Wireless Business Applications

Opportunity to Remake the Wireless Internet

A huge chunk of wireless spectrum -- the 700 MHz spectrum originally allocated to analog TV -- will soon become available. This is great spectrum with excellent building penetration capabilities. There is a possibility for significant innovation with this spectrum -- something other than the existing iron control by large wireless carriers. Nancy Scola nicely summarizes the issue and simple things you can do push the FCC to do the right thing.

From Nancy's post, here are some of the things that could happen with that spectrum:

A coalition of groups including Public Knowledge, Free Press, and the New America Foundation detailed basic principles the 700 MHz process should follow. They want to encourage small innovators to have a fighting chance in the process by keeping the process anonymous and excluding the big telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon. Licensees would have to use the spectrum they get and agree to principles of wireless neutrality. Perhaps not surprisingly, Google has a clever new plan for the auction's mechanics. Spectrum allocation today is inefficient -- small chunks of it go unused or underused all the time. Google's plan is similar to their AdSense's method of on-the-fly leasing of micro-bits of online real estate. Google Spectrum would let licensees release small parts of unused spectrum to other innovators.

Wireless Carriers Increasingly Recognized as Stifiling Innovation

There are many reasons discussed for why wireless and broadband services are so far behind in the US compared to other developed countries. For example, the US is ranked 15th and dropping in broadband subscriptions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Michael Mace discusses the weakness of US wireless services compared to European wireless services. Many theories circulate why this would be so: the geographical breadth of the US, stronger competitive forces, banking laws, european life styles, and so on.

The likely explanation is far simpler than these theories: US wireless carriers are uniquely able to stifle innovation in favor of customer lock-in. Particularly with regards to wireless software, carriers throw up intentional and accidental barriers right and left. Unlike the awesome competitive and innovative stew that brewed around PC software (before Microsoft became a more-or-less monopoly) and that now brews around the internet, wireless software has struggled. Complaints are emerging not just from academics like Tim Wu, but even from staid IT publications like Information Week. This week's issue discusses what carriers do that stifle competition and innovation.

Here is a quick summary of how the lack of competition and innovation stifle wireless software:

• Wireless carriers have no idea how to sell solutions - they want to sell phones and subscriptions, but quickly loose patience when the customer wants to figure out how to best solve their business problem. If the carriers is featuring phone X, or wireless software provider Y, that is what the typical carrier sales rep will lead with, irrespective of the customer's needs.
• WIreless carriers rigidly enforce arbitrary differences between devices - why can't you buy a Java phone from Verizon Wireless? Even on devices that have Java from every other carrier, Verizon WIreless disables Java. Why? They want developer's to use Brew -- a nice enough platform for games and consumer content, but highly proprietary and mainly focused on consumers. Why not let the developers or consumers decide? Verizon WIreless is not the only carrier with such a rule, just the simplist example.
• Wireless carriers support for business customers is terrible - We have one large national customer where one of their cities got phones with bad SIM cards. The phones work for voice, but not for wireless data. They have been working for several weeks to get this resolved. My company's support team figured out it was bad SIM cards. The carrier customer support staff has refused to work with the customer's team in the city, instead wanting to work with corporate! And this is for a customer with 1000s of subscriptions. Another carrier gave up a 200 subscription opportunity rather than provide my company with an engineer that could make Java signing work on their network. These stories are common -- if anything out of the ordinary goes wrong, the carriers seem totally unable to provide support without the cleverest of politics by the account managers.
• Wireless carrier support for developers is terrible - It is beyond routine that regular software companies and software platform companies (think Microsoft Windows, SAP, Oracle, Google, QuickBooks programming extensions, eBay programming extensions) issue betas, review upcoming feature sets with partners, collect bug reports, provide workarounds to known bugs, etc. Almost none of this is done by carriers. New phones are routinely released with major bugs that are either never fixed, or fixed in unannounced upgrades that are extremely hard to find out about, acquire, or apply.
• Devices are usually designed to disadvantage non-packaged software - On many major phones, when you flip the lid closed or take a phone call, any working programs stop. There is nothing the developer can do about this. It is the developer's problem to write software to survive arbitrary shutdowns. And what about programs that need to run all the time (say, monitoring emergency alerts)? For most phones, developers need to figure out workarounds or to take the phone off the list of viable alternatives.

The point of the list is not to whine, but to illustrate the kind of egregious problems that occur when there is no effective competition. If users could EASILY take their devices, software, and network subscriptions to other carriers, these problems would quickly be addressed by the winners, and the losers would go out of business.

 

Helping staff learn wireless applications

How do you get mobile staff to embrace new mobile devices and wireless software?

Some mobile staff commonly resist moving from paper to wireless applications – particularly if they are not regular desktop computer users. This resistance can be overt, or more perniciously, covert. We have regularly encountered situations where a field staff member insists the device is not working but it works when other people use it and the server logs show that it is working correctly. Furthermore, we have examples where people later admitted that they had intentionally tried to sabotage the application.

One of our customers had an excellent idea. He requires his staff to get checked out on the device. After training and a few days in the field, the field staffer needs to demonstrate competence on the device – completing standard tasks along with routine restart and error recovery.

Once competence has been demonstrated, the staffer gets a free day off.

Both parts of this idea are good:

1. Have the staffer demonstrate to someone else that they know what they are doing. This is a step beyond sitting in a training class and shows they really know what they are doing.

2. Provide a reward for the effort.

Ray Ozzie most proud of "the people and organizations surrounding the software systems" and the "customers whose businesses were changed"

Ray Ozzie is a software innovator in the domain of computer supported coordinated work. His accomplishments include creating Lotus Notes and Groove Networks. He is now the chief software architect of Microsoft, a title previously held by Bill Gates. He was recently interviewed by the Wharton School, talking about his job and view of the industry. I was most struck by his answer to a question about what he is most proud of (highlights are mine):

Knowledge@Wharton:  You have been around the industry for quite a while. Of all the things you've done, what are you most proud of?

Ozzie:  The teams. Let me extend that -- the people and organizations surrounding the software systems that I built. Just step back and look at [Lotus] Notes as one case in point. Forget the technology for a moment. There were some amazingly passionate developers who stuck with that project for a long time, and I got to know them. I love that.

There were thousands of small businesses and organizations where opportunity was created in the ecosystem surrounding that product. That's incredibly gratifying.

And then there are customers whose businesses were changed. I'm a technologist, so, frankly, I assume we can build just about anything that we set our minds to. What really impacts me are the people and organizational benefits that are downstream from those technologies.

John Backus Dies - Inventor of the first programming language

John Backus, inventor of FORTRAN, the first high level programming language has died. FORTRAN was my first programming language. Backus recognized two critical features that have been important to every computer tool since:

1. The tool really needs to move the problem solving process closer to the way user's think. FORTRAN was focused on making computer programming more like how engineers and scientists think.

2. The tool must not impose too heavy a performance cost on final solution. FORTRAN programs needed to run as fast as carefully hand-crafted programs done in lower-level ways.

