Behavioral Finance for Software Developers and App Publishers
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Business of Software, Uncategorized on June 22nd, 2010
The Old Schoolhouse
I recently had my 10 year business school reunion. Being the business nerds we are, we had additional classes. Here are some thoughts from one of those:
Behavior Finance by Professor Malcolm Baker
From the session summary:
“At the foundation of finance theory is the idea that investors and managers act rationally… behavioral finance proposes a broader role for social, cognitive, and emotional biases”
Think of it as a bridge between psychology and economics. Economists, basically, work to find the underlying models that best describe how we make decisions in our lives. They don’t believe that we actually do complex math when deciding whether to buy the Tall vs. Grande, but they say, that on average, we all behave as if we were actually doing the the math. Do you wake up and think about your “Expected Utility”? You act like it. Psychologists focus more upon the times when individual act against their best interests. In other words, when their emotions or biases make them behave against the economists model. The press likes to point out the gap between the economists and psychologists, but it isn’t as wide as they paint.
One Hour Crash Course on Behavior Finance
If you owe your your bank a hundred dollars, you have problem, but if you owe bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem.
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
So are people rational? Here are a couple of possible observations and possible ways of answers:
* No, but this is the basis for our intuition.
* So ask yourself, do most homebuyers have good intuition for ARMs when buying a home?
Well, maybe. By metaphor, think about the expert pool/billiards player. He plays as if he were an expert in physics, but he isn’t. Economists like to work on the physics problems of billiards. Psychologists like to focus on the time when he chokes if he isn’t wearing he lucky socks.
* No, but we delegate this process to advisers, that do act rationally.
Should you delegate the deicsion to advisers? Imagine that you are thinking about buying a house. Your banks will push you buy, your agent will push you to buy, everyone but maybe your fianancial advisor will push you to buy. My wife and I recently bought a house a house and, apparently easily qualified for a mortgage (this is after the recent financial crisis). Now, the kicker is that the bank didn’t know about some additional income that I used to calculate our budget, because it wasn’t part of a salary. As far as our advisors knew, they were putting us into a house that we simply couldn’t afford, and they were doing this even after the recent financial crisis – so you can not trust your advisors when their interests are conflicted.
* No, but this is the way “smart money” makes decisions.
Do the capital markets price these correctly?
Framing matters:
So, when asked, people will have very different answer to a question when it is just framed differently.
So, imagine the following scenario: Given the recent H1N1 outbreak, which course of treatment, if you were the president, would you take:
Framing One Way:
*Option 1) A treatment where 400,000 people out of 1M will die, or 38%
*Option 2) 1/3 chance that no one will die and 2/3 chance that all 600,000 will die: 62%
Framing another way:
* Option 1) 200,000 people will be saved: 62%
* Option 2) 1/3 chance that 600,000 people will be saved, and 2/3 chance 400,000 will be saved: 38%
When a two groups of students where asked their recommended course of action, the percent of students that chose Option 1 when the question was framed the first exactly matched the percent of students that chose Option 2 when the question was framed the second way. Now, if you look at the two framings, they both represent the exact same outcomes, so there is no logical reason for the percentages to flip – it is just how it is presented.
Saturday Galla at Boston Public Library
So, how can we apply these insights into human nature to software development?
I would argue that this is important to software development in a couple of ways, namely for project management, technical risk assessment, and marketing.
Project Management:
Programmers are notorious for over-estimating their own productivity. When asked to estimate how long feature X will take to build, they will routinely be off by several hundred percent. Granted, often with good reason. Sometimes management changes the spec because managers greatly over-estimate their own ability to deliver a perfect and unchanging spec.. Sometimes more urgent project cause frequent interruptions, seriously undermining concentration and flow.
Framing: I’ve observed that when I have freelancers bid on a project, the price is quite different between when I am vague, but still accurate, and when I specify, in detail, the project details. The estimated price increases significantly by bidders by several hundred percent, even though, the detailed spec actually significantly lowers bidding risk.
Category framing: effort to do the project vs. the effort to do each identifiable effort.
When a bunch of students, about 160 of them, where asked to estimate what the temperates would be during March and April, they would artificially group their answers in large chunks according to the month instead of thinking about the pretty smooth change in weather between each day.
First Group: March 12th: 37.5F, March 24: 39.0 ( a 1.5F change over 12 days – but within same month).
Second group: March 24.5F, April 5, 48.8 (an insanely high 24.3 degree increase during 12 days, but the this last date they were asked to estimate was in a ‘hot’ month – so they cranked their estimates up to 11!)
