Well this is where you figure out how to lead your horse to water. What is the flow of your app. What does it do? How does the user find, use, navigate it’s parts.

We usually do this like a cartoon, we storyboard the layout and buttons and flow of screens.

Then like any good animation you must come up with the visual aspects, the graphics.

So with as it relates to flow, the key is less clicks, more fun, mixed in with utility.

Again iPhone/iPad gives us some really cool touch screen navigation tools with ‘gestures’. This allows the user to make funky swipes and swirls and taps that translate into screen progression or actions. That is the add fun to the game of using an app.

The layout matters of the screen, and again think ‘less is more’. Few buttons, fewer options on each screen.

The iPad in my experience presents a daunting screen real estate challenge int hat there is just so much SPACE. How to fill it?

The iPhone not so much, the constraints force discipline on the designer. The iPad on the other hand I find you make stuff up to fill space. This has proven a mistake. I use the monkey in a cage analogy. I want the monkey in the cage to get a banana by pushing one button. And I want him to keep getting bananas. He wants bananas, so he just keeps pushing the button. Throw a rubber ball, a chain and swing and a whole bunch of other stuff in the cage and the monkey will get confused and have a nap or go ape wild! and be like an ADHD kid on speed. Simplicity works best for addictive utility in an app.

Figure out what your app user wants to do. Make a screen that enables it and give them enough instant gratification that they just keep using it. Pushing the button you give them the bananas with.

Now being at a carrier you also realize you aren’t paid to help them get that together. And a Wireless Strategy as we often referred to it was not exactly high on the radar of anyone in client accounts. How did wireless and mobile really affect a business.

In certain vertical markets like transportation, store delivery and anyone with a home service business mobile applications became paramount. AVL – automatic vehicle location- for example is now mainstream and anyone running around with trucks wants it and can affordably acquire it from a carrier or a carrier AVL partner.

Managing a bunch of BlackBerry users with a BES- addressing security, device management, access to instant collaboration- calendaring and e-mail. Table steaks.

Enter the mighty Apple. The application development capabilities of the Apple iPhone and its larger brother the iPad
bring the concept of Apps to the masses. Now suddenly Apps on a Smart Phone are a part of every day life. And consumers and business consumers alike interact on the Internet in a new manner. They consume information, services and indulge in games through these elegant untethered devices.

So what is the opportunity? Well for any CEO or entrepreneur you have the ability to figure out a way to be in your customer’s pocket, thats the opportunity. Accessible at the touch of their fingertips. The App must be revered and addressed.

The challenge is that people now want everything to be a game. They want fun. Bus-ertainment. Edu-tainment. Tickle me and tease me with your lighter side. Give me the happy button to push.

Hardly the stuff of hardcore business.

Where the Apple iOS and the devices it runs on (iPhone, iPad) have succeeded is that they give businesses the chance to connect with clients and to do their business better all with something you can readily build and deploy business and consumer applications on in 2-3 months if you play your cards right. Android is on the edge of this too. The tools are good, the devices are fun. Yet still the king App will remain Apple with its perfect iPhone 4 and it’s I want it before I know what to do with it brother the iPad.

So the first question is, what to build and why?

How do you figure this out.

First stop thinking ROI. Return on Investment is a math problem. Apps can be built inexpensively and won’t bankrupt your business. It’s not the end of the world. Return on Investment calculations – maybe moreso in companies north of the border, kill more useful ideas and initiatives than anything. It limits the scope of your ideas and the impact the final product will have on your business. Stop trying to add things up, this is art not science. We will bring science into the equation though. Lets call it App-enomics.

App-eonomics is the invisible hand of Adam Smith. Its kind of how I see Google. Their aim is to make all information useful and accessible. They organize organize organize information you want. They know what you want. They also profit profit profit. Google also clears markets in economic terms. They create a great product then give it away in exchange for being able to extract from it’s informational economic value. Whats the power of this?

Well its really predictive and analytical in nature and it doesn’t try to control you. Who wants to do something they HAVE to do? Having to do something is coercive and limits potential. It doesn’t allow the normal pattern of things. It is obvious. Do this now Mr Customer. “Really? OK”… or “Really? No thanks”. It forces. What it doesn’t do, is allow you to corral cats… and cats must be free to roam and stretch and party. Imagine putting your cat on a leash. You look odd right? Your cat will look oddly at you. Cats however can be low maintenance furry friends. You don’t have to walk them. Just give them a place to hang and some stuff they like to eat and play with and bam! They stick around and contribute a positive air to your world. Or so goes the relationship with people and cats. Customers are cats aren’t they? Are you really thinking you can control your customers? Well if you are a wireless carrier, maybe … but I digress. (Thanks for the fast networks, whacky data plans and crazy contracts. We love you. Some of you.)

Stop trying to shove your business down peoples throats. Figure out what your customers would do with your business if they had their way. How would they use you to their maximum benefit if they had a magic wand? Then you figure out how to let em do that thing or things – maybe they don’t even realize it themselves… preferably they don’t actually- you must think about this. Give them what the want in an App. Somehow. Your App is a mound of digital clay. Use it to give them what they deeply desire. Then use the Invisible Hand approach to connect, watch, observe and profit from that. Its behavioral feedback. You will learn more about your customer than they understand. Then reveal that ‘thing’ to them, enable them to learn and understand that ‘some-thing’ about themselves as it relates to you and your business.

Isn’t that what Apple has done? Isn’t that what Google does? Isn’t that what Starbucks has done? They give people things they didn’t even realize they love. Then when they get it- Aha! that is the ultimate experience. And they gladly pay for it because its no longer a math problem. It is not about ROI for the customer. They just pay $799 for an iPad that is made up with $125 in parts. They pay $4 for a $0.17 cup of french pressed magic.

