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Agenda
Day One, 27th May 2008
08:30 | Reception, cafe, networking area and exhibition space
Registration and light refreshments09:00 | Conference room
Manifesto #7: Intelligent contact lists are the future centres of the user interface
Chairman Presence and IP-based messaging change the dynamics of mobile communication. The natural focal point for next generation user interfaces is an intelligent, presence-enabled contact list. Enhancing the information and services which can be shared through people-centric networks is the best way to encourage usage of voice, messaging and data. The background Mobile devices are unique. They are always with us and they are always connected to a network. However, several key areas of the user experience are yet to benefit from this connectivity. The contact list, the interface through which we connect to the most important people in our lives, remains a simple, localised database on most devices. In its first iteration, the ability to share presence information with our contact lists will enable us indicate how and when we'd like to be communicated with. It will change the experience by providing users with a better contextual understanding of the people they want to contact. New behavioural traits, like scanning your contact list to check who is 'available' or what your contacts are doing, will quickly emerge. But why should it end there? Perhaps the intelligent contact list is actually the most logical gateway for a much wider range of services? If your best friend takes a photo and wants to share it, should it not appear immediately alongside his profile in your address book? If a key business contact changes his email address, should it not be automatically updated on your device? If a parent wants to send pocket money to their child, should they not be able to do that by clicking on their contact listing and selecting the appropriate option? To get you thinking
10:00 | Café, networking areas and exhibition
Coffee, light refreshments, networking and an opportunity to visit the MEX Exhibition showcase10:30 | Conference room
Manifesto #4: Fashion is a stronger motivator than functionality
Chairman Fashion is a stronger motivator than features. Colour, shape, texture and packaging play a bigger role in influencing mobile purchasing decisions than the specification list. The highest margins in the handset business are achieved by devices which lag the technology curve but invest in brand partnerships and a boutique retail experience. The background It sells for £269 (USD 552) and yet it has a poor 2 megapixel camera, no 3G, no keypad and no support for memory cards. It can only be obtained from one operator and when you purchase it you are commiting yourself to a minimum spend of £899 ($1843) over 18 months. It has been described by consumer watchdogs as the 'worst value mobile deal in history'. It sold more than a million within two and half months of launch. Say hello to iPhone. According to aggregate estimates issued by several analyst firms, Apple makes a gross margin of around 50% on each iPhone. This contrasts starkly with the 13.9% average margin achieved by the world's five largest handset manufacturers (accounting for more than 80% of the market) in Q3 2007. The iPhone is the poster child for a whole new generation of handsets which capitalise on consumer desire for the sleek, slick and fashionable. LG offers the Prada phone, Samsung has followed suit with an Armani product and Nokia's 8000 series continues to push the boundaries of how much people are willing to pay for under-specified yet beautifully attired handsets. To get you thinking
12:15 | Café, networking areas and exhibition
Lunch, networking and an opportunity to visit the MEX Exhibition showcase13:30 | Conference room
Manifesto #6: Search requires a radically different approach in the mobile environment
Chairman Search requires a radically different approach in the mobile environment. To find the answers they are looking for in the time they have available, mobile users need access to the widest range of search techniques, yet these must be provided within a highly constrained interface. The background A group of friends at a restaurant seeking the answer to a particular question. A commuter walking along a busy street trying to find the time of the next train home. A teenager in his bedroom searching for a video clip. An executive looking for a relevant email as he goes into a meeting. Is there a single mobile interface which can support such diverse search requirements? Searching for digital information with a desktop computer has been built around keyword input and a summarised results page. Google, Ask, Yahoo and Microsoft Live are variations on a very similar theme. The giants of web-based search are seeking ways to expand their pay-per-click advertising franchises to a larger audience with little consideration for the vastly different behavioural characteristics of mobile users. However, there are a growing number of innovative start-ups building search engines optimised for mobile. Techniques include asynchronous, message-based services employing a combination of human operators and advanced databases. There are browser-based tools which return search queries as neatly packaged pages with the layout optimised for their context. Some companies are even creating whole new hardware interaction layers to add a third dimensional element to the mobile search experience. To get you thinking
