The EchoUser Experience

A last minute glitch and I could not get international roaming activated on my cell phone. This was the first time I was going to be without a convenient access to a phone while on an international trip. I wasn’t happy…

First stop Hong Kong airport, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the complete airport WiFi enabled. I was able to use Skype on my iPhone to talk back home, check my emails and send updates to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. So far, so good…

My entire stay in San Francisco, I must admit I never missed not having cellular connection…it seemed like the entire city was WiFi enabled even though it was only in parts. Any restaurant, shop, pub I found myself in had WiFi so staying connected was a breeze. In all my years in the US and my trips there over the last 3 years, I never saw WiFi so entrenched in the ecosystem until now.

It goes without saying that WiFi enabled Internet access on mobile phones is the way of the future (Virgin America has even started offering WiFi on their domestic flights).

Suddenly, with broadband data access, 3G seemed a bit too slow, cumbersome and a hindrance to the overall user experience.

In almost all aspects of consumer consumption behaviors in India, there has been a leapfrog like trend where the Indian consumer has bypassed some of the technical/behavioral aspects of adoption due to the late entry of some technology or product. Jumping from having no phones to the cell phone, getting introduced to the Internet directly on the mobile are some classic examples.

Apart from the government run service providers, 3G in India is still some distance away. Can India leapfrog in this aspect of adoption as well? Can we jump directly from Edge to WiFi? One can argue that carriers like TTSL, Reliance and Airtel are well positioned with their already existing home based broadband service to provide blanket (to some extent) WiFi coverage in metro cities. This could earn them enhanced revenue from their broadband service and also help bypass 3G. They could focus on mid/high tier WiFi enabled mobile phones, and generate greater ARPU through a much enhanced user experience of their VAS services.

It will be worth investigating a two-tier strategy - A limited 3G rollout to cover the rural geography in India for enhanced voice/data services and WiFi rollout in metro cities for data services.

Since the launch of the MotoCliq yesterday, my Facebook and Twitter have been flooded with hurrahs and comments about this cool new device. Seven years in Motorola gave me enough friends there and some of them were heavily involved in making this Motorola dream a reality. Great work guys!

The iPhone kick-started it all and now Motorola has joined the social networking bandwagon (many others have but very few deliver the experience worth mentioning) with it’s first Android phone. They have gone a step ahead (as should be expected) and created a great experience around integration of the various social networking sites in a very cool looking ‘Homepage Dashboard’. Sanjay Jha in his talk at Mobilize 09 said that ‘one-to-one’ communication is a thing of the past. Now, it’s all about ‘one-to-many’ and the MotoCliq is true to this tenet.

This is all good but what happens if ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’ are not ‘THE’ social networking sites anymore. The probability of that happening is low at least till the launch of Motocliq but same time next year and the story might be very different.

If changes in the human behavior at the high tier segment has forced companies to respond with the now social networking solutions, can they not extrapolate this behavior to the many many more low/mid tier user groups, provide customized social networking solutions, encourage this networking behavior and drive ARPU.

How do mobile phone companies respond to 2 basic questions?

• How do we keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of social networking sites
• How do we scale it so that such services are made available to the rest of the 80-90% low to mid tier cell phone users worldwide

Living in India the second question intrigues me more. For sometime now I have been thinking about a flexible mobile social networking platform that can be customized for different and specific user groups at the low and mid tier user categories.

Consider these user groups:

• Auto rickshaw/Taxi drivers across a city like Mumbai
• Truck drivers across India
• The millions of maids employed in every middle-class family of India
• The millions of farmers across various states in India

Now a few facts about the above user groups:

• They all have cell phones
• They do not possess an internet connection
• The cell phone is their main channel of communication and entertainment
• Their awareness levels of things around is very minimal and hence are an exploited lot
• They come from very specific user groups and normally communicate within their own group/community

With the above facts, a dashboard like networking application can improve the quality and extent of communication and also make them more aware, entertained and connected. It could eventually provide them with a better life.

I hope the mobile industry is already working on such solutions but I suspect the focus is very heavily bent on making the iPhone competitor. There is an opportunity waiting to be tapped. Any takers!

Last night I had an interesting discussion with Aaron on the topic of ‘Usability Magnitude Estimation’ where we discussed the various capabilities of this very scientific and powerful tool that elicits a user’s perception of a product. Mick and Aaron have successfully applied this methodology on various software applications, devices and even the BART public transit system in the Bay Area.

Coming from Motorola and having seen the challenges of the mobile device industry from close quarters, I’m writing down my perspective on applying UME to the building of an effective portfolio.