While inelegant by modern standards, FORTRAN was a breakthrough in opening up computer programming to a vastly wider audience. Many key computer language ideas and translation techniques are still widely in use were pioneered by Backus and his team.

Tim Wu: Current wireless telecom policies stifle innovation of wireless software and devices

Tim Wu has written an important paper about wireless net neutrality and how current wireless telecom policies stifle innovation and industry growth. He persuasively argues that current wireless telecom control over their customers and networks harms their customers and the overall growth of the industry. Wireless software and hardware innovation are particularly hard hit. Here is a short excerpt -- note point 4 describing the difficulties in introducing innovative wireless software:

This report finds a mixed picture. The wireless industry, over the last decade, has succeeded in bringing wireless telephony at competitive prices to the American public. Yet at the same time we also find the wireless carriers aggressively controlling product design and innovation in the equipment and application markets, to the detriment of consumers. Their policies, in the wired world, would be considered outrageous, in some cases illegal, and in some cases simply misguided.

Four areas warrant particular attention:

1. Network Attachments. Carriers exercise excessive control over what devices may be used on the public’s wireless spectrum. The carriers place strong controls over “foreign attachments,” like the AT&T of the 1950s. These controls continue to affect the innovation and development of new devices for wireless networks.

2. Product Design and Feature Crippling. By controlling entry, carriers are in a position to exercise strong control over the design of mobile equipment. They have used that power to force equipment developers to omit or cripple many consumer-friendly features, and also forced manufacturers to include technologies, like “walled garden” internet access, that neither equipment developers nor consumers want. Finally, through under-disclosed “phone-locking,” the U.S. carriers disable the ability of phones to work on more than one network. A list of features that carriers have blocked, crippled, modified or made difficult to use, at one time or another include:

*    Call timers on telephones
*    WiFi technology
*    Bluetooth technology
*    GPS Services
*    Advanced SMS services
*    Internet Browsers
*    Easy Photo file transfer capabilities
*    Easy Sound file transfer capabilities
*    Email clients
*    SIM Card Mobility

3. Discriminatory Broadband Services – In recent years, under the banner of “3G,” carriers have begun to offer wireless broadband services that compete with WiFi services and may competee with cable and DSL broadband services. However, the services are offered pursuant to usage restrictions that violate basic network neutrality rules, and pursuant to undisclosed bandwidth limits.

Most striking is Verizon Wireless, which prominently advertises “unlimited” data services. However it and other carriers offer broadband service pursuant to both bandwidth limits, and contractual limits that bar routine uses of the internet, including bans on downloading music from legitimate sites like iTunes, the use of Voice over IP, and on the use of sites like YouTube.

4. Application Stall – Mobile application development is by nature technically challenging. However, the carriers have not helped. They have imposed excessive burdens and conditions on application entry in the wireless application market, stalling what might otherwise be a powerful input into the U.S. economy. In the words of one developer, “there is really no way to write applications for these things.” The mobile application environment is today, in the words of one developer, “a tarpit of misery, pain and destruction.”

Training non-computer savvy technicians to use wireless software

Russ Woodward is Maintenance Project Manager at the Indianapolis campus of the University of Indiana. Here is a detailed description of how he rolled out wireless business software to his team of 100+ technicians. His team were not regular computer users before this rollout.

As with any new technology, some workers weren’t comfortable with the idea. They said the old way worked fine so why change. It has been a challenge to convince those people this is the right thing to do. We started slowly. I used four volunteers in one of the zones as guinea pigs to test the system so we could identify and work out any problems. They caught on quickly and were really excited by what this technology could do. Their enthusiasm was so contagious that others wanted to get involved.

At first, I trained only those who volunteered or were technologically savvy. I have taken a low pressure approach, explaining that this is new and may take a while to learn.  For most it only takes about 30 minutes. Every group caught on quickly, but inevitably someone would warn, “Just wait until you get Joe (or Pete or Mike). He’s technologically challenged.”

Without exception, everyone picked up on this technology, even those considered “technologically challenged.” Some had to work a little more, but they all learned and now are proud of the fact that they stepped up, realized this is what we were going to do and are doing it. When I talk about our success, people are amazed that even workers who never touch a computer are using the system.

We use a cell phone with a large screen to give more information, and so that everyone can read it.  JumpStart Wireless designed the system to make it as simple as possible so training is fairly simple, little more than showing what’s available, how to access it, and what buttons to press, and then helping everyone become comfortable with the buttons. Naturally, there were rumors about how hard it was going to be to use the system, but when they finish the training they all say, “Is that all there is too it?” They are amazed that it is so simple.

I like to compare learning to use the Maximus’ FM Instant system to buying a television set and learning to use a new remote. It may take a while to figure out how to program it and which buttons to push, but once you do, you can surf quickly. This, too, is basically a matter of learning which buttons to push, and when.

 

My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots

Charlie Brooker provides the cell phone review I wish I had the guts to write:

It seems to have been designed specifically to irritate anyone with a mind. It starts gently - a pinch of annoyance here, an inconvenience there - but before long the steady drip, drip, drip of minor frustrations begins to affect your quality of life, like a mouth ulcer, or a stone in your boot, or the lingering memory of love gone sour.

The menu system is a confusing mangle of branching dead ends. It has touch-sensitive buttons that either refuse to work, or leap into action if you breathe on them. One such button also terminates calls, so it is easy to cut people off merely by holding the phone against your ear to hear them. It has no apparent "silent" mode, and when you set it to vibrate, it buzzes like a hornet in a matchbox. ...

Worst of all, it seems to have an unmarked omnipresent shortcut to Orange's internet service, which means that whether you are confused by the menu, or the typeface, or the user- confounding buttons, you are never more than one click away from accidentally plunging into an overpriced galaxy of idiocy

(posted by Bruce Sterling at Beyond the Beyond)

Web 2.0 Explained - Amazing Video

Michael Wesch does a beautiful job, by video, of explaining Web 2.0, participatory web sites, and the power of separating form and content. Watch it. Also see the Digital Ethnography Blog.

Now, how do we make this stuff work on wireless devices?

iPhone - breaking the mold for relations between carrier and device manufacturer?

The Wall Street Journal has a detailed story about how Apple and Cingular came to partner on the iPhone (full article available to non-WSJ subscribers here or here). The deal is unique in the extent that Apple called the shots and wrung unusual concessions from Cingular:

1. iPhone will not have Cingular branding on the case or in the software.
2. iPhone cannot be sold except in Apple or Cingular corporate stores.
3. iPhone will be sold at full cost, without a Cingular subsidy.
4. Apple completely controls the software loaded.

Iljitsch van Beijnum, adds that Apple did not totally undo the standard wireless carrier paradigm:

1. iPhones sold in the US cannot be unlocked and run on other (non Cingular) GSM carriers.
2. Services, like integrated visual interface to voice mail, are very much tied to Cingular.