Take away: the march / april barrier caused the estimators to pool their answers into two distinct groups instead of thinking about the answers as lying on a continuous scale, which they clearly were. People think about stuff in large categories, not on a continuous or high-resolution scale. For software developers, this makes us, I think, underestimate the work in involved for poorly specified projects and over-estimate the involved in well specified projects. I’ve observed this several times when outsources projects to freelancers. When I’m sort of vague, but accurate, about a project, the prices seem sort of low. When super well specified, the price for the same project inflates greatly. Unscrupulous Publishers might be able to take advantage of naive freelancers and consultants, and vice versa. Basically, be aware, and act accordingly, to avoid all around pain.
Self worth bias (most people think that they are above average): Time for somebody to do a project = 2X, time for me to do a project = 1X. How much should I be paid to do that project if I charge a fixed fee? What if I charge per hour? What is my hourly rate? What has my hourly rate actually been. Let’s call the Implied Rate the hourly wage calculated by taking the total project cost divided by how many hours a project took. I guess we figure there is no reason to track our time if we aren’t charging by the hour. In my experience, we programmers show a large internal inconsistency in our proclaimed hourly rate depending upon how the project is setup, hourly vs. flat fee, and we don’t go back to calculated our implied rate, even when taking things into considerations such as payment risk, self insurance, etc.
So, what can do about this?
Well, I’m certainly not in a position to fix the whole software development lifecycle problem, but I feel like I can suggest a couple of courses of action.
1 – Track your hours, even when working on own projects or flat-fee projects
2 – After every project, conduct a post-mortem to analyze why the project went off schedule (they all go off schedule)
3 – Develop and grow your own well-vetted library of software components to minimize custom develop of technology. Keep the custom development, and thus the schedule risk, to just the new business logic of the project.
4 – Do mockups to vet with the customer/stakeholders what, precisely, needs to be built before the code starts flying. Fixing mistakes in the design phase, as we know, is ten times cheaper than fixing them after coded.
5 – Well, I could go on.
I’m working on a new client project and I’m trying hard to apply these principles, but it isn’t easy. My client gave me a great spec, and I’m working on turning that into a working mock-up, to work out some previously unforeseen UI issues. I’m also refining my own library with an eye towards workflow. This might be a long process, but, in the long run, well worth it.
Further Reading
Books: Nudge, The upside of irrationality, Animal Spirit, Predictably Irrational
I haven’t read this yet, but it was referenced in the talk.
Video: Nova: Mind Over Money
This was my first introduction to modern Behavioral Finance. Really an easy way to quickly grasp the whole field. Recommended.
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (Maybe a stretch, but I really liked this when I first read it. It was a hit in its day but seems to have since faded.
Why I’ll Replace My MacBook Pro with a Desktop Because of the iPad
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Uncategorized, iPad on May 27th, 2010
My 2.0G 15″ Macbook Pro is getting a little long in the tooth. I went to the Apple store yesterday to replace an unexpected failure in the external Mag-Safe power supply. I’m now on my fourth power supply – yikes. It wasn’t covered by AppleCare – the guy behind the counter pitifully reminded me that my laptop was now over four years old. That’s at least 28 years old in computer-hardware years, and in dog-years. So it is probably time to upgrade. But I don’t think I’ll replace this laptop with another – I’ll get a desktop instead. Unlike times past, the arrival of the iPad releases me from the laptop upgrade cycle.
Happily, unlike in my old Windows days, my computer isn’t slowing-down, per se, but I’m asking a lot more of it than I used to ask. I’m doing a lot of cross device smartphone development lately, which involves running multiple simulators – tough work for any computer, let alone a laptop. The recent upgrade to Snow Leopard breathed new life into my old beast. Also, my recent upgrade to a SSD hard-drive helped, too. But my hard limit of 2Gig of RAM is killing me.
I’ve written about how my iPad is proving to be a fairly useful portable computer. I find myself writing blog posts, catching up on reading long articles using Instapaper, and writing presentations and business plans using Keynote. I can even do some emergency SSH’ing to manage basic server maintenance. I plan to eventually do app requirements development and wireframe moch-ups, too, once I get around to building those apps.
