We brainstormed lots of user scenarios, but the client was locked into thinking that the mobile was primarily a business tool. The video focused on scheduling, travelling to meetings and making presentations, but we managed to drop-in some mobile behaviours that we thought would be common place in the future.

So what did we get right?

The scenarios maybe humourless, but they’re not a million miles away from the Siri launch videos.

What did we get wrong?

• A Leviathan scroll wheel menu rather than multi-touch
• Applications extending functionality
• Video working well over 3G (… but sold as a key speed benefit during the spectrum auction!)

The Intelligence Assumption

Our basic assumption in the video prototype was that the phone would act like a concierge or human-like assistant.  After hearing Matt Jones talk at the “In Progress” event, (staged by ‘It’s Nice That‘ magazine) maybe that premise is a promise too far. Maybe it is wiser to aim for experiences that connect robots and autonomous services in a way that engineers simpler emotional empathy rather than human-like intelligence. Examples of these types of not-so intelligent connectors to the real world are Little Printer, the learning thermostat and Cryoscope haptic forecaster.

Siri is still in Beta

However, a voice interface does provide the seductive potential to expose and unify services. Outside of America Siri is breaks easily.

Siri is hopelessly crippled for most of the world because it cannot link to maps, directions or local search. The disappointment felt is really similar to the feeling at the first iphone launch.  Jobs said Apple would never allow third parties to develop for the iphone.  There were a few bundled apps, and many of these, particularly messaging, had many flaws. AS history played out, the iphone’s most powerful differentiator is the application ecosystem.

Siri is the ‘doing’ ecosystem

Perhaps ‘Siri’ is distined to become  a new type of ecosystem that lets you command your phone  to ‘do’. There will be an API, where  businesses and brands will have a way of directly interfacing and extending  into the underlying lexicon, actions and  language. Interflora may have an app, but it’s far more interesting to be able to act upon the verbal question “Send my Girlfriend some flowers tomorrow”. Siri could become a doorway to a mirade of actions and third party datasets. This is already appearing in a range of ‘cracked’ usefulness.

Google must see the same thing, and many observers think this is the reason for recent unification of Google privacy polices. Currently in development, Majel will make it possible to offer the whole spectrum of Google’s confusing array of services via voice on android.

Will Siri get good enough?

The real question is whether Siri will actually succeed. It’s bad enough to make you just give up. Sending the voice recording to the cloud for interpretation introduces a very annoying lag.  It has a very high error rate. Even the activation gesture of raising the phone to your ear doesn’t work reliably. On top of these usability issues, there is a human reality that, for some reason, it’s really embarrassing to dictate misunderstood commands to your phone. It took my whole walk from the British Film institute to the millennium foot bridge to successfully dictate one SMS message.

I believe these usability problems will be solved in time, and linking third party services to pet-like ‘intelligence’ in the cloud will transform the perceived usefulness beyond dictation. If I were to make another mobile ‘future’ video today, I’d focus on the ‘Internet of things‘ and how the mobile works with the cloud of semi-intelligent connected objects that will fill our future lives.

We always love working with Imagination; this time we had been asked to come up with different ideas for a leading handset manufacturer to be used in their Shanghai flagship store. How to drive traffic into the shop, engage customers and make it culturally relevant and enriching the city?

Anything from interactive installation to crowed sourced exhibition contribution, geo-location online games, light projections and  - of course – mobile apps…Intense few days with lots of research and ideas will hopefully keep Imagination busy for a while…

Just finished another job at Pirata, when Stinkdigital grabbed us and threw us into the pool of happening. “Can you come up with some ideas for a telecom account pitch while we are off for a shooting in Columbia and NY?…Oops, and then there are these 12 scripts from Goodby that somehow need to become interactive, any chance you have that ready by tomorrow?…”

‘Love their unconventional approach and cheeky attitude. Boundaries are fictitious!!!

Hope to work with Stink more in the future.

During 2010 Ubermore led  the digital strategy for the Isobar global Nokia team focusing on smartphones and navigation.

Back In January 2010 Nokia introduced free voice guided SatNav on all it’s Smartphones. The best component of this multi-million pound navigation campaign was ‘Own Voice‘. This came from a simple client side idea to make an app that would let people record (and share) their own voice instructions.

Launched on the same day as Tomtom starwars voices, the app (made by Starcut) was an instant hit ,  warmly received by tech bloggers and getting coverage in the mainstream press. Thousands of voice packs being still being made and shared every week. The genuine surprise was the popularity of regional accents, particularly Italian!

To help drive further engagement, the Own Voice facebook app was developed by Glue Isobar in collaboration with Wieden Kennedy.  A Facebook first, that allows groups of people to collaborate remotely and record personalised direction prompts onto their Nokia SatNav. This work received a Eurobest bronze.

The pitch asked to identify areas of improvement on the newly launched website of Star Alliance. Ubermore suggested to approach the pitch from a slightly different angle and rather then looking at the site itself, identifying areas that have not yet been explored outside the site, using existing content and service. We developed mobile phone service ideas, online widgets and social media loyalty programs, always considering the fact that Star Alliance is predominantly an aggregation platform on the net.

‘This is just spot on and brilliant’  Client feedback

“Ubermore provide an inspirational yet seamless extension to Imagination’s Digital offer resulting in great, strategically driven ideas through fluid collaboration.” Damian Ferrar, Director of Digital, Imagination

In Spring 2007 a lucky group of creatives was challenged with a mobile treasure hunt as part of a three-month interactive learning program. While focusing on their mobile delivered instructions, Soho Square quickly turned into a battlefield of treasure hunters on that epic afternoon. Finding clues, they had to blue-tooth passing pedestrians, create human circles around secret spots,  get semi-codes to trigger audio riddles….all while documenting their journey via tumbler and evading capture by a murderous Ninja. It was an unforgettable alternate reality game (ARG), that bonded the whole agency, even making the CFO lose his cool head and strong nerves! More about the cyberchase game

Project: Cyber-chase
Media: Website, blogs, lectures, games
Duration: 3 months
Role: Planner / Writer / Developer / Facilitator
Agency: Partners Andrews Aldridge

Made in 2000, ubermore envisioned for British Telecom the future of mobile phones. This helped support Cellnet’s / O2 3G spectrum bid. We imagined a device with a spiral of configurable web services that could be operated by voice. We’d just finished comping in device screens for Bond 19 ‘The World is not enough’ so found the post fairly straight forward. This let us concentrate on the design and logic of the phone interface. The typographic look and dynamically scaling type still looks futuristic.

Project: “You’re going to be…” 3G mobile concept video
Media: Video
Role: Director / Editor / Post production
Agency: Tui Interactive Media
Post in collaboration with Neil Wilson.

Promotional cards made for the launch event:

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