So, is this phone an example of the wireless carriers beginning to be forced into offering less closed and restrictive products, or merely an example of Cingular caving to the Steve Jobs reality distortion field?

Iljitsch says:

A true revolution would be for Apple to sell the phones and for the carriers to sell the minutes and data plans, without colluding to squeeze the last dime out of their collective customer's pockets. Don't hold your breath, though.

I'd love to see phones as open platforms, where developers can deliver truely innovative services unhobbled by petty restrictions and limitations of highly proprietary devices -- restricted by both the device manufacturer and the carrier. Apple claims that the iPhone runs OS/X. But without the ability to create and run any OS/X applications, what good is the underlying locked system?

It remains to be seen if the Apple/Cingular iPhone moves either of our visions along.

Multi-touch user interfaces

If you haven't yet seen Jeff Han's user interface supporting multiple simultaneous touches make sure to view that demo or this updated demo.

Beautiful stuff!

There are also rumors of commercial availability tied to a new company Preceptive Pixel with a very large screen and commercial applications. Apparently the iPhone and Jeff Han's work were developed independently.

Wireless phones in the developing world

Congratulations to Muhammad Yunus on his Nobel Peace Prize (NYT article on Nobel Prize for Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank). Yunus invented the concept of lending small amounts of money -- as little as $20 -- to the very poor so they can start small local businesses. Typical businesses include buying a cow to sell milk and craftspeople buying supplies. Since 1983 Grameen has loaned $5.72 billion to 6.6 million borrowers, with default rates less than 1.5%.

The Peace Prize is “a fitting acknowledgment that the ways of the market are not necessarily evil, that markets can be harnessed as forces of good” said Nachiket Mor, executive director of Icici Bank, India’s largest privately owned bank.

Grameen Telecom allows villagers to purchase a cell phone and then rent it out by the minute to the other villagers. In Bangladesh, where there are only 3 land lines for every 1000 people, this provides not only an entrepreneurial opportunity, but also a critical lifeline to the rest of the world. Here is a summary from the Grameen Telecom website:

Grameen Telecom (GTC) is a company dedicated towards extending the benefits of the information revolution amongst the rural people of Bangladesh. Currently GTC provides the GSM 900 cellular mobile phones to the villagers. Our corporate vision is to provide telecommunication services to the 100 million rural inhabitants in the 68,000 villages in Bangladesh. ... The Company is entrusted with the responsibility of providing telecommunication services in the rural areas in Bangladesh and also acts as a sales agent for mobile phones for individual urban subscribers. Our basic objective are to ensure universal telecommunication access for the villagers and provide other value added services.

Why Wireless Customers Buy

Business customers for wireless data demand the following. If a wireless application does not meet these requirements, it will not be bought:

a1. The mobile solution works with the customer's entrenched office-bound software.
or
a2. There is some simple, easy to explain, horizontal thing the application does (e.g. GPS) that does not require integration with existing software.

b1. The mobile solution is trustworthy because it is endorsed by the customer's software vendor, by other people in their industry vertical, or by their carrier.
or
b2. There is a "low risk" way to try out the mobile solution without committing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

or
b3. The customer is an earlier adopter and willing to "go for it" without a lot of external validation.

c. The moble solution does exactly the task the customer perceives they need

Cellphones, wireless will drive "connectivity" everywhere

If there was any question that cellphones and wireless technology will drive "connectivity" everywhere, consider these handmade wooden "cellphones" from Mozambique (post in BoingBoing, picture from Peter Vessenes on Flikr). Cellphones are the definitive humanity-wide cultural artifact of the 21st century. Just as PCs moved computing into every home in the developed world and then the internet connected those PCs, wireless devices will drive connectivity through the rest of the world. They are arguably the most important development force since the "green revolution" of the 60s. See my previous post for more information on just how pervasive a force handhelds will be.

Wireless and Less Developed Countries

The EPROM project at MIT is looking at how mobile phones can make a difference in less developed countries. Mobiles already make a huge difference in Africa:

A large part of this boost comes from the innovative use of mobile phone technology by local entrepreneurs. In contrast to their use in the developed world, mobile phones in Africa are used for a wide variety of tasks, from sending money to family members to buying a fish from the market. Kenyan business men, farmers, and laborers are finding new uses for a tool thought of as simply a voice communication device in the West, and are coming up with original methods for solving their own problems. For example, contract laborers can now provide their phone numbers to potential employers and move on, instead of having to wait for hours at a workplace in case a job arises. Access to market information through mobile phones also provides rural communities with invaluable information about centers of business; many African fishermen check the local fish market prices on their phones to determine where to bring the day’s catch. The Kenya Agricultural Commodity Exchange (Kace), now provides crop growers with up-to-date commodity information via text message (sms). This allows farmers to access daily fruit and vegetable prices from a dozen markets, and many have quadrupled their earnings because they have access to information about potential buyers and prices before making the often arduous journey into urban centers to sell their produce. The community payphone, another innovation unique to the developing world, has helped bring mobile phone usage to the poorest areas of Africa. These payphones are owned and operated by entrepreneurs who buy airtime from the network and subsequently sell it to local people who don’t own phones themselves.

EPROM, supported by a grant from Nokia, is working on ways to enhance and extend these benefits.

Mainstreaming of high feature wireless devices will expand wireless application deployments

Motorola's purchase of Symbol Technologies is great news for wireless data. Symbol wireless devices are extremely full featured -- including printing, bar-code scanning, signature capture, support for WiFi and cellular in the same device, and ruggedness -- and extremely expensive, ranging from $1500 to $3000 for combinations of the features listed above. The mass market belongs to devices that are less than $200 (see previous post). There are users, however, that really need all these features to deliver a complete wireless solution. To the extent that Motorola brings the price of these sophisticated devices down and makes them less of an esoteric niche, this will help to expand the world of wireless applications.

New inexpensive "smart phones" will rapidly expand the number of wireless applications

Over the last few months there has been an acceleration of new "smart phones" with advanced data features (email, calendaring, application support). These phones are being sold for less than $200 or even less than $100. Getting to this price point is a key requirement for rapid expansion of wireless applcations.

No such thing as unlimited bandwidth

Wireless applications need to be very smart about bandwidth. They cannot assume huge amounts of unlimited wireless data traffic. "Unlimited" wireless data plans will have real limitations. Mike Lazardis, co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIM) made this point in a Globalcomm keynote address to wireless carriers:

For example, an average voice plan that includes 500 minutes of airtime uses about 45MB of capacity per user per month, he said. By contrast, a user with an unlimited data plan who watches 15 minutes of video per day, reads at least three articles from a mobile Web site such as CNN.com, and checks e-mail using his company's virtual private network uses about 1.6GB worth of capacity per month. Translated into voice minutes, this amount of data usage would require roughly 20,000 minutes per month. ...
The message here isn't that we shouldn't do new things, but that we need to have incentives for efficient usage. When you have a fiber running into your home, it is its own little universe with dedicated bandwidth, but wireless spectrum is something that we all have to share.