So the thing is, even good laptops don’t perform as well as good desktops. I’m realizing that my next computer might last a long time, longer than I’m used to in the Windows world. My single biggest desire, other than more horsepower, is a large screen with letters big enough to let me avoid reading glasses. I also know, from experience, that a very high quality monitor can last many, many years. So my need for an upgraded laptop just isn’t too pressing. My old laptop will probably serve my increasing occasional heavy-usage mobile needs. My iPad will probably serve my lite-usage mobile needs. My new desktop will likely serve my big screen and big cpu needs. My spectrum of needs (I’m needy), will get met.
I’ve been relying upon laptops since I got a Dell Latitude in 1998. I just need to last the two years of business school. That is about how long it lasted, too. The thought of moving away from laptop-land is weird. Scary. Exciting. Visions of three 30″, side-by-side, monitors are dancing through my head. Home office utopia might be near. Ahh, peace is settling across my being.
Good bye laptop upgrade cycle. Thank you, iPad.
iPad vs. Jesus: Healing the Blind and the Silver Market
[Guest Post by my father-in-law, William Haueisen, PhD., CEO of Sterling Research Group (SRG). William agreed to share his recent experience with the iPad touching the older generation that has been sadly overlooked by recently technology innovations. That older generation is rapidly growing and sometimes referred to as the silver-market because of their under-addressed needs and under-tapped purchasing power.
About SRG: SRG designs and executes high-quality, and high-volume, customer satisfaction surveys.]
Gavin and Maddie’s great grandmother, aged 86, has suffered from macular degeneration for a decade. In earlier times she was an avid reader, sometimes with multiple books “under process” at the same time. But the macular degeneration has robbed her of any ability to read. She “reads” now only by sitting under a bright light and holding a fairly strong magnifying glass. That is until a week or two ago.
Great Grandmom lives in a retirement center so meals are always a big social time. Recently she’s been hearing her friends talk about Kindles. And while she hadn’t actually seen one, she had a feeling that it might be something that could help her read again. So we took her on a shopping trip, first to Best Buy to look at Kindles. They were interesting and she was fascinated with the idea of the thing, but unfortunately, even with the text enlarged to its maximum, she couldn’t read from a Kindle except with the ubiquitous magnifying glass. Part of the problem was the lack of contrast. But, even though it didn’t help her, she sure liked the basic idea of the thing.
Next we took her to Barnes and Noble to see a Nook. No dice, not enough real estate, and otherwise the same problem with lack of contrast.
Finally, we took her to the Apple store, and after waiting in line three lines, she got her iPad. Wow, great contrast (back lighted) and very large print, and a type face (sans serif) that that made the words clear still. She could read! We loaded a couple of novels on her iPad and she went to town. She went to town when I went out of town, and within minutes of our departure, she was in trouble. Something happened that she couldn’t figure out.
Fortunately, about that time her son called from Texas, and in short time, she told him she needed a “geek” (that was her word, honestly.) Jim suggested she call Best Buy since he knew they had a Geek Squad. She did, and then the fun began. First of all, none of the Geeks had been trained on the iPad yet, so they were at a loss, and said they’d have to come to the house. They issued her an incident number and told her to log in to the Best Buy Internet site, use the incident number and pay for the consulting using her credit card.
She indicated she didn’t have Internet access. They asked her how she got the iPad, and she said her son, Bill, got it for her. How did she get her books without Internet access? She said her son, Bill, put them on the iPad for her. She would be happy to give the Geek a check, or her credit card information when they came out. They indicated they couldn’t do that, she had to pay in advance. Finally, they had mercy upon her, and agreed to be paid when they got to her apartment.
When they (two of them) arrived–the Geek didn’t have a clue because he hadn’t been trained on the iPad, but he brought one of the Apple salespeople with him, and this guy knew his stuff. Within a few minutes (2-3 at the most), they had her untangled and back in her book. She was delighted. But, when she learned that she had to pay for a hour, and they would charge her for a quarter of an hour (their minimum) she insisted they just sit down and talk to her until she used up her quarter hour. They would put the rest of her time on her “account” and she could call in again, if she needed help.
Apparently they had a good chat; they liked her, she liked them, and I suspect that she was the talk of the Geek Squad that day. Not too many 86 year olds with cutting edge technology.
So, cut to the present: she’s finished one 400 page novel–the first book she’s read in years and years, and she’s well into her second. And, what fun, lots of the “boys” in the retirement center are beating a path to her apartment to see her iPad. She’s become the hot number in the entire Manor.
The Killer App for the iPad is, wait for it…, Writing.