14:30 | Conference room
Manifesto #5: The developing world is the new frontier for mobile user experience
Chairman The developing world is the new frontier for mobile user experience. It is the industry's responsibility to deliver voice communication and internet connectivity to the disconnected in ways which are locally relevant, useable and cost-effective. The background Cellular networks were introduced to Kerala (India) in 1997. Fisherman soon began investing in mobile phones which allowed them to call local markets while they were still at sea and determine where they would receive the best price for their catch. These developments became the subject of a Harvard economist's acclaimed paper on the efficiency of markets. Robert Jenson's study found that the improvements in information flow facilitated by mobile phones helped to raise the fisherman's profits by 8%, lower consumer prices by 4% and reduce the average 'catch wastage' from around 6.5% to almost zero. In sub-Saharan Africa, a group of network operators has said it will invest about $50bn to increase mobile coverage from 67% to 90% of the population by 2012. In 2007, only 150m people in this region - representing 20% of the population - had mobile phones, yet the region is the fastest growing mobile market in the world. Across the globe, from Latin America to the Pacific Rim, millions of new customers are connecting to mobile networks every week. What will the mobile user experience look life for these new consumers? Their usage requirements vary from rural workers wanting to speak with friends and family to a new generation of entrepreneurs requiring email and web access. Mobile devices will be their gateway to communications, but it may be in a very different form than what we have come to expect in developed nations. To get you thinking
16:15 | Café, networking areas and exhibition
Afternoon tea, networking and an opportunity to visit the MEX Exhibition showcase16:45 | Conference room
Manifesto #8: Mobile payments herald the next generational shift
Chairman Mobile payment applications will lead the next major leap in wireless communications, when our interactions with machines start to outnumber our interactions with people. Using our mobile phones to pay for goods and services in the physical world requires an interaction model and user interface of breath-taking simplicity. Cash and credit cards represent a singularly impressive benchmark - only when we deliver unique benefit above and beyond these existing solutions will mobile payments explode. The background You are doing your daily commute. As always, the train is too crowded to find a seat, so you're standing in the aisle texting with a friend. As the train arrives, you step onto the platform and you keep your phone in your hand, waiting to see your friend's reply. As you walk up to the turnstyle, you swipe your handset across the reader almost without thinking and it vibrates in your palm to confirm your ticket payment has been made. These kind of natural interactions, where the primary interface is almost invisible, will lead the first wave of applications when handsets start talking to the world around us. To be adopted, they must be simple to use but also provide benefits unique to the mobile device. In the transportation example, these benefits could include avoiding queues by topping up ticket balances direct to their handset and an integrated timetable and route map application. By using simple, time-saving applications such as these to establish consumer trust and the technology infrastructure, we can begin to build a much wider range of applications. In Japan, operators are already expanding the Osaifu Keitai (electronic wallet) system to allow users to download coupons and information cards from retailers supporting the service. As usage expands, the handset has the potential to take on the role of a 'remote control' for the physical environment. To get you thinking
18:00 | Café
The MEX Mobile User Experience Awards Drinks & Canapes ReceptionWinners of the 2008 MEX Mobile User Experience Awards will be presented with their awards at a special reception in London on 27th May 2008, the opening night of the 4th annual MEX conference.It’ll be a great party and a cutting edge showcase for mobile user experience innovation, supported by our generous sponsors. The awards reception will also be attended by leading industry executives and mobile pioneers from the co-located MEX conference, providing a great opportunity to highlight the winning entries to the biggest players in the mobile business. Attendees of the MEX conference automatically receive an invitation to the Awards as part of their registration. Day Two, 28th May 2008 08:30 | Reception, cafe, networking area and exhibition space
Registration and light refreshments09:00 | Conference room
Manifesto #2: Handsets are no longer just for the hand
