The Realities of The Fantastic Tavern #TFTLondon

Yesterday I had my first opportunity to visit The Fantastic Tavern. (It's like a software user group but aimed at designers)  The theme of the night was "[Augmented] Realitites".

A couple of more details write ups of the event can be found at:
http://vinf.net/2010/04/29/augmented-reality-tftlondon/
http://ubelly.com/2010/04/realities-blurring-the-boundaries-at-the-fantastic-tavern/

At the end of the night the open Q&A was concluded with an unanswered question about how to prevent a situation where you look through your AR application to see hundreds (thousands) of additional competing pieces of information all laid over (and probably obscuring) the image?

I have a different but related question though. How do we get to that point? At the moment all AR apps are separate and you could potentially have dozens on a device. How do you combine the information from different applications? Is anyone looking at/making a way to do this?  And are they doing it in a way that avoids the overload feared in the original question?

My other question:
All AR apps seem to be driven by the person specifically using a device. Is anything being developed where the location identifies the person and provides additional relevant information to them?  At an extreme case think of the iris recognition in Minority Report.  But on a more practical (and realisitic/easily achievable) level what about ticket booths at railway stations. Why not give me useful information while waiting to buy my ticket? For instance, if I buy a ticket to a location I've not visited before (based on previous purchases made with that card) why not tell me which platform I need and show me directions.


As I was tired and the place was very hot and noisy I didn't hang around for long afterwards. Lots of interesting ideas though.

Please [don't (?)] peek at Orange

 

This is a really poor quality photo (taken with my phone) of one of my local orange stores.  As you probably can't tell. The store is currently closed for a refit.  The entire front of the store is covered with black paper.  In large letters it says "hey, no peeking" and then there are some generic numbers you can call for more information.  On the other window (not shown) it says when the store will be reopening and has details of the nearest alternate store.

While I can appreciate that they are trying to have a sense of humour with the message being displayed. The entire store front basically says "go away".  This doesn't strike me as the best things they could have done with what's a potentially very valuable opportunity to engage with potential customers.

Why not take this opportunity to engage with potential new/future customers?
Instead of stopping people from seeing what you're doing why not show them?
Or better still, why not show them something that intrigues, entertains and encourages interest and word of mouth?

Here's what I'd do:
Instead of having paper covering the whole store front, I'd leave gaps and encourge people to look through.
I'd create the gaps at different heights (including very low and very high - deliberately making it harder for everyone to see everything) and behind each I'd have something different.  Behind some I'd have static images, promtions, info, etc.  I'd also have competitions and discounts avaialble on a text to win basis.  Any such prizes would of course be linked to discounts limited to the day of reopening.
But behind certain key gaps I'd have screens and while some may occasionally provide information on when the store will reopen the real value would be in having unique, entertaining footage.  This could be all sorts of things: It could look like the store was completely missing; what if it looked like the store was being filled with something completely ridiculous - animals, water, a ball pool?; it could look like people supposedly doing the refit but who suddenly break into dance.  The only limit would be imagination (oh and cost) but such footage could potentially be reused across multiple store refits and then made available online.

• How many people just walk straight past a store that's closed for refit?
• How many would stop to peek in if they thought they'd get to see something they normally wouldn't?
• If you walked past a store that was obviously closed but had people clammering to peer in at the window, wouldn't you be at least slightly curious yourself?  Admit it, there's a bit of a voyeur in all of us.
• Who's done something like this before? (in the UK?) Don't you think people would talk about it? And want to come and see for themselves?  And at the same time being educated about the reopening and the brand in general.

In that, as Orange, I'd know who had bought a phone there before or lived nearby and was shortly due an upgrade I'd email or SMS them (subject to previously expressed mailing preferences) to let them know a bit about some of the new phones that will be available when the store reopens.  I'd also, obviously, tell them when it would reopen. And I'd tell them to come and have a peek in the window to see what was going on while the refit was going on.

The aim would be to engage with [potential] customers, promote the newly refurbished store and encourage word of mouth that means that when the store reopens more people will be aware of it and be eager to see what has actually changed.

Well, that's what I'd do.

I hope the refit doesn't get rid of the fish tank they used to have.  Disappointinglyt that was often far more interesting than most of the phones there.

Oh and for the record, I've had (among others) a contract with Orange for more than 12 years, but I'm frequently starting to wonder why.

Avoiding a substandard product

“If you don’t have a triad of a designer, technologist, and business professional all coming to the table with equal skills and equal levels of creativity, the result will be a substandard product” 

– Bill Buxton 2010

More boats in the water

At the start of the year the blogosphere was, as ever, full of predictions for the coming year.
A common trend among many predictions was that there would be a thinning of the numbers of companies in the mobile OS business.

With Palm now up for sale we're starting to see some of those predictions beginning to come true.

A common prediction was that Microsoft would end up leaving the mobile space.

Almost in contrast to popular opinion, I tried to argue that they wouldn't.  I claimed that mobile was to important for Microsoft to not be in the party.  I said they wouldn't just roll over and die.
For over a year Microsoft had been talking about their "3 screens and a cloud" strategy but had hardly made any real indication of what the experience around the phone screen would really be.  I thought this noticeable in it's absence.
At the time Windows Phone 7 hadn't formally been announced - but we all knew it was coming, just not what it would be.

So here we are in mid April.  Windows Phone 7 (now without any reference to "series") has been more positively rceived than most would have expected.  Plus, the Kin has also now been announced to much praise.


So what's all this got to do with boats?
Well, in a Twitter conversation at the time I used that analogy of shipping.  I said that to be successful in the mobile industry you needed the flexibility of a fleet of canoes, while Microsoft had been more like an oil tanker.
Now, while Microsoft is still a large vessel in the water it's giving the impression of being surrounded by a floatiller of smaller craft.

Beware the lollipop!

"Beware the lollipop of mediocrity. Lick it once and you will suck it FOREVER."

- Brian Wilson