
Q2 ‘13
Q3 ‘13
Q4 ‘13
Q2 ‘14
Q2 ‘14
Share of Digital Media Time Spent by Platform (% share in US) Source: Comscore, June 2014
iOS 8 Gearing Up for the Future Lode Vanhove, iOS Competence Lead - In The Pocket
EXTENSIBILITY —
TECHNOLOGIES
GAMING
Widgets
—
—
Share & Action Extensions
CloudKit
Metal
Custom Keyboards
HomeKit
SpriteKit
Document Providers
HealthKit
SceneKit
Photo Filters
PhotoKit
Interactive Notifications
Camera API
It has been a great year for Apple. Sales kept growing, several new devices were introduced (Apple Watch, iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus) and a major new version of the mobile operating system was released. Where last year’s iOS 7 is mostly known for its complete UI-redesign, this year’s iOS 8 release is packed with new features & improvements to be really excited
about. It gives mobile developers great new opportunities. Let’s dive in.
A FEATURE-PACKED UPDATE Let’s start with an overview of the most important additions to the operating system.
CROSS-DEVICE INTEGRATION
FEATURES
—
—
iCloud Drive
Voice IM
Handoff
Smart Keyboards
—
Airdrop
Family Sharing
Adaptive UI
Instant Hotspot
Spotlight
IM & Phone Call Relaying
Apple Pay
ADAPTIVITY
When looking at the different aspects of the update (see previous page), 2 important concepts stand out. Simply stated: • Apps working together • Devices working together
APPS WORKING TOGETHER Before iOS 8 every app had its own private data, sharing options, storage, and so on. Plus, you had to open them to use their features. Apps were silos and there was no effective way to let them work together. This has changed. With the addition of share & action “extensions“, as Apple calls it, it is now possible to share content via services exposed by other apps or to execute an action in the context of another app. Widgets enable you to glance at the most important information right from the today screen. Interactive notifications allow
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your app to add useful actions to it. But the addition of document providers really opens up applications by giving the possibility to open documents regardless of which app or services stores that file. Previously, opening documents in other apps would effectively create a copy of that file for use in that app. With the introduction of a unified iCloud Drive for iOS and OS X, this really brings document management on iOS to a new level. Apps can now, more than ever, be used to act as service providers. Now, extensibility gives apps a bigger stage to do what they are really good at: providing a single, focused purpose. Conceiving apps as services will make them easily reachable across the platform.
“Apps can now, more than ever, be used to act as service providers.” 24 THE STATE OF MOBILE ’14
DEVICES WORKING TOGETHER Continuity With the concept of ‘continuity’, Apple has taken a big step towards a more seamless integration between devices. This feature includes the possibility to ‘hand over’ the work you were doing in an application between iOS and OS X. New additions like instant hotspot and phone call & SMS relaying (where OS X transparently takes over your SMS conversation or phone call), really bring down the boundaries between the two platforms. Airdrop has also been updated so that it now works between both operating systems as well. And of course the new iCloud Drive also contributes towards the unified feeling and the omnipresence of your data.
New technologies Next to these enhancements, Apple also introduced their two new frameworks ‘HomeKit’ and ‘HealthKit’, which intend to unify two important user experiences, those of home automation and health tracking. iDevices & apps will be able to plug into this system to offer the user a simplified, secure & centralized experience. Most of these technologies build on the foundation that was laid out by BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) & other technologies introduced in iOS 7.
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“Users should be presented with the proper services & actions at the right time.”
UBIQUITOUS, SEAMLESS & CONVENIENT It’s quite clear which direction Apple is heading. Users have been asking for more extensibility & better document management for a long time. Apple has taken the time to implement this in a secure way, without making too many sacrifices. Apple users now enjoy ubiquitous data: on any device, everywhere, anytime. Next up (and more importantly) is the move towards a more seamless integration between devices. Users want convenience, so they should think less about which app to use when but rather be presented with the proper services & actions at the right time. It should just work.
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Extensibility & continuity are the first hints of this future. But there’s more to come, as the announcement of the Apple Watch and Apple Pay already demonstrated.