Most wireless application development models still assume arbitrary amounts of bandwidth, constant connectivity, and over the air exchanges of huge wasteful web services XML strings.

Anyone who plans on deploying usable applications, not just toys, should plan on much more constrained resources for the foreseeable future.

Multi-touch user interfaces

Jeff Han has taken touch senstive user interfaces to the next level:

While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops. ...

Our technique is force-sensitive, and provides unprecedented resolution and scalability, allowing us to create sophisticated multi-point widgets for applications large enough to accommodate both hands and multiple users.

Make sure to see the video on his site. This is the future of user interface.

Analyzing real users of wireless

Chris Fahey has documented who rides the New York subway each morning -- hour by hour. For example:

3:00-4:00 AM
Drunks of all sorts, club kids, and winos. Late night workers, busboys, getting off their shifts. Only a handful of people per car. 6:1 male/female ratio.

4:00-5:00 AM
Transit workers changing shifts. Maybe 6 people per car. All male.

5:00  AM - 6:00 AM
Blue-collar laborers, minorities, immigrants. Half the car is asleep. Maybe 20 or 25 people per car. 9:1 male/female ratio.

There is also an hourly study of subway population on the 1/9 line and a great cartoon treatment of the demographics by stop on the F line.

Why are their not similar kinds of studies of how people actually use wireless devices? Wouldn't it be useful to categorize the purpose of work related wireless phone calls? How do wireless carriers and device manufacturers decided what device features to support? Shouldn't they want to know what kinds of wireless mediated interactions are done by people on the job, on particular jobs?

What is the average content of a work call for a construction manager for example? Given that almost every construction manager carries a cell phone and pays at least $50 to $70 per month to use it just for voice, you would think we had a pretty good idea what it was being used for. Is that $50-70 per month being well spent? Could the wireless voice work be done more effectively using other wireless data approaches? What other tasks could be done given the investment in the voice device and the monthly airtime?

 

I don't think anyone knows. Do any of my readers? Do any of you know of studies of wireless users and how they use their devices, particularly in a work setting?

Wireless data does not necessarily mean wireless email

Many in the wireless industry confound wireless data and wireless email. While wireless email is currently the most visible wireless data application, this will not be so in the future. RIM has just announced a version of their BlackBerry Enterprise Server that does not support email, only wireless data applications.

As Richard Martin in UnStrung describes it:

As companies look for ways to roll out more enterprise applications to mobile workers, many assume that any new apps will run on a device primarily intended for mobile email, such as a BlackBerry or a Treo.

Now, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM)  (Nasdaq: RIMM -  message board; Toronto: RIM) says it will deconstruct that equation with the release this fall of a new version of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server that will enable companies to provide mobile applications to BlackBerry devices that don't necessarily have a corporate email account. (See RIM's Unified Theory.)

WIreless email is important to mobile knowledge workers. It is highly horizontal and adaptive, well suited to workers whose tasks and concerns are constantly changing. Wireless email is neutral and adaptable.

For many mobile workers, however, you do not want neutral and adaptable communication. These workers -- doing repair, inspection, crew supervision, delivery, and so on -- do the same kind of tasks over and and over. For their communication you want something structured and managed. You want to make sure, for example, that every field of the form is filled out and filled out correctly. The whole value proposition is based on reducing the cost of business transaction data collection.

For these workers wireless email is a very poor approach:

• There is lots of extra typing and noise words -- composing an email instead of just checking a box that says "work complete"
• Email does not ensure that all fields are supplied and filled out correctly,
• A human in the office is required to parse the message and enter the proper data into office software.

Many wireless-enabled mobile workers, perhaps most, will not be wireless email users. It is good that RIM is recognizing to see this.

Peter Drucker - "Productivity of knowledge work and dignity of service work are the two great priorities"

Every 200 or 300 years, there is a very short period when the world suddenly changes - the way it does in a kaleidoscope. This is one of those periods when the old solutions no longer work. One can clearly see new priorities.

Knowledge has become the central resource. [But] the productivity of knowledge workers is incredibly low. Does anybody here believe that the teacher of 1991 is more productive than the teacher of 1900? The productivity of service workers is even lower.... Over three-fourths of our workforce are service and knowledge workers. By the end of the century, 90 per cent of total workers will be knowledge and service workers. Productivity of knowledge work and dignity of service work are the two great priorities.
from New Priorities, by Peter Drucker, featured in In Context a publication of the Whole Context Institute

Peter Drucker, who died at age 95 last month, taught us that work and business are human endeavors demanding the utmost of us as human beings. His deep and original thinking (here too) will be deeply missed.

Inexpensive wireless devices are essential for broad based deployments

"They saw some of the prices of the Symbols and the Intermecs of the world, and they started choking"
James Potter, VP of client services at EnfoTrust, discussing Home Depot's wireless deployments

An excellent article describing a complex wireless deployment at Home Depot. Home Depot needed a way to manage the activities of diverse sales representatives who manage merchandizing within their stores:

The world's largest home improvement retailer used to be a victim of its own merchandisers—not under siege exactly, but certainly out of control.

Home Depot U.S.A. Inc. sells thousands of products from hundreds of manufacturers in more than 1,900 stores across the country. The problem was that by 2001, there were 342 service organizations responsible for placing their wares into Home Depot stores. They were not held accountable for their merchandising techniques or whether they interfered with one another.

An absolute requirement for Home Depot and the software developer: devices that were affordable for 3rd party partner organizations doing the actual mobile work.

Ideas for Wireless Carriers

(guest blogged by Jim Chard)

An enormous opportunity awaits any wireless carrier who has the vision to see it. Wireless data currently comprises a relatively small portion of carrier revenues but could be so much more. The wireless data market has not been pursued with the aggressiveness that the opportunity demands. Rather than focus on this business market, far greater effort and investment has been devoted to voice, email, consumer, and teen age markets such as ring tones.

Most importantly a wireless data sale does not have to be deeply discounted to beat out a competitor because wireless data delivers a return on investment. This makes the wireless data sale much more profitable and “sticky” for the carrier.

Furthermore, a data sale to a business customer can be far easier than voice because the “prospect” is generally already a customer. The prospect already has accounts and devices. He does not have to be snatched away from a competitor. A bidding war does not have to be part of the closing process. And the sales staff has a good reason to be calling on the existing customer because they have something new and important to offer.

There are over 35 million mobile workers in the United State alone. This number is growing and doesn’t even include “dispersed” workers in warehouses, stay-out-home workers that need to stay in touch, and market niches such as consumer surveys or clinical trials. All or most would benefit from wireless applications which are far more efficient and time saving than voice or email. But wireless carriers are focusing almost exclusively on voice and consumer (and to a lesser extent email).

The carriers have not built the infrastructure necessary to reach and develop the wireless data market. For example, there are relatively few data sales engineers. Such professionals are necessary to craft wireless solutions for customers. Sales incentive plans are almost exclusively directed to voice and device activations. Data sales are treated as the poor step child of the organization. Most carriers do not have industry verticals or focus that enable the sales and support staff to deliver wireless applications that meet domain specific requirements.