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Business of Software, iPad on May 11th, 2010
The killer app for X. Everyone always wants to know, when a new widget is built, what it really does well. Often, it seems, it isn’t what was advertised. The killer app for the iPhone was suppose to be, according to Jobs, Making-Phone-Calls, with a heavy emphasis visual voice mail. The killer app for the personal computer, for those of us that can remember back that far, was supposed to be Cooking-Recipes (OMG!). The killer app for the iPad, again, according to Jobs, is Media-Consumption. All wrong.
The iPhone, although it needs to make phone calls, is only so-so good at it – but it is great for always-within-arms-reach-apps. Granted, there are lots of other uses for it, like games, web surfing, etc, but the Unique thing about the iPhone (and other smart phones) is that it is a little computer that you carry in your pocket that is connected to the Internet – and it does it Good-Enough(tm). I used to carry a Palm Treo 650 – which was also in your pocket and connected, but not it didn’t quite do it good-enough. It arguably did it better than others, but key functionality was really crippled if you weren’t employed by a company that could afford the Good e-mail back-end server. The Good software made the Treo very Blackberry-like. Apps were relatively difficult to install – more difficult than for a normal PC. The killer app for the Treo was the e-mail. Same thing for Blackberries. Maybe the twist for the iPhone is the ease of app installation and their security – you really can’t screw up your phone by downloading hack-apps. You could screw up your Treo, and you can still screw-up your Android phones.
So, what does the iPad do that is unique and awesome. Sure, you can read books. Sure, you get most of the benefits of the iPhone. But that isn’t unique. Browsing the web while I lounge in the living room, without having to fumble with a a mouse is truly awesome. Watching Netflix and ABC is, without a doubt, a game changer for media consumption. The Wall Street Journal app is within spitting distance of demonstrating how newspapers will survive. But, those are all, oh, how to say it, too obvious. However, when I attach my Bluetooth keyboard to my iPad, I roam to where there are no distractions, and write like I haven’t written in years (though, still, badly).
My desktop, for me, is for programming, and spreadsheets, and sort of serious endeavors. Writing, for me, is one of those things that is important to do, but never urgent. How could I ever justify writing? If I’m sitting at my computer, how can I allow myself to write when I should be programming? Well, nobody programs directly on the iPad. Nobody does serious spreadsheet work on the iPad. You get the idea. But an iPad with an external keyboard provides a wonderful, portable, low-distraction, writing environment.
I’m drafting this post at my kitchen table. I probably won’t add the links and pictures until I get back to my desktop, because rapid switching between programs, image uploads, etc., are a bit of a pain on the iPad – which is great – because I should be writing, not cropping images! The value is in the content, and thought, not the links and eye candy.
My 1st grade son and I have a semi-regular routine of going to a coffee shop, before his school starts, and we both write. Frankly, grabbing my laptop, the mouse, maybe the power supply, ejecting the external drive, grabbing the backpack, is just a bit too painful. Grabbing the iPad and keyboard, is cake. Not much bigger than my son’s composition notebook. I can grasp those two with one hand. He gets a the good influence of seeing a parent write. I get good writing time and good quality time. He gets to practice his writing and gets to see that an otherwise dull homework activity can be spiced up by just changing locations. We wrap-up by reading our creations to each other. His are more interesting.
iPad Annoyances
I’ve been using the iPad since day one, and I thought I would categorize some things that I still find annoying about the iPad. Consider this a Dear-Apple letter for things they should refine.
1) The brightness controls are not calibrated for dark rooms. I often read my iPad in bed, at night, but the screen is simply way too bright. It is bright enough that a bed partner will need to turn away from it so that they can sleep. So, every night, I go into Settings and lower the brightness to its darkest setting. The next morning, I reverse the process. This is not ok.
2) The iPad has a bad habit of doing an unwanted screen orientation rotation when it is moved from vertical to flat. Flat, like, flat onto my lap or table top. The is really never the desired behavior, because hey! – I was looking at that!
3) The wireless-keyboard connection is way too sticky. As I write this, I’m sitting at my kitchen table with my iPad and bluetooth keyboard. Its great. If I were move to the couch to surf the web, I wouldn’t want to use my keyboard anymore that is still sitting in the kitchen. However, the iPad stubbornly refuses to bring up the on-screen keyboard until I go into settings and disable bluetooth. I would really like to just hit a button on the keyboard to disconnect it, like, say, the Eject button…
[Update] I’ll be damned – guess what the eject button does! It brings up the soft keyboard – but its only temporary. I bet there is a way to totally disconnect – hmmm.