Chairman The role of the mobile device is expanding beyond the hand. In fact, handsets are spending less time in our palms and instead finding a role at the centre of the room. This trend represents a major new user experience challenge and will require us to think of new ways to interact with mobile devices. The background Teenagers are relying on their mobiles as music systems in their bedroom. Parents are entertaining their kids with video playback on outings. Executives are tele-conferencing with the speakerphone function of their mobiles. Friends are sharing photos around the dinner table. It all adds up to a new role for mobile devices which goes significantly beyond their original design brief as handheld telephones, built to be comfortable when held to the ear. These new usage scenarios require us to question the fundamentals of mobile design. There is a generation of users emerging for whom voice calls represent a relatively small percentage of their mobile interaction time and they want devices optimised for very different requirements. For instance, consider how the integrated GPS on devices from Nokia, Samsung, HTC and others is encouraging users to replace the navigation systems in their cars with mobile phones. In this situation, many of the characteristics of today's handsets become counter-intuitive: small buttons are difficult to press while driving, interface text is hard to read while keeping an eye on the road and incoming calls and messages interupt the interaction flow. To get you thinking
10:45 | Café, networking areas and exhibition
Coffee, light refreshments, networking and an opportunity to visit the MEX Exhibition showcase11:15 | Conference room
Manifesto #3: Fragmentation is the enemy of innovation
Chairman The structure of the mobile industry is killing application developers. There is a tidal wave of innovative content and services waiting to be unleashed if we can build a business environment which enables new companies to make money from mobile. The background The industry's biggest players - handset manufacturers, network operators, software platform providers and chipset suppliers - have created a mobile eco-system which is fragmented at every level. As a result, small companies wanting to deploy services through the mobile channel face a minefield of self-proclaimed 'standards' and incompatible software platforms. This increases technical development costs, staff requirements and time-to-market, making it prohibitively expensive for small companies to prosper in the mobile business. Even experienced developers focusing on a particular programming language find themselves re-coding applications to accomodate the platform variations which proliferate across handset models and network operators. Often the only way to be a certain a product will deliver the user experience envisaged by its creators is to invest in physically testing it on every handset on every network. It would be like asking web developers to buy every model of PC and test it on every broadband supplier. As a result, many limit their applications to 'lowest common denominator' options like SMS and far more simply ignore mobile altogether. To complicate matters further, developers which manage to overcome the technical challenges face an additional battle to negotiate commercial agreements with the numerous companies that control billing relationships with their prospective customer base. These often result in terms that would be deemed punitive in any other industry, with distribution and billing often accounting for more than 50 percent of the price paid by the end consumer. To get you thinking
13:00 | Café, networking areas and exhibition
Lunch, networking and an opportunity to visit the MEX Exhibition showcase14:00 | Conference room
Manifesto #1: Content itself will be the interface of the future
Chairman Icons are dead and the content itself is the new interface. By stripping away the confusion and clutter of traditional interface elements like menus and scroll bars we can put photos, music and video at the heart of the user experience. The background The Series 60 mutlimedia gallery, the CoverFlow system on the iPhone, Google maps... They are all examples of applications where the content itself is at the heart of the user interface. If a user wants to browse music, he should be able to flick through the album art as if he was exploring covers in a record store. Photos should fill the screen and pan and scroll when the phone is moved or tilted. Photos, calls, texts, music and video should be merged into a single activity log, clearly visible from the home screen. Users think in terms of friends, tasks, days out, favourite songs and web-sites. By separating these elements into individual application silos, the industry is limiting how big a role they play in the mobile experience. The interfaces of the future will be content-centric and context aware. To get you thinking
15:00 | Conference room
Manifesto #9: Users as individuals: uniquely complex and contradictory