Currently, sales incentive plans at wireless carriers work against data sales. These plans focus exclusively on voice, devices, and activations. There is a monthly quota imperative that works against data sales which tend to have a longer sales cycle and do not consist of simply activating accounts. However, the sales staff, if properly trained and supported for wireless sales, can sell a service that does not have to be deeply discounted to beat out a competitor. Properly incented sales staff can demonstrate to the prospect how wireless data generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings and pays for itself in 3 to 5 months. This “solutions sale” or “enterprise sale” demands more of the sales staff but positions the wireless carrier to build customer loyalty, reduce customer churn, and dramatically increase revenue per user. By selling added value not lowest price, the sales staff can enhance the relationship with the customer while at the same time boosting margin for the carrier.

To complete the picture of an aggressive wireless sales effort for carriers, it is critical to build a strong Independent Software Vendor (ISV) alliance program. ISVs are the catalysts that make the wireless sales program percolate. Without wireless applications, wireless carriers are just transporting bits of data, not answering to customer needs. In a truly aggressive program, a carrier would recruit ISVs, offer them incentives and co-marketing dollars, introduce them to potential customers, and help educate them on certain verticals and market niches. Something as simple as providing the organization chart for data sales engineers, marketing heads, and indirect channels to ISVs would provide a substantial boost to wireless data sales.

While such an aggressive wireless data sales and marketing program could represent a significant investment on the part of the carrier; capturing this huge market could lead to a significant return to the carrier both in increased revenue per user and reduced churn.

Wireless and Hurricane Wilma

My company JumpStart Wireless, located in South Florida, has been dealing with the destruction of Hurricane Wilma. We've survived nicely with our co-located servers, our ASP office software, and offsite programmers.

Unfortunately, many of our business colleagues have 100s of staff idle because their wired communication infrastructure is completely down. They now want to know how fast we can implement a wireless application.

Don't wait for a disaster - now is the time to replace your wired communciation infrastructure with wireless.

Here are the results from this week in Florida:

Most reliable communciation services: wireless email and applications. Definitely some delays, but smooth, mostly seamless operation, even during the peak of the storm.

Much less reliable: wireless voice. We commonly do not reach people, calls placed move to voicemail without ever ringing the handset, and calls need to be placed 5-10 times to actually get an outside line.

Totally unreliable: wired lines.

Bonar's Rule of Wireless Business Software

The first day of wireless business software usage by real users will teach you more than a year of careful study and analysis.

How could a wireless phone replace a desktop computer? Usability issues are key!

Today's typical mobile phone or wireless handheld is far more powerful than early personal computers. Could a mobile phone or wireless handheld be an effective primary computing platform for average folks? Philip Greenspun lays out a detailed proposal for how this might be done. He proposes an appliance that would act as docking station for the wireless handheld. The appliance would provide a large keyboard, large screen, broadband connectivity, large amounts of storage, and basic applications: web browsing, email, digital photo and music organization, and so on.

Greenspun's appliance project is terrific. I'd love to see that it not only has the right hardware and connectivity, but begins to address some of the big picture usability problems that have plagued personal computing. He points to usability problems with PC file systems (I elaborate on that issue below). But there is much more to get right if the appliance is to be more than just  a PC plus a cell phone dock.

Here are my thoughts on what is needed to make the proposed wireless handheld docking appliance really work for non-sophisticated users.

User Objects Move Between Wildly Different Platforms

How do the user's objects of interest --  documents, people, projects, music, photos, call history entries, email messages, tasks, reminders -- seamlessly migrate to/from the handheld as needed. Updates entered when the handheld device is in the field should automatically move to the appliance while updates that arrive to the appliance by broadband need to selectively move to the handheld device.

Two Kinds of Applications For the Same Objects

The applications that operate on user objects -- like browsers, editors, search tools, organization tools -- will need to have two completely different user interfaces -- one for the handheld device and one for the appliance. Appliance applications are designed around a full sized screen and a full keyboard. This is the user interface where the bulk of the typing and organization will happen. The handheld device user interface needs to deal with the small screen, unloved tiny keyboards (or only a numeric keypad) and other limitations of handheld devices. Handheld applications demand on-the-go usage without "browsing" and single hand operation. Arguably, there will need to be two completely different applications sharing the same data objects synchronized between the handheld and the appliance data stores.

Synchronization of Objects Between Platforms

The handheld device docking appliance that replaces a PC needs to have brilliant synchronization, operating more seamlessly then current schemes like Intellsync and Sync-ML. The synchronization should be push, rather than pull. This means that the synchronizations happens automatically whenever the handheld is docked (or connected via a wireless connection). The user should not need to initiate the synch manually. Furthermore, the synch should be fine grained, working on an object-by-object basis, not just as a batch. Generally, the synchronization should happen quietly under the covers and bother the user rarely if ever. There should be priority rules -- one kind of object gets synchronized agressively using any connection even if it is a slow or expensive wireless connection. Other kinds of objects only get synchronized when there is a cheap high-bandwidth connection. Perhaps RSS can provide a good basis for the synchronization (some good background on RSS here) as it allows for a finer grained approach than Sync-ML. Whatever the technology, we need to figure out how to make synchronization much less complicated and much more closely tied to human usage patterns.

Applications Move With Their Objects - Plug and Play Applications

A handheld docking appliance needs a standard for applications that allow them to move seamlessly to the device along with their critical content. An unfortunate approach, that even has a standard defined, requires handheld users to download, maintain, and install handheld applications in the same broken and unmanageable way that PC applications are downloaded, maintained and installed. Besides the inherent manageability problems, this misses the critical usage issue for handhelds: applications are very fine-grained and they have to operate while disconnected.

For example, when I book an airline reservation, the application to book seats for that airline reservation should move from the network to the handheld with the reservation object. This is a fine grained application by itself, but it gets worse: each airline company will have their own seat selection application. When you consider the range of fine-grained hand-held and mobile applications, all of which have to work while sometimes disconnected, it is obvious that the traditional install model is broken. Here are the kinds of applications you want to run on your handheld: airline reservation applications from each carrier, a movie-ticket application (from each theater chain), prescription drug application for ordering refills, an application to notify my friends that I am going to a certain concert or movie this weekend, a way to manage the weekly tasks lists for each of my employees.

Just like the web, handhelds want to get their applications on an "as needed" basis. There are relatively few "generic" applications (like a word processor) in the handheld world. Applications are small, tailored, and focused on particular tasks at hand. Consider how unworkable the web would be if you needed to "install" a page any time you wanted to do something that requires an operation. That is crucially flawed, but that is what is widely proposed as a standard for wireless applications. Instead, applications want to be plug and play. As you use a handheld you want relevant applications to be available as needed without an install step.