To give some background on UME: Usability Magnitude Estimation is a methodology used by us to measure the value of the user’s perception of expected and actual user experience. This is a powerful tool that can be effectively used to improve many product capabilities and hence company portfolios.

A telecom service provider portfolio mainly consists of products (cell phones) and services. Let us consider the products aspect of the portfolio and apply UME:

A portfolio is mainly divided based on segmentation and price point. A cell phone has physical and digital attributes that contribute to the overall experience delivered. (physical color, finish, keypad usability, density, one handed opening for clams, digital power up/down screen, individual applications, tasks within individual applications, especially high ARPU tasks, graphical elements etc.)

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Imagine an annual sporting event comprising 8 teams packed into 5 weeks followed intensely by a billion plus hysterical fans. That’s the Indian Premier League. This tournament is only 2 years old and is already considered the 5^th most valuable global sports property (at $1.6 billion behind the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NASCAR).

The IPL has taken the global cricketing world by storm and is already threatening to change the very nature of the traditional sport of cricket. One of the most important things that the IPL has done is to combine the concept of T20 cricket with a tournament format that provides a high-energy, intensive sporting experience to the billions of fans. The franchise model based on the popular American sporting leagues has given enough off-the-field entertainment as during the game to the cricket crazy nation of India. One of the glaring differences between an IPL match and any other One-day/Test match is the overall glamour and glitz quotient.

As Mick and Felix go about exploring the opportunity to evaluate a major league gameday experience in the US, I think it would be interesting to apply the same methodology and evaluate how the IPL games fares. Given the high stakes and the keen desire to grow franchise loyalty the gameday experience plays a very critical role. The Kolkata Knight Riders are already considered the franchise leaders in generating profits due to the high glamour that Shahrukh Khan brings in. Since not all teams can match up to that, new and innovative ways will need to be thought out to grow profitability over the course of time. I suspect the Gameday experience; something that has been taken for granted for very long would be a key differentiator in drawing fans to the stadia.

I bought my last car sitting at home. The          test drive vehicle(s) drove up to my house (in  2 different variations!), I completed all the  paperwork while baby-sitting  my daughter and the check was picked up at  my convenience. I could have my new dream  ride delivered right at my doorstep, but  preferred to pick it up from the showroom.  What’s the big deal! One can argue that it  was a high value item and with the intense competition, it’s no unique trend. However, the other day, I had a ‘Maharaja Mac’ delivered to me, a bottle of shaving cream early in the morning when I realized I was out of it. It’s regular practice to expect things to be delivered to one’s doorstep no matter how small its value.

With easy access to labor and intense competition, ‘Home Delivery’, which was a key differentiator until some time back, has become a necessary trend especially with smaller setups and Kirana (mom-pop stores) stores. This trend has grown so much that larger players are forced to match up. Big players now have huge teams of sales/delivery people, who travel all day long going from customer to customer delivering bills, picking up deposit-checks, flowers, food-items and everything under the sun that one can think of.

‘Home Delivery’ (or at least the extent of Home Delivery) is a very unique trend and consumer behavior that is here to stay in India. This is one classic example of a regional trend that can be and is being targeted by various technology/solutions companies. The telecom industry in particular is all gung-ho about VAS (value added services → which accounts for almost 7% of all their revenues). According to industry reports, VAS is expected to be a $270 million spinner by end of 2010. ‘SMS’ and ‘Digital Music’ dominate telecom VAS today.

With 250 million mobile subscribers, 40 million fixed line subscribers, and 10 million Internet subscribers, it’s a no brainer that the mobile channel has the potential to be the ideal and most far reaching solution base in terms of services.

Telecom VAS in India can innovate in this area to become the preferred ecosystem for Home Delivery. The challenge is to customize it at the local (muhalla) level. Imagine an app that gives you the semantic of the various shops that you normally use and a quick easy way to browse inventory, order, and get the items delivered. For intangible items, the mobile phone could be the delivery mechanism itself. The challenge is to make it an experience where it is easier than direct calling.

Imagine a telecom brand that gets associated with Home Delivery. What a money-spinner!!!

It’s sheer co-incidence that the India operations of EchoUser have started at the same time as the launch of this blog. It’s a great medium for me to share some of my thoughts with you as we ramp up here.

I spent the last 2 years heading Motorola’s India design group and that has given me some interesting insights into the various aspects of design and this industry in India. There is a lot to share and I will over time. However, today I am going to write a little bit about the most commonly used but the most misunderstood term in this industry; Usability and give some thoughts on using an experience planning approach to drive and better co-ordinate product and brand innovation.

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