War of the Platforms In Belgium, Android still hasn’t surpassed iOS in app downloads iOS Android
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
Q3 ‘11
Q4 ‘11
Q1 ‘12
Q2 ‘12
Q3 ‘12
Q4 ‘12
Q1 ‘13
Q2 ‘13
Q3 ‘13
Q4 ‘13
Q1 ‘14
Q2 ‘14
Q3 ‘14
iOS Versus Android Downloads Source: In The Pocket published apps, 2011-2014
When it comes to devices, Android dominates the global market
2012
2013
2014
22%
52%
24%
49%
32% 41%
16%
13% 12%
10%
15%
14%
iOS Android Windows Others Worldwide Device Shipment by Operating System (in %) Source: Statista, Q2 2014
Android for the Connected World Dries De Smet, Android Developer - In The Pocket
ANDROID EVERYWHERE — Android Auto Android TV Android Wear
MATERIAL DESIGN — Floating Action Button Cross-platform Animations
ANDROID LOLLIPOP
MATERIAL DESIGN
In 2011, Google announced a big change in the Android platform. Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) was a big leap forward for users and developers. Later updates like ‘Jelly Bean’ and ‘KitKat’ only made the platform better.
One of the main focuses of Android Lollipop will be the ‘Material Design’ concept. This refers to the new visual language that Google is not only planning to apply throughout the platform. The idea behind this design is aiding the user by focusing on the most important actions and content.
At this year’s Google I/O conference, the birth of a renewed Android platform was announced: Android Lollipop.
ANDROID LOLLIPOP
WEARABLES
—
—
Smart Notification Center
Moto 360
Project Volta
Google Glass
ART
Samsung Gear
For example, they do this by using very bold and graphic colors and shapes or animations, to hint change and to give that extra guide in the user interface. A perfect example using these animations, and one of the key elements in user interfaces, is the ‘Ripple animation’, in which you get a feeling of interaction with the button, because it animates its background.
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“Android wants to be everywhere in our lives.”
NOTIFICATIONS
UNDER THE HOOD
Another enhancement is the visibility of the notification center, that from now on - like iOS - will be visible from the lock screen.
Performance has always been one of the biggest concerns when it comes to our mobile devices. Responding to this, Android Lollipop will use a new runtime for your apps, called ART. In non-nerd language this means that without upgrading your phone, everything will work smoother and faster. For games and other animation-rich apps, that’s big news.
Besides that, notifications will get more functionalities under the hood. Apps, for example, will be able to categorize and prioritize their notifications. The Android platform will use this to sort the notifications by importance. Moreover, notifications can be tailored to show different content depending on whether the phone is locked or not. This way privacy sensitive data can be hidden when the phone is locked.
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There has also been an improvement in battery life. The first test reviews showed there’s already a 30% increase of battery life on Nexus devices.
ANDROID WEAR In the beginning of 2014, everyone was convinced that this would be the year of the ‘wearables’. These are ‘smart’ devices, connected to your smartphone, that you wear with (or on) you. There are already a few on the market, like Google Glass, FitBit and Pebble. But also rings, shirts and shoes have entered the wearables space. It’s the smartwatch however, that gets the center of attention. After the crowdfunded Pebble as a brave first mover and Samsung going for the first bite out of the market with their Samsung Gear, pressure started building for Google.
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The Android Wear OS, based on Android, is Google’s platform for wearables. LG, Samsung and Motorola already launched some great smartwatches on Android Wear. For a beautiful example, check out the Motorola 360. It’s possible to build special smartwatch apps for Android wearables (Flappy Bird!) and we’ll see many great innovations as developers embrace this new small screen. But, for now, the main use case remains notifications (from your smartphone apps). Android Wear allows for smart personalisation to make the experience as relevant as possible. The smartwatch is still an early adopter’s product that struggles with battery life (1 day) and convincing use cases, but it will mature quickly and become an important part of the mobile ecosystem.
ANDROID EVERYWHERE? Besides Android Lollipop and Android Wear, Google announced even more Android spin-offs. Android Auto is the answer of Google to Apple’s CarPlay. It’s an operating system designed for car dashboard systems. It focuses on hands-free use of your mobile, with Google’s advanced voice control. But it has other features too, like playing music, showing notifications, reading your messages and answering calls. Completely voice-controlled. Another new platform based on Android is ‘Android TV’, which will bring the Android experience to the TV screen. You could compare it to Apple TV, but there are important differences.
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It will allow screencasting from other devices, give access to Google Play and even allow regular cable TV watching. Furthermore, just like Android Auto and Android Wear, developers will be able to create apps for Android TV. Android wants to be everywhere in our lives. In our pocket, on our wrist, on our head, in our car and on our TV. Google wants your apps, your media and your documents to be available everywhere you go and on any device you’re using. You don’t have to think about “taking it with you”, it’s already there - through the cloud and Google’s pervasive platform strategy.
