Usually in any discussion about mobile and design the focus is on the devices. There is no doubt that some of today’s handheld units are things of beauty, highly covetable consumer devices — and sometimes even some kind of competitive social distinction. Smart phones with Swarovski crystal covers spring to mind for some reason.
But all mobile devices today are can be dual purpose: personal and business. For business use, the form factor and the sleek externals are just one aesthetic component of smart design. Fitness for purpose, performance and the user experience are the focus of the total integrated design purpose. Good industrial design is all about matching form and function.
Mobile working has permeated every aspect of work today. So it depends on a fully joined up system to support that work across every activity and process and application of the enterprise. It is no longer about simple remote access to data or applications. Now we are in a world of natively mobile functionality — apps as opposed to full computer applications. Many of the more serious challenges are about getting data to the app fast enough to satisfy the ever more demanding user from back ends that are often a mix of cloud, servers and even legacy mainframe systems. As for Bring Your Own Device, this is now universally expected the technical teams just have to cope.
As indeed they now have the systems and tools to do. In terms of IBM technology, and proven by our own use of it in mobility management, all of the technical challenges have been effectively overcome. IBM through its Apple partnership has disrupted the Enterprise App market by bringing out readymade best of breed Apps for 10 vertical sectors that uniquely improve processes for customers. These are available now on Apple devices, saving our customers the development work so they can concentrate on their business. IBM also offers solutions on all other mobile O/S — Android, Windows, Blackberry.
Yet that is not to say that enterprises are not encountering difficulties. Many of the elements in effective mobility management are complex — challenges such as security, patch management and end point management are all very real and difficult to master. But today the solutions are available for all of them and well beyond the devices level.
“Many of the elements in effective mobility management are complex — challenges such as security, patch management and end point management are all very real and difficult to master. But today the solutions are available for all of them and well beyond the devices level”
Which means we have moved on. Now the goal is a seamless, easy, consistent user experience that works every time, all the time, on any device over any channel. We have to integrate apps and applications, services of all kinds and the data they all work with — and we have to do that in a way that is secure and trusted.
The challenges have moved on to a more sophisticated level. Users have become accustomed to lots of smarts and adaptability and they want their mobile experience to be specific to them. So in turn that is what our IBM customers want to deliver to their mobile staff. A standard corporate experience or interface is no longer good enough. That is linked to the impetus to unlock all of the back office or head office capabilities for front line users—which more and more means mobile. The IT sales mantra for years has been empowering the users. Today that’s simply the basic requirement in managing and gaining the value from mobile working.
The foundation in our IBM solutions is our MobileFirst approach which begins with the technology to write the code once and then deploy it on any device or operating system. The hot spot in mobile today is designing what the users want and how they want it. What do they really want? Often it’s actually not what they say or think they want because they don’t know. But we do know that all mobile users these days are impatient. If the app does not work smoothly or there are delays they just zap it and move on. But since they can’t abandon corporate apps they just get doubly frustrated.
We believe the answers lie in a total design process and IBM has invested strongly in a set of nine Design Studios in technology centres around the world. Dublin is one of three such centres in Europe. We work with our corporate customers to give space and time for creative engagement with their specific needs and objectives to deliver best quality user experiences to their mobile workers and customers and clients engaging through mobile. We have moved on from technical solutions to giving that better and continually evolving user experience and increasingly a customisable one.
Recently I went through a mobile App design session at one of our IBM Design Studios and the penny dropped as to the both the importance of design thinking and the way to do it effectively. Our scenario was a field inspector working in quarries, in and out of mobile coverage through the day, and the need for the app both to report the inspection results and be an alerting lifeline for the inspector in case of any mishap. My all too speedy solution combined drones, smart phones and Google glasses. But I had made the fatal mistake of jumping to the technology solution, based on what is available and smart, without having spent enough time on the user experience. When we started again we used the IBM Design Studios approach and concentrated on the users’ needs and wants and we came up with a far simpler and more effective app.
Back in the real world, we are seeing a greater use of analytics to monitor and gain feedback from users and their behaviour. Naturally that applies especially in m-commerce where our customers need to know, and quickly, if there are flaws in the online experience that are inhibiting sales. Market research suggests that about 48% of consumers will just not accept a bad mobile experience and are inclined to think that means the company offering it is similarly deficient. In blunt business terms about half of the potential market will reject your company and its products if their online experience with you is poor. If that’s not an incentive to invest in the best possible design and processes perhaps their response is not entirely wrong!
Paul Davey is mobile technical leader in IBM Ireland
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