And that is your App Strategy. You want to use the same tools of these three Aha! Companies. Come in. Sit down. Have a coffee. Wait not a coffee. A Latte. No wait a gingerbread latte. (What?) Here’s a comfy leather arm chair Mr. Customer. Stay a while. Oh here’s Internet access and some nice overhead music. Stick around. Don’t rush out. (What, What?)

The strategy is to engage with your customer- I don’t care if you deliver watermelons to aliens. You want your app to get in their pocket. On their digital wallet. Give them a button they want to push. Push the button, get gratification. An Aha! moment ensues. Watch it, and profit from it.

Ok so how do you get to this point? You really need to profile your customer. Your customer today. Your customer you don’t have. Then turn everything opposite. Turn it upside down. Imagine giving away your product. Imagine making it digital if it isn’t already. Imagine charging 10x as much for it. What would have to happen for these things to work.

Then imagine there is something you figure out that your customer wants but isn’t getting. Or is getting but wants more of or more information about or less of or — whatever. Now imagine that you can give them a button on a little screen to get it and they will push that button over and over happily sending you money with every button push.

Thats your app.

Looking for that Aha! relationship is the only way I think you can build something meaningful. You can build something LESS meaningful, and you might, but we begin with the macro. The big picture. You have a digital blank slate, lets use it. Then if you chicken out and take the path of least resistance thats fine too, but at least you had the opportunity to make your App great and to derive maximum benefit from it.

Once we document the App strategy, presumably get the money and resources you need to build something then we must design it. Design is the critical element that can doom your App in complexity, ugliness or boredom. Or it can make it fun, cool, useful — something that matters and you will get maximum engagement with your clients on.

But thats a different topic now isn’t it…

The New App Order. iPad, iPhone, Android-- Oh My!

So Apple really has changed the smart phone game. For a long time there really was just BlackBerry and then a bunch of stuff that didn’t work very well. Windows Mobile, Palm was decent but they just couldn’t nail down their position as a great device. Then comes along Steve Jobs and the rules all changed.

Carriers are a big factor. Before Apple iPhone the rate packages were stingy to say the least. $90/month data packages for 100 MB? Whoa thats not very Internet friendly. Where BackBerry always succeeded was in dealing with bandwidth constraints. Delivering e-mail in a compressed format through the RIM Relay instantly? Bingo, BlackBerry killed it for years.

iPhone comes along and says hell I’m just going to use what the ‘Net gives me and its going to look pretty the way the ‘Net wants it to. Mr Carrier you’re going to have people lined up at your stores and you’re going to charge them $30/month for 6GB.

The carriers freaked out. But with so many data plan consumers unlocked who could argue. Bandwidth be damned and the 3G era was really ushered in.

What to do what to do with all of this extra bandwidth and airtime?

Well Steve Jobs knew the score there too. Apps. He unlocked a developer community and consumer demand for applications on smart phones that has blurred the lines between consumer and business users. Everyone is a data consumer now. BlackBerry has struggled with this reality. Android has embraced it and created in several years what Palm and Windows failed to: a great user Interface experience in short order, relatively cool inexpensive devices across multiple handset brands and carriers. Steve Jobs unlocked hidden demand. He gave users what they didn’t even know they wanted. Google elegantly jumped on that demand curve and gives away a really great product to try and efficiently clear a market space. As they always do.

Bam. New World Cellular Order.

Fast forward and now app developers are going mad. Corporations are forced to deal with devices they are not sure they can manage or control (freak out time!) and everyone tries to figure out how to engage employees and users using applications.

Theres an App For That!

If there isn’t there can be. There should be. Apple created and dominates with a really slick but closed loop distribution system. Developers benefit, carriers benefit, consumers benefit. Wow! Great Jobs! Competitors still struggle a bit but generally now companies with brands realize that the web is now longer constrained to web pages. There is a new device coming to visit, gathering consumer and buyer attentions.

And then yet again the game changes.

Bam. The iPad. Suddenly tablet, those terrible computing devices that PC manufacturers and Microsoft have butchered for so long yes see the light yet again. Apple creates yet another category of business, there is no other player. PC and device manufacturers alike scramble to redefine the iPad market as the tablet market- trying to ignore all the terrible pen based attempts for 20 years prior. And yet again Mr Jobs gives consumers alike something they did not realize they wanted. He saves his competitors who once again have something to understand and copy and differentiate against. Bravo Mr Jobs. Bravo.

Everyone scrambles. Net book and laptop economies and demand crumble. Long live the new always on- no really- its always on- screen computing device that you control with magic.

Actually, the concept of computing doesn’t even enter the equation.

Now you as a brand owner or app idea owner or person trying to stay engaged with someone you want to sell something to– have yet another opportunity to address a sizable user group who have a better way to engage you. iPad apps!

New screens, new eye balls, new rate plans for Carriers. Rejoice. The world is your oyster.

But now what?

What to build, what to build?

Well it all begins with strategy and you need to think like Steve Jobs. Forward, elegant, contrarian. You need to stop thinking about your business as you know it. We need new rules or maybe no rules – throw those away, do the opposite… to make apps that people want, that we can derive benefit from as businesses and entrepreneurs.

There is a plan. You just need to build it. So how do you get there? What apps should your business be offering consumers? If you have a crazy idea for a killer app how do you go about getting something meaningful built, distributed and monetized?

We shall deal with these topics in further posts on:

Strategy.

Design

Development

Distribution.

For now I’m going to go boot up my Slingbox App on my iPad and watch a little Boardwalk Empire.

Morgan Stanley Mobile Social Web Oh My

http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/tenquestions_web2.pdf

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