Tablets Grew 39% in the Last Year…
… Driven by Android Tablet Sales
Mobile phones
Android
Tablets
iOS
PC
Windows
2.000.000
2% 28%
1.500.000
1.000.000
70%
500.000 %
+39
0
2012
2013
Worldwide Device Shipments by Segment (thousands of units) Source: Gartner, 2014
2014 Global Tablet Shipments by Operating System (in %) Source: Gartner, 2014
The PC Will Pay the Price PC Tablet
400 350
300 250
200 150
100 50
2012
2013
2014
2015
2018
Forecast of Global Tablet and PC Shipments (in million units) Source: Statista, February 2014
The Rise of mHealth Christophe Jauquet, Business Developer - In The Pocket, mHealth expert
Talk of “mHealth” or mobile health care has been around for years, but in recent months the buzz seems to have come to a climax. The delivery of health care services through mobile devices is getting its breakthrough in 2015. Not just because we understand the societal need for (cost-) effective ways to deliver care. Our rapidly aging population and the impact of modern lifestyle diseases, such as obesitas and diabetes, are putting pressure on health care systems. Medical companies and governments alike are looking to mHealth to cut costs for care and increase effectiveness at the same time. A second driver is the growing popularity of preventive medicine. We are becoming aware that the status of our health shouldn’t just be checked or managed during episodic visits to
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the doctor’s office or when an event occurs. Existing tools are inadequate to deal with these challenges. Health is the most searched topic on Google. If anything demonstrates opportunity and momentum, it’s that. But the browser doesn’t offer real tools for prevention or self-care. The smartphone does: it will revolutionise our engagement towards our own health. In 2014, we have seen major players like Apple, Samsung and Google stepping into the health industry by launching specific mobile platforms for health. Apple’s HealthKit, Samsung’s Sami and the Google Fit offer the possibility to integrate health information and data from various other apps and sources. Now app developers can use the smartphone as a flexible and powerful biometric device.
“What the iPod did for the music industry, HealthKit is starting to do for the healthcare industry, affecting the business model and business strategy of health and wellness apps, hospitals, doctors, lab test results companies and health insurance companies,” Arturo Devesa, CEO of MedWhat
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Already in the first half of 2014, medical apps have been the 3rd-fastest-growing category in the app store. And in that same period, the usage of the health and fitness apps has grown at nearly twice the rate of app usage overall, according to mobile analytics company Flurry. 2014 was the year wearable technology and connected devices found some traction in the consumer space. Fitness bands like Fitbit and Jawbone became very popular, but they are still child’s play compared to some new wearable sensors. For instance, companies like iHealth, Lifescan or Medtronic have smartphoneconnected glucometers ready to be launched for diabetes patients. In the field of fertility, pregnancy and pediatrics, Kindara, Bellabeat and Mimo already offer a series of connected sensors to monitor health. There are countless other examples in many therapeutic areas.
These new mobile technologies are designed to meet a basic human need: health. That’s a guarantee for growth. But despite many promising initiatives, designing mHealth products still holds many challenges. It will require meaningful interpretations of the raw sensor data to become relevant and motivational, while guaranteeing security and data privacy. This was a pivotal year for mHealth. The surge of wearable sensors is creating a new wealth of health data. A number of great apps have been build on top of this data, finally allowing preventive care and self-management. The new health platforms from the tech giants are offering the necessary means to collect, store and communicate health data. In conclusion, mHealth is set to become one of the biggest digital markets.
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“Health is the most searched topic on Google.”
We Asked 277 People...
Do you use notification center (swipe from top)?
60
%
Do you use control center (swipe from bottom)? %
40
93
%
No
Yes
Is wifi usually on?
80
%
%
7
No
Yes
Yes
6 No
%
94
%
Yes Is 3G/4G usually on?
53
%
No
47
Do you usually have bluetooth on?
%
Yes
%
20 No
If you don’t usually have bluetooth on, what would change your behaviour?
% To connect with
47
other devices
% I don’t know why I should
26
27
switch on bluetooth
Do you allow location services when asked by an app?
5%
% To save battery life
Do you allow notifications when asked by an app?
8%
13%
7%
Always
28%
Usually Sometimes Never
44% 38% 57%
App Usage in Belgium Source: In The Pocket Survey (N=277), October 2014
The Agile Organization Christophe Rosseel, Operations Manager - In The Pocket
“Mobile moves fast. So should you.“ That’s how I ended my contribution to our report exactly one year ago. Turns out I was wrong. Moving fast is an understatement; the rate at which technology is driving change is actually still accelerating. This article is about how development teams deal with change and what companies can learn from this approach.
if they deal with digital in an agile way, learning the ways of the modern developer. There are those, like IBM, that take it even further and install agility at management level.
