Mobile Technology

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Mobile Technology Product Design

• Trevor Pering, Intel Research

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Outline

• Technical Overview Motes, Phones, and Laptops
• Business, Users, and Technology
• Project Examples

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Smart Jewelry
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Technical Overview

• Motes Any Questions?
• Really the fourth wave of computing
• Phones more capable than desktops of old.
• Processing
• Storage
• Communication
• Wearable Components
• Things dont always become more capable they
  just become smaller.
• Pushing towards a world of Ubiquitous Computing

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Phones vs. Laptops
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Product Platforms

• PCs Not really mobile or wearable (laptops and
  desktops)
• High cost, but can generally assume that people
  have them
• Very compelling user experience, but tends to be
  distant
• Common, but no where near as common as phones
• Phone The personal platform of choice
• Very wearable, but people tend to leave it
  behind
• Amazing computation/communication/sensing
  possibilities
• Difficult but compelling user experience
• Sensors New entry into the arena
• Environmental vs. wearable
• What are the considerations for wearing
  something?
• Installation and standardization considerations

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Phone Platform

• General Purpose Computing Environment
• Standard Linux operation system
• Java Midlets simplified Java environment for
  doing GUIs
• Standard C programming high performance signal
  processing
• Mobile interface to sensor networks, and
  communication hub
• For new product design, the trick is to build on
  these emerging platforms
• Can significantly reduce cost by piggybacking on
  other platforms.
• However, it is a very closed market, and the
  business landscape is rapidly changing.
• And, if not the phone, then the mp3 player (or,
  the apple iPhone).
• Also makes a great platform for prototyping other
  devices
• The basic electronics inside most hand-held
  devices are pretty much the same
• Using a general-purpose platform can greatly
  decrease your prototyping turnaround
• UPS package tracking warehouse floor, delivery
  truck home user?

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BUT Fundamentals of Platform Design
How the market will mobilize around the idea and
make it a success.
In order to be successful, a brilliant idea needs
to address all three aspects of the product
ecosystem.
Why people will use it, and why it will serve
their (unmet) needs.
What it does, and how it will do what it needs to
do.
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Business

• Total Available Market (TAM)
• If things go well, what would you expect to
  achieve?
• Service Providers, Subscription Models
• You pay for a device once, subscriptions last
  multiple years
• This is how mobile phones are handled in the US
  (but not everywhere)
• E.g., for Apple, there will be a shift from iPod
  to iTunes
• Corporate vs. Consumer Markets
• Corporate markets are huge, but also monolithic
• Consumer markets are dynamic, and insanely
  competitive
• Government as well really an altruistic yet
  dysfunctional corporation.

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Users

• What is the user need that the product meets?
• What is the over-all user experience?
• Out of the Box?
• Off the shelf?
• User interface?
• Be careful of technological solutions to social
  or non-problems
• Ex Social conventions for arbitration
• Ex Exercise and personal wellness
• Need to understand how the effective impact of
  the technology

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Technology

• Is this new technology? Or new use of an old
  technology?
• How would people do this today?
• Is this technology in search of a problem?
• Technologists tend to think technology will solve
  the problem.
• Rate of change of technology is much greater than
  business or users
• Users stay the same, business models are
  immortal.
• Hard to keep up with the technology changes
• Overall, its a greater vector for change and
  innovation
• However, users and business are much more complex
  than technology
• Its relatively easy to understand what
  technology can do
• Much more difficult to understand what it should
  do, or how.
• Technology is designed by other people, limiting
  its complexity.

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Moisture Peak Example
See, this is what tomatoes should look like. You
need a moisture meter to control the water
consumption of your garden.
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Example Breakdown

• Business
• Standalone device single cost of unit
• Subscription or service model? Tie-in services?
  Integrate with a phone?
• What about a farms? More than just backyard
  tomatoes
• Users
• Need to feel healthy and connected with the
  environment
• The entire problem measurement and knowledge
• Entire flow, from store shelf to backyard garden
• Technology
• Base Mobile platform for sensing moisture
• Impact of sensor networks?
• Impact of a mobile phone interface?

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Top 5 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Made It
Big Time.http//weirdtechnewshub.blogspot.com/20
06/07/top-10-dumbest-online-business-ideas.html

• 1. Million Dollar Homepage - 1000000 pixels,
  charge a dollar per pixel thats perhaps the
  dumbest idea for online business anyone could
  have possible come up with. Still, Alex , a
  21-year-old who came up with the idea, is now a
  millionaire.
• 2. SantaMail - Ok, hows that for a brilliant
  idea. Get a postal address at North Pole, Alaska,
  pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10
  bucks for every letter you send to their kids?
  Well, Byron Reese sent over 200000 letters since
  the start of the business in 2001, which makes
  him a couple million dollars richer.
• 3. Doggles - Create goggles for dogs and sell
  them online? Boy, this IS the dumbest idea for a
  business. How in the world did they manage to
  become millionaires and have shops all over the
  world with that one? Beyond me.
• 4. LaserMonks - LaserMonks.com is a for-profit
  subsidiary of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of
  Spring Bank, an eight-monk monastery in the hills
  of Monroe County, 90 miles northwest of Madison.
  Yeah, real monks refilling your cartridges.
  Hallelujah! Their 2005 sales were 2.5 million!
  Praise the Lord.
• 5. AntennaBalls - You cant sell antenna ball
  online. There is no way. And surely it wouldnt
  make you rich. But this is exactly what Jason
  Wall did, and now he is now a millionaire.

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Next assignment

• 9/27 Sketch best concept
• 200 word Scenario
• 8-12 frame Story Board these three items 10
• The Story Board is laid out to tell a story
  like a cartoon strip tells a story maybe without
  any words
• Our Story Board is not a cartoon in the funny
  sense (though it can be if you want to) More
  that it can temporally tell how the user
  interacts with the product

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Case Study Nike iPod Sports Kit

• http//www.apple.com/ipod/nike/gear.html
• This diagram is a sketch 93 words

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Technology

• The product 30 retail, 6.33 BOM a 374
  profit margin!
• A sensitive piezoelectric accelerometer monitors
  your foot-strike when you walk or run and
  determines the amount of time your foot spent on
  the ground. This contact time is directly related
  to your pace.
• (Actually, its just a piezoelectric disc
  speaker, commonly found in toys and greeting
  cards. Motion causes the transducer to function
  as the pickup of foot action.)
• This sensor is extremely small and cheap (about
  10 cents), so the technology here isnt anything
  super amazing
• but, it relies on the considerable technology of
  the iPod leveraging an already well established
  (and high end) market.

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Users
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Business Model

• Adapter 30 retail, 6.33 BOM
• Non-replicable 1000-hour active-use battery life
  requires purchase of new transmitter every few
  years but so what?
• Shoes 100, needed twice a year (they wear out)
• iPod 200, plus the entire iTunes ecosystem
• So what/who is making money off of this?

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Looking ahead to the poster show!

• Poster show 10/9 in class (2 weeks away)
• Succinctly explain to somebody the business,
  user, and technology proposition behind your
  product.
• What is the market, and who will make money off
  it, and how.
• Why will people want this? What user need is it
  serving?
• What is the new technology that is behind the
  product?