Why not just use the kind of thin client browsing that works fine on the desktop web? That is fine for when you are at the appliance. But on a handheld you ARE NOT always connected. Despite "can you hear me now" TV commercials, our typical commercial user goes in and out of coverage 5-10 times per day. Your screen is small and browsing does not work. Some way to manage "store and forward" or "plug and play" applications is required. On the web applications live on the server (via PHP, JSP, ASP, etc.) or travel to the desktop as light-weight bits of program that enhance a pure browser experience (e.g Javascript or Flash). On a handheld you are not always connected. Plug and play applications need to keep operating even when disconnected.

My company, JumpStart Wireless, provides the kinds of plug and play applications described in this section, but in a commercial setting for mobile workers doing repair, delivery, inspection, etc. Our technology would work in the broad context described here (anyone interested in funding a move of this technology into a broad consumer world?). Other approaches would work as well. The key here, however, is the need for plug and play, disconnectable applications.

Working Out Smooth Object Movement -- What Do You Want to Carry With You?

Working out how to have object movement from the handheld to/from the application is another key issue. How do I set things up to keep the right objects in the right place without a lot of manual manipulation. For example, how do I choose the limited number of songs I can carry with my phone today?  How do I ensure that an email from james.smith@bigco.com is properly connected to the address book entry for Jim Smith? If I have an appointment today with Mary Jones, could I arrange to have the phone automatically get copies of all recent emails to and from Mary?

Getting the "File" (really Object) System Right

Greenspun talks about how PC file systems are far too complex and counterintunitive. Why, for example, when I update a document do I need to "save" those updates before I "exit" the word processing program. Updates to your phone address book are automatically saved without any explicit save. Why should your other computer objects be different? Furthermore, using that address book entry happens in context, for example, addressing an email or dialing a phone number, without needing to search through the hierarchical folders holding the raw address book data. Again, I would like my computing objects to place themselves in useful places that can easily be found by automatically maintained indices?

It is a huge failure of the PC industry that, after all these years, we are still living with file systems that force users to understand lots of low level details about how hard disks and operating systems work.

Beyond the confusion of the file system, crucial information is stored in isolated silos that are hard to coordinate and manage. Your address book is arguably your most important data. Why isn't it trivial to keep your address book for your mobile phone coordinated with copy on your desktop computing device? Why can't EVERY program treat that as your only address book, instead of every program keeping its own copy. Microsoft Outlook, to cite a particularly nasty example, keeps three different address books.

File System: Concrete Proposal

Here is my concrete proposal for what should be done to a file system. Every object - every photo, address book entry, email, phone call record, etc, should be filed in at least 3 places:

1. Everything should be filed based on when it was created/received. A calendar-like viewer should allow you to retrieve things by when they were created/received.
2. Everything should be filed based on the people involved. For example, filing based on To,From, and CC for emails and filing based on the Artist for music. An address book viewer should allow you to retrieve not only address and phone, but also recent documents and emails.
3. Everything should be filed based on interest/project tags (gardening, family reunion,  promotion, etc.). Objects can be stored based on many different tags so you can find it multiple ways.

Summary

I love Greenspun's proposal. It is exactly the right project for an obvious direction that convergence of telecom and computing is taking. Usability, however, is far more important than just getting the hardware right.

 

Tiny Keyboards Biggest Obstacle for Handheld Users

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research says that:

... most consumers would be willing to utilize more data-oriented mobile services if the keyboards on their handheld devices weren't so impossibly cramped. The study found that adoption of wireless activities such as text messaging, picture messaging, Web surfing, phone personalization and gaming remain bogged down by frustration with digit-challenging handheld interfaces.

Five reasons for Palm's slide

Michael Singer has a nice article summarizing the difficulties of Palm. This is an analysis of the difficulties that led to Palm announcing a Microsoft Windows Mobile version of the Treo.

Palm's decision to use Windows Mobile software also highlights some of the missed opportunities and key moments in Palm's history that could have allowed the company to remain not only dominant but autonomous in the smart-phone marketplace instead of seeking the help of Microsoft.

So what happened?

Wireless devices need to be one-handed

Andrew Seybold's Commentary takes of the subject of Smartphone usability. Two critical points for him:

• One-handed operation
  

I am at an airport, changing planes and have to walk from one gate to another. I am pulling my carry-on luggage and briefcase with one hand so I only have one hand free during this walk.

I can easily use a standard clamshell or candy bar phone to place and receive phone calls with a single hand. I can also use my BlackBerry to make calls, look at my inbox and click on and read messages. I can even send a quick email reply using one hand, which is the optimum situation. Being able to place phone calls and read email as I walk is a must for me.

• Push email -- your email comes to you without having to explicitly request it each time

Seybold often is very white-collar oriented, but I think his comments in this article are applicable to any mobile user or application. One more dead-on quote:

And don't put a notebook computer into the form factor of a handheld. Give me the features, functions and capabilities that will permit me to leave my notebook home more often.

Exactly right.

How NOT To Phrase Error Messages

We learned a lesson this week. We have product that display's the following error message:

Cannot connect to service provider

90% of the time this is due to poor wireless coverage to the device. Occasionally, particularly when just getting started, a customer will get this message because they have not set up the customer's server link correctly. When we came up with this message wording, we congradulated ourselves on the technical precision in covering all the possibilities in just a few words.

We were taken to task by a customer this week because the staff in the field had no idea what this message meant or what to do. We'd heard this before, but this customer didn't want to hear our expanation, they wanted it changed so the user knew what to do. I patiently explained that this usually means the user is in an area of bad coverage, and they should try again later. The customer said, "Well if that's what it means, just say so -- tell the user whats wrong and what to do."

Great advice. Here is the new message:

Weak coverage, try again later

Why Wireless and Handheld Software Companies Fail

The failed and the “living dead” wireless software companies have suffered from one or more of the following characteristics:

1. Systems integrators rather than product companies

The integrator model for wireless software does not scale gracefully. Many wireless software companies created reusable code libraries but they didn’t productize their software for broad applicability across multiple applications or multiple verticals. The companies were dependent upon expensive hand programming to produce one-off applications for each customer. One-off products lead to one-off revenue models rather than recurring revenues which pay dividends year after year.

2. One big customer vs. go-to-market strategy and sales infrastructure

Point 2 is really a corollary to point 1 above. Some wireless software companies were initially successful because one of the founders had a special relationship to one or more major early adopter customers but didn’t have a marketing strategy --- or product --- to build a sales pipeline or business development program. The bear hug from the initial client prevented them from becoming a full-fledged company. Companies geared to one or two large, well-heeled, early adopter customers seldom scale to mainstream enterprises, let alone SMB.

3. Trying to apply a windowing/desktop user interface to mobile applications

The market is littered with unsuccessful attempts to build mobile versions of desktop applications. These applications were hard to use because they tried to do windowing on tiny screens and were aimed at desktop users rather than mobile users. These windowing applications were designed for users "browsing" to find relevant data and screens. This does not meet the day-to-day needs of workers in the field who are looking for a more linear process. On small screens, with mobile devices, field staff want to be led through a process. Desktop windows, menus, buttons, and tabs just confuse what should be simple processes. The applications also assumed constant connectivity and did not easily tie to mass market devices and enterprise software. Generally, these windowing applications proved unwieldy to use in the field and difficult to maintain.