As Operations Manager, I developed the agile process of In The Pocket and I worked with many types of companies in challenging mobile projects.
In most companies, the leadership gets that the world is changing at a rapid pace and that they need a culture of innovation in order to deal with that. Making innovation a key part of company culture is a challenge in itself but companies that succeed are rewarded with a reliable stream of ideas for new products, services and business models.
In software development, the ‘agile’ approach has become the industry standard for creating outstanding applications. But agile is more than a method. It can become a company culture and the basis for the very structure of an organization. Companies can benefit hugely
In order to turn these ideas into something that is of value to a customer, culture is not enough. Successfully going to market with innovation requires an exceedingly agile organizational structure. There are a lot of convoluted definitions out there but at its core an agile
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company is a company that detects shifting consumer demands and is able to swiftly respond to these demands. Definitions are one thing but the question is, how do you get there? Many companies have looked to software development teams for inspiration: • GE is rolling out FastWorks, a system inspired by Silicon Valley’s lean startup movement. • Spotify’s mantra is ‘Think it, build it, ship it, tweak it.” The company is organized around squads, self-organizing teams with the autonomy to create and ship specific functions of the larger product, for example radio. • Netflix is the poster child for a flat organizational structure and takes a nonhierarchical approach that stresses freedom and responsibility.
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• IBM is experimenting with ‘agile management’, in which self-governing teams have regular scrums to decide the next sprint, or stage, of the project. Despite the enormous differences between these companies, it is easy to identify some basic principles that would benefit most organizations.
LISTEN TO CUSTOMERS AND USE THEIR FEEDBACK IN PRODUCT ITERATIONS Although listening sounds deceptively straightforward, the methods for listening are also evolving: • advanced social media monitoring • measuring digital customer interactions (e.g. Google Analytics) • recording POS interactions (e.g. using Beacon technology)
The tremendous amount of data that is created in this way has even helped to create an entirely new industry, dubbed ‘big data’.
Nevertheless, the same principles apply to the product or service itself, as will become obvious in the next section.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
RAPID DEPLOYMENT, AKA: “START SMALL”
Agile is built on a simple foundation:
A steady stream of small improvements is superior to occasional bursts of “breakthrough” changes. Continuous improvement is about reducing operational overhead. Regularly taking time out to identify what could go better, helps to streamline workflows. In other words: it’s not just about the product, it’s also about the way you create the product.
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Building complex things takes time. This is true for digital as well as for ‘analog’ products. Other factors being equal, the best way to speed up a deployment process is to start out with a less complex product. The Lean Startup methodology came up with the concept of a Minimum Viable Product. The MVP is about quickly building the bare minimum version of your product vision in order to learn from it. An MVP is released only to a subset of customers; it should not be the object of a commercial launch. The exact kind of subset
IDENTIFY — Opportunities in the process or workflow
REVIEW — How are changes working for the team?
THE CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT CYCLE
EXECUTE — Implement changes
PLAN — How can the current process be improved?
depends of the context but it could be your employees, friends and family, friendly users, early adopters… The MVP serves 2 purposes: • validated learning: it allows you to test an idea by exposing an early version of your product • risk reduction: if there is a fundamental problem with your product vision, you will know this early on The first version that is shipped to all customers, should be the Minimum Marketable Product (MMP). This is the product with the smallest possible feature set that addresses the customer’s needs, creates the desired user experience, and can be marketed successfully. The MMP is a tool to reduce time-to-market: It can be launched more quickly than a bloated,
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feature-rich one. You would think this is common sense, but alas... In an ideal world you start out with a Minimum Viable Product, and incorporate what you’ve learned from that version into a Minimum Marketable Product.
