The conference also featured two days of workshops where we got to work in teams with other attendees – that’s always interesting and fun, and a way of seeing first hand how others who we don’t work with on a daily basis work to create design solutions.

One of my favourite presentations came from Jared Spool, who has an entertaining take on UX - combining examples of good and bad designs interjected with his own brand of humour. His style works really well to communicate the many UX issues that still exist with many products and their effect on users.

The keynote presentation was from Don Norman – who is something of a legend in user experience. His book ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ is a classic and one that many interaction design courses have as part of their reading lists. Don has been a champion of simplicity in the past, but at this conference he actually argued that complexity can be a good thing. He illustrated his argument with real world scenarios – like learning to read music, or learning to fly a plane – he argued that although at first glance these are complex, there is fun and learning involved which in itself is complexity and without that the experience would not be so fulfilling. It posed interesting questions about how we handle complexity when it is all around us and natural in many ways.

Resources:
Below are links to presentations and notes from the presentations given by the speakers during day one of the conference:

Dan Saffer of Kicker Studio:
http://www.kickerstudio.com/blog/2009/06/designing-from-the-inside-out-behavior-as-the-engine-of-product-design/

Eric Reiss talking about Service Design:
http://www.slideshare.net/ericreiss/reiss-on-e-service-ux-london

Luke Wroblewski ‘Parti and the design sandwich’ talk
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?838

Don Norman talk notes ‘In Favour of Complexity’ (notes via Luke Wroblewski)
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?837

Jared Spool ‘What makes a design intuitive?’ (notes via Luke Wroblewski)
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?835

This “grass is always greener” mentality hit me like a freight train yesterday when I saw a post from Taptu friend Ewan over at Mobile Industry Review.  Basically, Ewan pointed out that 3, a UK mobile phone carrier, is offering the brand new Nokia N97 for free in exchange for customers signing an 18 month contract and a mere £35/month (that’s roughly $58 US dollars for my fellow yanks) tariff!

In exchange for your £35/month, you get 300 mobile minutes.  Add on another £5, and 3 will throw in unlimited data.

This is really an awesome deal, from a US perspective.  If this a similar offering were made available by AT&T in the States, the handset would probably cost $300 or $400 up front, and you’d have to have a voice and data package that would be roughly $100/month; all with a 2-year agreement versus 3’s 18-month.   Note: I’m using the iPhone 3GS handset cost and monthly plan costs as a comparison.

Right now in the United States, no carrier is offering to subsidize the Nokia N97, meaning potential customers will pay the full $700 handset cost plus around $100/month to AT&T for voice/data services.

And don’t even get me started on how spotty AT&T’s voice and data network is here in the States.  I know from friends that 3G speeds in the UK leave AT&T in the dust.

My point is this: competition in the mobile market is a good thing that benefits all mobile services consumers.  3, in an effort to stand out, is giving a pretty sweet offer for customers who want to purchase top of the line handsets like the Nokia N97.  Unfortunately here in the U.S., we only have two GSM carriers, leaving a void in terms of competition and therefore making our mobile landscape less attractive.

What’s the view like from the other side of the pond?  How do you view the US mobile market?  I look forward to being educated.

I look back at all the things we’ve achieved in that time and am simply amazed at the growth. When I joined, a few engineers were throwing ideas around about a mobile search and we had a pile of mobile phones sitting on a desk, which we used for testing. In October 2007, the first iteration of Taptu went live, and like a very nervous parent, I watched feedback begin to trickle in.

Since then, it’s with great anticipation that we’ve rolled out numerous feature releases, all with very entertaining naming conventions, bought vast amounts of hardware and … also bought vast amounts of beer on evenings out with the fab community we discovered. Working with a startup is head-spinning and heart-pounding, with team meetings putting rollercoasters to shame sometimes. And now, it’s time for me to hand over the reigns to a new (soon to join) Community Manager.

Armed with great experiences and knowledge, I’m by no means disappearing off the map. With many projects in constant evolution, I’ll be flitting around Cambridge and London and, of course, organising some further Cambridge Geek Nights.

