Dispatches: Mobile Innovation Summit 2018

How does mobile change the way we live, work, and play? That question threaded through every panel at the 2018 Mobile Innovation Summit in NYC. Attendees were strongly encouraged to up their game, starting right now, when it comes to creating new, relevant mobile experiences.

The all-star roster of presenters talked about the coming sound revolution in UX design, getting real about going number one in the App Store, and the potential benefits of cross-platform development.

Notes on the Fearless Girl

“If you don’t name her yourself, the community will do it for you.” McCann’s Director of Social & Mobile Gemma Craven talked at length about the campaign around Wall Street’s Fearless Girl statue.

McCann’s client, State Street Global Advisors, did most of the work by walking the walk (establishing a gender diversity fund) and the timing was considered carefully. Instead of promoting on same day as International Women’s Day, where conversation about the statue would potentially get lost in the noise, they launched the day before.

A purposeful image (professionally-shot photograph) was released to spark social sharing, and the element of surprise was important for encouraging shares. The science of successful moments was studied, and maximum impact was achieved by working 3 groups in tandem:

• Dark shares: shares amongst relevant communities (women in business)
• Public shares: high impact activity including press coverage and influencer shares
• Personal + mobile shares: people sharing with other people on social networks, and people who see the statue in person

“We Need a Mobile App!”

A frantic question that echoes across product departments the world over. Companies sometimes dive into the process of app-building for a simple reason: they want an app because there’s money to be made. But there’s no guarantee for success, especially when the expectations of bringing an app to market are unrealistic.

MQ Qureshi (Xoobies) laid some sticker shock on the audience: It costs about $200k to get in the Top 25 results of the App Store. That cost is increasing — per install cost went up by 50% over the past 3 years.

Before making an app, ask “How will having a mobile app solve our customer’s problem?” Does it provide additional value over say, your existing website?

Customer journey-mapping should be adopted across the company, not just as a task for designers. The results are real. Customers are much more likely to engage with many different channels, so inconsistent experiences will reduce customer satisfaction.

The Invisible Power of Sound in Mobile

Kevin Perlmutter from ManMadeMusic believes that sound is the next frontier of brand identity/experience. Why? Because it’s one of the most underutilized methods to elicit an emotional reaction.

Sound affects a person’s user experience subconsciously, whether someone intended it or not. For example, a debit machine’s chip buzzer, an unpleasant sound, is a customer’s last impression of the store they’re in before they leave.

As visual interfaces decrease, sound will become paramount via virtual assistants, contactless payments, etc. Think of it holistically. One recent example: there is no audio confirmation when walking out of an Amazon Go store, which led to some customers feeling like they were shoplifting and therefore uneasy. So, it’s not about the sound, per se, it’s about the experience.

The In-Arena Mobile Experience

Fun fact: The Miami Heat is the first NBA team to enforce mobile ticketing only. With the exception of large groups and children, everyone has to have a mobile ticket in order to enter AmericanAirlines Arena.

The app used for ticketing also acts as a mobile wallet, where fans can just tap to pay for merch from stores and food. The team’s mobile guru Derek Rhodes said the switch to mobile-only turned out very well for them: huge increases in engagement, faster lines, etc.

Fans responded well to the app’s additional features, which were added incrementally. They get exclusive content on the home screen every day, plus live feedback on concession lines.

Cross Platform Mobile Development

FreshDirect’s Thomas Connors talked about the fast-changing landscape of cross-platform mobile development, positing that converging platforms may decrease the amount of testing needed during QA.

He also suggested that if you can’t rebuild your entire app, consider an “inside out” approach — build cross-platform using a tool like Xamarinwhen adding new features, then embed it in your native apps.

My colleague Garrett Glick took particular notice when Connors explained the importance of putting QA first rather than as an afterthought through the use of TDD (Test Driven Development). This involves testers working closely with developers through the entire process, and using Xamarin’s test automation tools and devices stored on their cloud server as a supplement to manual user acceptance testing. This cut their overall QA time by 75%.

App development is maturing but has never been more important — he estimates that users spend 2x the amount of time in apps vs. the web.

Hot Takes!

Angela Lee from the Columbia Business School had a very concise breakdown of the forces that hinder innovation:

• Conformity
• Social loafing (the people slacking, letting the rest of the team carry them)
• Production blocking (obstacles for idea exchange)
• Downward norm setting (weakest link of the team drags everyone down while the best of the team is not able to bring everyone up)

When creating advertising content for mobile users, BloombergCreative Director Christopher Briseno advises us to never be afraid of negative space, kill the noise, and do everything you can to reduce cognitive load on the reader.

Brian Hull’s Monetizing AI + IoT at Scale presentation covered IBM Watson Advertising’s data-driven methodology and focus on consumer product experiences. A salient observation is that AI is…well, hard. It’s time-consuming compared to the breakneck speed of advertising and there’s no standard workflow for it, unlike established channels (TV, radio, print).

Hull also thinks we’re going to see a space race in the next 3–5 years of who can train AI the fastest. Right now, there are no pre-trained “kits” of data that we can build brand-specific data on top of.