THE AGILE ORGANIZATION Digital agility is best achieved if all departments of the company are on the same page. Take marketing as an example. Agile marketing is gaining ground and even large, marketingdriven organizations like Coca-Cola have started to take agile marketing seriously. Back in the days, promotional efforts were often focused on sizable but infrequent campaigns. This was undoubtedly the best approach when listening to customers wasn’t
an ongoing process and when product iterations were few and far between. Surely there still is a time and a place for large campaigns but it is worthwhile to challenge the convention that they should be the rule. Taking an agile approach to marketing has advantages very similar to those found in software development. Last but not least it is worthwhile to think about the way the organization is structured and how to deal with all this from a management perspective. Changing the company’s course from ‘command and control’ to ‘test and improve’ is best done with the full support from the top floor. The reason that a lot of large corporations have trouble with innovation is the traditional silo structure. Extensive chains of command slow down decision-making, which is exactly
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what you need to avoid. Entrepreneurship can flourish in large organizations but only when they have a structure where individuals and small teams are empowered to make their own decisions. Borrowing a phrase from software development, Netflix labels its own organizational approach “highly aligned, loosely coupled.” That means strategy and goals are clear, and management works hard to ensure they are broadly understood. But tactics are executed with minimal cross-functional discussion and replaced by trust among groups and ad hoc coordination. In conclusion, achieving digital agility is easier than it sounds. Many companies have the knowledge in-house, they can learn agile from their development teams.
How To Build A Minimum Viable Product NOT LIKE THIS
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LIKE THIS
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Mobile Strategy & The Art of Simplicity Jan Deruyck, Business Development Manager - In The Pocket
In last year’s edition of this report we described how mobile was moving to the center of digital. Five years ago, apps were gimmicks, fun little pieces of software. Today, startups and established businesses are building on mobile technology. Smartphones have become extensions of our minds and bodies. The consumer became a digital consumer and is now a mobile consumer. Expectations about services, about media, about communication and about value have completely changed. From the consumer point of view that’s normal, but for many companies it is disruptive. Not just consumers - employees and clients also demand the user friendliness they know from their mobile apps. Enterprises are faced
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“The general who draws meticulous plans before battle will defeat the general who makes none” Sun Tzu
with that challenge, but it has the potential to boost productivity and efficiency.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
On top of that, the next wave of mobile innovation, the Internet of Things, is set to take the stage in the next few years.
Find data. Loads of valuable data is often within reach, without expensive data mining required. Check the statistics of existing digital products. What devices are being used? How frequent are the interactions? What works and what doesn’t?
That’s a lot of change, so how should companies respond? Here are some rules of thumb we learned from doing mobile projects that were strategically important.
Find more data. Perform a survey to detect needs, look at the digital behavior of your audience. What apps do they use? How mobile savvy are they? The reason for gathering data about your (potential) users is that good mobile products, as well as solid mobile strategies, are built from the user’s perspective. Always start from the end user, not from the business requirements or the marketing KPI’s.
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SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION Today’s users expect simplicity and a high level of usability. Ease of use is taken for granted. The statistics are clear. If a website isn’t optimized for mobile, 48% of the visitors take this as an indication of the business simply not caring. The mobile experience equals the customer experience. But creating a simple and compelling mobile experience often takes companies far out of their comfort zone. It involves stripping down, saying “no” to many things, rethinking product offerings and service design. Mobile asks for frequent product releases through an agile approach and modern IT-infrastructure.
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A classic example is data fragmentation. Many companies will find their data siloed in different databases and divided over different departments. The datasets will be incomplete and incompatible with each other. Building mobile apps or websites on top of this kind of legacy environment will introduce complexity. They become hard to maintain and expensive to build. But more importantly, the end user doesn’t care about the backend complexity. Thad Starner, professor at Georgia Tech, calls it the magic two-second rule. “If you can’t get to a tool within two seconds,” he says, “your use of it goes down exponentially.”
That’s why mobile can be very demanding for companies and it’s important to have a strategic framework that is carried companywide. This strategy should be adaptable. A mobile strategy must be able to evolve, because that’s exactly what the technology and the users are doing.
SET GOALS, START BUILDING It’s impossible to plan ten years ahead. In twelve months time every mobile strategy will need rethinking. Mobile goes fast. The feedback and data of users is essential to grow a product and get it from good to great. You don’t have this feedback when you’re writing the strategy, therefore shipping is essential.
“Aim for quick and decisive victories, not prolonged campaigns of war ” Sun Tzu
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Start small and iterate to greatness. Keeping a product in the pipe for too long will make it obsolete. Get the product out there, listen to the users, learn from the data and tweak the product. In the mean time keep updating the strategy. Mobile users demand high quality and personal experiences. That can only be achieved through a continuous effort. In summary: know who you are building mobile products for, keep it simple and get the product out there, repeat. That’s a good backbone for any mobile strategy.
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IN THE POCKET is a leading mobile agency that designs and builds for the smartphone, the tablet and all connected devices. We create product roadmaps and strategies, helping companies embrace the mobile world.
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