And so, on this note, I hang up my hat (which is obviously bright pink and fluffy) and head into the sunset. Thanks everyone and see you around! (By which I mean, on my blog, on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook )

Have a great summer,

- Vero

Ewan at Mobile Industry Review says:

“[Ed note: In the context of your average mobile search engine] It’s incredibly annoying to have to click, click, click on a mobile device, irrespective what type. There’s a cost in terms of time and battery (assuming you’re on an unlimited data plan) to every single tap or click.

So they’ve tried really hard to get it right first time. A total godsend for any mobile user. [...] Nice work Taptu!”

Scott at MobileCrunch says:

“Another great feature of the current version of the Taptu app are context sensitive search filters included beneath the default search filters. As you can see, my search for beer produced a number of beer-related links. Mmmmm…beeer.

Bottom line: Taptu is a pretty slick mobile search solution.”

What’s On iPhone says:

“Google works just fine on the iPhone, especially now that iGoogle is back on line. But is it the only choice of search engines for the device? NO WAY!

Taptu brings a unique aproach to web searches on the iPhone with its new search engine. Designed to be finger friendly, it is intended for small screen. And it shows.”

Now, we have also had a few bits of criticism from some iTunes reviewers, who have flagged up that our index isn’t up to scratch for every type of search term. That’s a fair comment - our index is growing every day and will continue to improve as we keep plowing more material into it. In fact, you can help improve our index by recommending the best mobile sites out there if we don’t already list them.

Our thanks go out to everyone who’s taken time to look at the app, reviewed or commented (positively or negatively constructively) over the past few months. Now, how about I go get one of ‘em new 3GS iPhones and test that Taptu works properly on it? Oooh shiny!

This search experience starts from scratch with a new mobile search index – an index of as many touch-friendly Web pages as our crawlers can find. By touch-friendly we mean not only a Web page that is optimised for mobile but also one which is easy to navigate with your finger without pinching, scrolling or zooming contortions. (We’ve talked in depth about this concept of touch-friendly search in our recent white paper “Exploring the Touch Friendly Web”)

Over the last 12 months we’ve seen an exponential growth in the number of touch–friendly Web sites. They’ve multiplied more than 10-fold (Taptu estimate) as site owners begin to focus more and more on building their mobile audiences. Some are doing this in anticipation of an expected surge of e-commerce activity on mobile phones (the same surge that has already happened in Japan and South Korea). Touch phones with their bigger screens, better browsers and all-you-can-eat data plans are where this wave is going to hit first in Western markets.

It’s hard for users to explore the touch-friendly Web. The well-known search engines take you to desktop site results, sometimes auto-transcoding them for your phone. Start-up players have indexed the older-style mobile sites designed for phones with their smaller screens and their keypads. But until today nobody has offered a search engine especially for the touch-friendly Web.

Our touch-friendly index is still young and growing by leaps and bounds, but it’s now big enough – 3m+ pages - to be really useful. It’s available for you to play with right now. Just download it from the Apple App Store onto any iPhone or iPod touch. We’re keen to get your feedback, so please let us know what you think.  Email iPhone [AT] taptu.com, @taptu on Twitter or use the feedback forums you’ll find in the About section of the App.

And watch out for updates and other new developments from Taptu coming soon.

[the full press release is available here]

Links:

• Try the App now : take me to App Store
• Follow Taptu on Twitter: http://twitter.com/taptu
• Join Taptu’s Facebook group: http://bit.ly/woxVg
• See Video of the Taptu app: http://tinyurl.com/ktkg4p

If you’re also developing an iPhone app and want it to stand-out amongst the crowd in the App Store, then this download is for you.  Download the templates below and you can see how your app will look before it’s submitted.

Just drag your icon into the template to see how it’ll look with Apple’s funky  gel-effects applied.  Or better yet, design your app icon from scratch from within these templates.  We use these to design in context so as to ensure we are thinking about how it will look from a user’s point of view - in the App Store list, the Home Screen dock, and on the Desktop iTunes Store.  If you’re a designer or a developer, you’ll find these assets ultra-useful.

The templates are in Photoshop PSD format with full editable layers.  We recreated the gel-effects using vector paths to give you greatest flexibility.  The pink symbol is there just as an example.  Hopefully the layers are all quite self-explanatory - if not, give us a shout.

Click here to download the whole zip package.  There are templates for the Home Screen, the iPhone and Desktop App Store as well as individual 57×57px and 512×512px icon PSDs.