Chairman Customers cannot be defined by numbers or segments or demographics. Every user is uniquely complex and contradictory. If we are to design experiences which recognise customers as individuals, we must develop research tools and analysis techniques which allow us to live and breath the world as users see it. The background He is a man in a suit. He spends £200 a month on roaming calls. He subscribes to the Blackberry email service. His operator has him neatly profiled as 'senior executive, world traveller' in its market segmentation model. When his contract comes up for renewal, it has its retention strategy all planned out: they can offer him the newest Blackberry handset at no charge, a great deal on roaming and a free Bluetooth headset. Its a market-leading anti-churn package and its sure to appeal to someone in his segment. Wrong. You see, when the high spending executive customer takes off his tie at the end of the day and sits down in a hotel room hundreds of miles from home, what he really wants is to see his young kids on a video call. His Blackberry can't do that and, since he falls under the 'business customer' group at his current operator, no one has thought to include him on the recent video calling promotion they sent to all the tech-savvy teenage users. A store at the airport, however, is more than happy to sell him a handset with video calling from a competing operator, even though he's wearing a suit and this device actually comes from their 'youth market' range. He has no particular loyalty to his current provider since number portability came in. It's a £3000 a year loss for his former operator but a priceless lifestyle gain for the customer. Come to think of it, the Blackberry always made him feel a little too conventional - his shiny new 'youth' phone actually makes him smile in meetings and, more importantly, the kids finally think their Dad is a little more cool. To get you thinking
15:30 | Café, networking areas and exhibition
Afternoon tea, networking and an opportunity to visit the MEX Exhibition showcase16:00 | Conference room
Manifesto #10: The potential of smart voice
Chairman The industry's love affair with all things '2.0' is blinding us to the reality that customers are spending more time than ever making basic voice calls. There are a wealth of potentially valuable smart voice features, ranging from conference calling and call waiting to texting to decline calls, which are failing because of poor user experience. The background Even as we start to recognise how mobile user experience issues affect everyone in the value chain, there is a growing tendency to imagine these usability problems are limited solely to mobile data services. With more than 3 billion mobile voice subscriptions in use and voice continuing to account for the lion's share of industry revenues, it is easy to assume there are no problems left to fix. However, in most markets voice ARPU (average revenue per user) is declining faster than revenue from data is increasing. With operators like Three launching handsets in partnership with Skype and effectively offering unlimited calling for a flat fee, is there a way to extract new value from voice services by improving the user experience? Almost every mobile handset is capable of supporting advanced calling features such as multi-party conferencing and call waiting, yet they are used by a tiny fraction of customers and almost exclusively in a business context. These capabilities are potentially of interest to a much wider group of customers - particularly in the youth market - but they are too complex to access and there is significant uncertaintity around the pricing. To get you thinking
17:00 |
Conference closes |
Agenda key
Session formats We use a range of different session formats to keep delegates engaged in the creative process throughout the conference. Breakout sessions These sessions start with everyone together in the main conference room. After a presentation to inspire and provoke debate, we split the conference into small groups and send these teams off to individual breakout rooms. Each team is given a specific challenge or question to work through in a 30 minute period, led by one of our user experience facilitators. At the end of the 30 minutes, everyone returns to the main conference room for a 45 minute open debate, led by the chairman, where your group will have an opportunity to present their views back to conference. Panel sessions These take place in the main conference room. After the keynote presentation, the speaker will be joined by expert panellists and the chairman will lead an open debate with the audience. Speaker sessions Individual speakers with unique insight deliver a presentation on a specific topic, with plenty of opportunities for a two-way dialogue between the speaker and the audience. Networking sessions We have the whole of the Wallacespace venue at our disposal, so take time to relax, pick up some refreshments and catch-up with your colleagues. The unique MEX approach Corporate Powerpoint pitches are outlawed, creative thinking is essential and a uniquely relaxing and collaborative environment will encourage us to define the cutting edge of mobile user experience. Expect the best speakers, metrics you can’t get anywhere else and all the light, air and sofas which define the MEX approach. We promise you’ll leave with at least 5 reasons to increase your investment in user experience, 5 new contacts and 5 new ideas to build your business. PMN have provided market intelligence for the mobile industry since 1995 and the conference combines our own insight and experience with input from more than 1000 members of our MEX community – from operators and handset manufacturers to platform providers and developers. The two-day agenda is the product of hundreds of hours of interviews, surveys and research. If you would like to respond to one of the manifesto issues, please contact Marek Pawlowski (marekpawlowski@pmn.co.uk or +44 (0)7767 622957). You can also register to attend as a delegate or request information about sponsorship. |