4. Applications based on “Palm end-of-day synch” model

Many failed wireless companies provided software that was batch oriented and only synched at the end of the day. These earlier versions of wireless applications were not real-time, always on applications. Successful handheld software replicates central databases and synchronizes with remote, dispersed databases throughout the day. With "sync at end-of-day" wireless applications, the customers’ management personnel had no way of tracking progress (such as job status) in the field nor the ability to assign additional work throughout the day to increase productivity. The centralized databases could not update customers’ information, produce invoices, or request permits until the end-of-day synch was completed.

 5. Screen scraping approach

Many wireless companies simply replicated all or part of a web browser-based application – taking a web page specification and automatically creating a wireless application. This “thin client” approach creates long lag times and extra keying. Furthermore it requires browsing rather than process orientation, constant connectivity, and inefficient forms designs in field operations. These limitations slowed down operations and over complicated training and deployment. Many of these applications simply went unused by field personnel after initial attempts to master the software. In other cases, the requirement of constant connectivity proved fatal.

6. Overly optimistic business process re-engineering (BPR) vs. ROI focus

Implementing wireless applications offers significant and multi-faceted opportunities for companies to modify their business models. Companies can shift more responsibility to dispersed locations, provide real-time information that can be re-purposed for marketing and CRM initiatives, and reallocate field staff on the fly for more flexible and responsive operations. While all the above is true, the vast majority of new technology acquisition in the last few years has been ROI driven, rather than BPR driven. Successful sales over the last few years, in our experience, are all about ROI. Wireless companies that built a business strategy based on BPR have not be successful.

7. Failure to produce productivity enhancements in the field

Many wireless applications simply mobilized work in the field without providing real ROI value, partially because of the problems enumerated above. In fact, early wireless applications imposed a burden and slowed down processing in the field rather than reducing time and introducing cost savings.

8. Point Solutions - What you see is ALL you get

Wireless applications are often designed for only one specific business model within a vertical market. These products are not built to be customizable or to adapt to the unique ways a company may conduct its business. They also do not allow the customer to embody their business unique model. Nor do they accommodate functions that could enrich and integrate the wireless product with features like payroll or inventory.

9. Maturation of the technology

Many of the early wireless companies did not have the benefit of handheld devices with speedy processors, full-blown development environments, or significant data store (up to and exceeding 32 megabytes). Bandwidth and performance of wireless networks has improved by an order of magnitute from 5 years ago. Wireless service, while still not perfect, is nearly omnipresent for the urban and suburban parts of the US. Finally, device and data plan prices are much more affordable today than they were for the earlier generation of wireless data companies.

10. Hand Crafted Solutions Tied to Particular Hardware and Software

Many initial wireless applications were built on specialized hand held devices that were expensive, software that was totally hand crafted, based on technology that did not have a long-term development path, and packaged in an unwieldy form factor.  Companies committed to particular types of devices or technologies (e.g., Motorola Paging, Symbol Technology or Intermec) saw their market shrink as their platform of choice obsolesced.  Winners must be able to flexibly use a wide range of light weight, mass produced, low cost devices available from a variety of vendors on a variety of networks.

11. Benefits From Peripherals

Early wireless companies did not have benefit of the wide variety of peripherals that are available today including credit card swipe, signature capture, bar code reading, and printing. The emergence of BlueTooth technology has also enhanced the potential ROI and simplified connectivity to handheld devices. Complete solutions are much easier to create.

12. Too early, maturation of the market

In many ways the knowledge and sophistication of prospects has grown rapidly and equaled or exceeded the functionality of wireless applications. Even 12 months ago, many prospects were uninformed regarding wireless applications or thought that handhelds could only do email. Earlier wireless companies had to struggle with a conceptual sale that was frequently not cost justifiable.

The Tyranny of Rechargers Everywhere

Anyone in the wireless software busienss knows this scene - rechargers everywhere as captured by Russell Beattie. I am planning a trip to Europe and will be taking along 4 chargers, just for my hand held devices! And this is not even a business trip. Isn't there an easier way?

Wireless Email - In the News

There are several recent articles about the developing wireless email market. Yahoo News says that Good Tech has bought JP Mobile and the Thur 7 July 2005 Wall Street Journal has a front page section B article (syndicated here) about developing consumer, rather than business, use of wireless email.

From the Yahoo News article:

Pablo Perez-Fernandez, an analyst with ThinkEquity Partners in San Francisco, said Research in Motion controls about 80% of the market for enterprise wireless email software. Good Technology has a roughly 9% market share, with the remainder split up among smaller players including Visto Corp.Seven Networks Inc., both of Redwood City, Calif. Visto and Seven also cater to a growing consumer customer base.

The Wall Street Journal leads with a story about Susan Chevalier, a homemaker and mother of three kids, who wanted a wireless email device from the first time she saw a friend use a BlackBerry for his legal work two years ago. She now uses a Treo 600 from Sprint and:

"In just a minute or two, while I'm waiting for the kids, I can send off a note to my husband, check in with my PTA committee, or book doctors' appointments"

My prediction: wireless email will ultimately be a giveaway with consumer and business wireless data plans. I just don't see it adding enough value to sell broadly to average folks. The average business mobile worker (not senior executives, but average white collar business workers) and average consumers just don't get enough "return on investment" for wireless email. I just don't think Susan is all that typical.

Mobile Internet: Minimal Growth Because the Approach is Wrong

Stephen Baker writes about the Mobile Internet: a story of stagnation. The article quotes statistics from M:Metrics, Inc. of Seattle. The number of Americans using a mobile browser for news and other information appears to be falling.

Here are the numbers quoted by Baker  (unfortunately there is no link for the raw data):

January --    22,052,550 0
February--    22,628,052 2.6%
March --    21,533,717 -4.8%
April --    22,109,802 2.7%
May --    21,641,574 -2.1%

Here are my comments to his post:

If you think about it, mobile "browsing" is an obvious non-starter. Being mobile is absolutely the wrong situtation for "browsing" or any kind of navigating. On a mobile device you want just a few choices presented at any given time. You want your task handed to you in a well-defined order -- much like an MS Windows wizard. You want to be led through the task with just a few choices presented in context. There is more on this topic here.

The "wireless internet" will take off when there are applications and user interface models designed for small devices used by people on the go. Attempts to copy Microsoft Windows desktops and desktop Internet are doomed to failure because they are the wrong model force-fit from a previous generation of computing.

In the early 1990s IBM invested heavily in PC software that created visual interfaces by "screen-scraping" existing mainframe software -- they even mandated this as the PROPER way to build distributed applications. The success of Microsoft Windows and the Internet showed how short sighted this approach was. The mobile industry's current focus on miniature web screens and miniature desktops with application icons is similarly short sighted.