We are looking for a Community Manager, based in either London or Cambridge, with a dynamic personality, great communication skills and experience working with the community. You’ll manage all aspects day-to-day community life for Taptu through a wide range of channels, including this blog, Twitter and Facebook. You’ll get to contribute to the development of some fun campaigns and attend some great events.

Below is an official job description, but nothing is ever the same in real life as it is on paper. As I step down from the role after two years as Community Gal, if you think you’ve got it in you, drop me a line on Twitter directly with your questions.

It’s your chance to take the torch and carry it forward, so go on, apply by emailing givemeajob@taptu.com!

NO AGENCIES PLEASE

- Vero

Community Manager role

Objectives of role:

• To increase usage of Taptu across all mobile devices and loyalty of users
• To be an authentic voice of Taptu externally and representative for the community’s needs internally
• Build trust in our brand

Responsibilities include, but not limited to:

• Communicate with our users whenever and wherever appropriate on a personal level through the blog & social networks
• Identify and analyse issues, patterns and trends in community requests & product performance
• Identify ways to improve the speed in which Taptu responds to user feedback
• Be an evangelist for Taptu online and the first point of contact for the community
• Take part in relevant events, such as mobile conferences, BarCamps and impromptu gatherings with fellow bloggers (will often involve alcohol)
• Liaise with UK & US PR agencies, occasionally helping manage Taptu events
• Work closely with our US Community Manager
• Manage a small dedicated User Help team in Cambridge

The successful applicant will need to demonstrate the following skills & experience:

• You love helping people and find it rewarding to solve people’s problems
• Fluent, fast and engaging writer; from authoring long articles to creativity in less than 140 characters
• Understanding of and enthusiasm for social media (Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Digg, blogs etc..)
• You probably already have your own blog or an established online presence and have an understanding of blogging in the business context
• Excellent project management skills: experience managing multiple projects simultaneously and working effectively across departments (engineering, operations and commercial)
• Practical knowledge of basic web tools: HTML, image manipulation and video editing
• Some experience of web analytics software such as Google Analytics and Mint would be good
• Existing contacts in the media or mobile would be useful
• Experience working in a start-up environment would be a bonus
• Degree educated

Palm Pre - A New Beginning?

In the United States, June 6th saw the release of the Palm Pre.  This highly anticipated handset is seen as many a turning point for Palm, once a major influence in the mobile handset world.  The Treo had a strong following in the early half of this decade but with a lack of new innovations, Palm has fallen in popularity.  Will the Pre turn things around for the Sunnyvale, Ca company?  The next few months will tell.

Nokia and the N97 Mobile Computer

June will see the shipping of their newest NSeries handset - a phone I’ve called the “Holy Grail“.  The Nokia N97 has an impressive hardware stack including a high resolution touch screen, 5MP camera with widescreen video capture, GPS and compass.  Also, the homescreen of the N97 can be customized via widgets written for the S60 platform.  The N97 also features a full slide-out keyboard for easy messaging and text input.

The Nokia application store, called Ovi Store, was recently released, making app discovery and selection easier on the S60 platform.  This combinationwill help advance the Nokia/Symbian platform as a great option for mobile application developers and for customers as well.

Apple, the iPhone, and WWDC

This week, Apple kicks off their World Wide Developer Conference.  Tomorrow, June 8, the keynote address takes place.  We already know the Apple iPhone 3.0 software will be released soon, but mobile geeks everywhere are hoping for new iPhone hardware to be announced soon.  Last June, Apple released the iPhone 3G and there’s hope this June Apple will refresh the hardware stack again.

As you can see, there is a lot happening this month in the world of mobile hardware.

What features or handsets are you looking to try out?  Let’s discuss in the comments!

It’s a cheesey cliche but we’d genuinely like to thank all the people who use Taptu regularly and the team at Taptu for working so hard to achieve this.

Now for the next milestone….

The official press/blogger/ release thingy-me-jig is here

That said, Steve will be at a few different events in the month of June where you can meet and greet our head honcho.

Mobile Web Summit 2.0

3-4 June 2009 in London, England

Steve will be speaking at this exciting conference early in June.

Open Mobile Summit

10-11 June 2009 in London, England

Barcelona Mobile 2.0

18-19 June in Barcelona, Spain

Mobile Entertainment Market

23-24 June  in London, England