Great ROI at CSX Intermodal

Nice summary of the ROI payoff for wireless data at CSX Intermodal:

To get the most value out of wireless connectivity, organizations need solutions that deliver wireless voice and data in a single form factor.

and

After researching several wireless data solutions, CSX Intermodal came up with the criteria it needed to make its plan work. "We still needed two-way, real-time communication between the drivers and dispatch center," says Dugan. "And, it wasn't realistic for us to expect drivers to purchase cell phones and calling plans, plus wireless data devices and wireless data plans. We needed a single form factor that could accommodate wireless voice and data from a wireless carrier network."

Ideally, the solution of choice would need to be able to work with multiple wireless carriers so drivers would be able to choose the carriers and plans they preferred. Also, it had to be simple to use. Many of CSX Intermodal's owner-operators don't have a lot of computer skills; therefore, presenting them with complex handheld devices (that the drivers would have to buy) wouldn't work. The final criteria for the solution were that it had to accommodate spotty wireless coverage areas, and it had to be inexpensive.

How to analyze a handheld user interface - project management as an example

An earlier post described a terrific discussion at Edward Tufte's web site about building effective project management user interfaces. I have had recent experience with handheld interfaces to project management systems and want to add some thoughts about that.

The critical place to look is at who will be using the handheld interface to the project management system and why they are using it from the field. As soon as you ask these questions, the discussion is shifted. Desktop project management systems are used by project managers, trained in the complexities of gantt charts, resource leveling, float dates, critical path analysis, budget planning, etc. etc. These are experts looking for a powerful tool with lots of options and complex visual displays. They want to browse around among many interlinked projects and tasks, selecting the views and operations consistent with their job of managing all the many disparate pieces.

Why get field managers involved in project management at all? They have their daily "to-do" list and are not involved with big picture project management and resource planning. Instead, they are the critical link that provides data from the field to reconcile the plan with what actually happened. Project management tools can only deliver value when they are closely linked with real data about what is really happening.

We now have the focus we need to develop an effective handheld user interface. Present a "to-do" list with the current plan and easy ways to provide the "what really happened" information needed back at the office by the project manager. This is probably done with pop-up responses associated with each todo list task -- "completed", "requires 1 more day", "delayed due to weather". There is no need for gantt charts, resources leveling, visual displays, etc.

The lesson: handheld user interfaces should focus on the task at hand for the field staff member. The desktop user interface for the back end software to which the handheld application is tied typically tells you very little about what the handheld interface should look like. Instead, look at the tasks of the person who will be using the handheld.

User interface design - Edward Tufte - deep discussion of project management

I have been meaning to write an entry about wireless project management. As background, I found a very rich and thoughtful discussion about project management interfaces at Edward Tufte's website. For those who don't know, Tufte is one of the deep thinkers of our age on effective use of visual displays and information design. He is opinionated, a purist and deeply original thinker.

Form factor fallacies

    another Jim Chard guest entry

With little fanfare or recognition, handheld devices are replacing laptops and tablet PCs. The advantages are both obvious and subtle. Handhelds are always on; they don’t require time-consuming boot-up time. They are more cost effective. A company can buy 5 to 10 times as many handhelds as PCs for the same amount of money. Replacement for rugged use in the field becomes an expense item, not a capital item. It is certainly more convenient to keep your computing resource in your breast pocket or hanging from your belt than back in the truck or hotel room, or worse, dangling painfully from your shoulder.

Even more importantly, the PDA form factor is more appropriate for use in the field than a laptop or tablet. As long as bandwidth provides speedy updating and local data storage accommodates megabytes of data, the wireless handheld makes the laptop appear as an antiquated relic out in the field. The process of booting up and logging on vs the always available handheld literally saves thousands of dollars of wasted time in a large field force. And the ability to work with one hand rather than two hands on a keyboard (or using a stylus) means that field staff can multi process and update databases without pausing during their work. Capturing data and updating databases becomes part of the work process rather than a clunky intrusion at the end of the day. 

Nor is the small screen a limitation as handhelds develop the power to zoom in and out, display thousands of colors and navigate around a large drawing or x-rays. It wasn’t so long ago that we felt that we needed an E Size drawing to understand a blue print or a 14” x 17” film to understand an x-ray. Today we examine these images on a small computer screen with perfect comprehension; tomorrow we will view them on an even smaller handheld screen with equal comprehension. Not only x-rays and blueprints but maps, complex forms and detailed PowerPoint presentations can be rendered with perfect clarity and comprehension on the small screen, albeit in a different representation from that of a 19 inch flat panel monitor.

Transaction processing in the field (work orders, inspections and quality assurance, inventory receiving, etc) all require multiple pages and parts in a paper-based world. Wireless handhelds use displays tailored to the individual user (and easily customized), branching logic to emulate step-wise business processes, pick lists to minimize text entry, and feature-rich submenus to manipulate large databases or graphics. With careful analysis and design, a multi-page 8 ½ x 11 form can be reduced to a series of screens which allow a user to scroll and click the thumb wheel to readily scan and update  information. And all of this functionality and ease of use can be accomplished with a device that can easily be slipped into a shirt pocket.

Handhelds will displace laptops

(another Jim Chard entry)

Wireless applications began as pale imitations of their client server cousins with slower response times, limited data and dearth of user friendly features. As networks have become faster and more pervasive, devices more powerful, and developers more sophisticated about mobile applications, the software available to workers on the move has improved radically in its utility and productivity. As a consequence the barrier is continually being raised for software developers wishing to compete in the wireless data market. Just like Netscape and Internet Explorer kept raising the bar every 6 months when Internet browsers first emerged, wireless enterprise developers are competing to enrich functionality in wireless handhelds at an asymptotic rate.

Initial mobile applications were characterized by the need to synch devices physically at the end of the day. Or by lack of local data base capabilities resident on the handheld device. Or by data stores that were not replicated with server databases throughout the day. Therefore changes in inventory, project status, pricing, crew deployment, etc. were not reflected appropriately in either central or remote mobile databases. Management was still in an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind environment where activities could not be monitored throughout the day without reverting to voice, calling on the phone and asking “how ya doing?”

With the rollout of 3G networks and the introduction of handhelds with many megabytes of memory, the paradigm literally changes. Now mobile users are just as hooked into corporate networks as their desk-bound brethren. Their data is as fresh and accurate and their response time is nearly comparable. Data in the field is no longer untimely or out-of-date; it is just as accurate as data available at the desk top. The resulting enhancements to business management are reflected throughout the organization:

• inventory - management and stock reordering
• employee - routing and tasking
• accurate - time accounting
• customer - billing and cash mobilization

All these consequences, generated by wireless applications, will continue to squeeze inefficiencies out of operations. And these benefits are delivered over a device that is always on, fits comfortably in a breast pocket, is reasonably rugged and is priced at an affordable price point. Through a sort Darwinian principle of “survival of the fittest”, wireless handhelds will displace both laptops ­­and paper in corporate field operations and other mobile environments. Mobile workers will have no real need for a bulky, fragile and heavy device when a handheld can do the job better.