[Update - 24 May, 2010] I’m an idiot. You can get this to mostly work by remembering to turn off the wireless keyboard when done. You do this by pressing and holding the power button for about three seconds. When you press the power button, the little green light will turn on, and then off after a few seconds, which is how you’ll know it is off. At that point, your software keyboard will pop back up. This solution isn’t perfect, but it isn’t bad. My happiness quotient just went up!
4) Don’t get me started on Apple’s official iPad case.
5) On physical keyboards, I can hit the Delete key to left-delete, but I can hit, say, fn-Delete to right-delete as if I were on my desktop.
6) [new] The home button is too loud. While in bed, I’m afraid to hit it. It would be too loud for some meeting situations, too.
So, that is a pretty short list. Since, though, you can’t hack the iPad or iPhone much, unlike the Android phones, we’ll all have to wait patiently for Apple to address these. None of the above are show stoppers, and competition in the field is hot enough, that things do seem to get addressed by all of the vendors eventually.
Apple’s iPad Case is Badly Designed: How to Make It Better
When I bought my iPad on day one, I also bought the official Apple case along with it, and the official Apple docking station (doc). I’ve already hacked up my case to make it compatible with the doc, but I’m about to get out the scissors, again.
After using this iPad combo for a few weeks, I’m having two problems, one big, one small, speaker coverage and orientation-lock blockage. The case has little holes so that sound can escape from the speakers, but, at least on mine, the don’t align with the speaker grill. The iPad fits in snugly so there really isn’t any wiggle room. The holes are simply in the wrong spot. WTF?
Secondly, and more importantly, the case has a sort of annoying and uncomfortable flange around the body. The flange seriously blocks the orientation-lock switch, and, to a lesser degree, the volume control. I’m going to hack these real-soon-now(tm).
Fix 1 (optional): Docking Station Compatibility
Fix 2: Uncage the Speak Grill
Fix 3: Free the Volume and Orientation-Lock
Now, my hacks are pretty ugly, I know. The rubberized case isn’t very easy to gracefully cut with scissors, and, truthfully, I didn’t put too much time into it. Yours will probably turn out better.
Everybody Loves Robots
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Elegant Labs, Uncategorized on April 28th, 2010
Recently, while tinkering with spare electronic parts with my six year old son, I decided to try to get him involved in a local chapter of some robots-for-kids program, but I couldn’t find anything for him. Ok, you may not be surprised, but I was. After some searching, and researching, we ended up starting a Lego based robot club at his school, which, so far, has been very well received. My son is pretty lucky to have an opportunity like this, but I wish more kids, across the country, could benefit from a engineering-focused, after-school, program.
So, I’m kicking off, under the sponsorship of Elegant Technologies, the non-profit Everybody Loves Robots. Everybody Loves Robots helps kids gain the confidence, competence, passion, and resources to make robots, and other cool stuff. Students will work in small teams with like-skilled students and a grown-up coach to go through a set curriculum of foundation projects, with the coaches helping the kids when they get stuck, and helping the kids understand the more interesting parts of their creations.
Inspired by USFirst, the new organization is called Everybody Loves Robots. Enjoy.
PS – I’m taking donations to help scale the organization, so give until hurts and don’t be a wimp about it.
The iPhone HD and iPad means Apple Hates Apps – That’s a Good Thing
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Business of Software, Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities, iPad on April 20th, 2010
According to Gizmodo, this 
is Apple’s next iPhone, importantly, to me, with a screen of 640×960. There has been a lot of kvetching around the Internet about the iPhone’s new case, it’s front facing camera, etc. but I think that people are missing the cooler picture here. Since the iPad’s resolution is 768×1024, and that the original iPhone’s screen is at 320×480, then we can only draw one logical conclusion: Apple hates apps.
Yup – I said it. There is no taking it back. I dare you to disagree. Well, at least some apps. The bad apps. The unloved apps.
One of the iPhone’s, and iPod touch’s early competitive advantages against the Android, Palm, Nokia, and Blackberry was it’s consistent development target. As a developer, a typical app that I built for the iPod touch would work just fine for the all of the iPhone platforms because they had the same input, same screen resolution, etc. If it worked on an iPod touch, then I really didn’t need to test it on, say, an iPhone 3G. Unlike, say, the Blackberry line, with several different resolutions, orientations, and input methodologies, developing for one model meant very little chance of it working on the other models. My early Blackberry development was a bit of nightmare. I screamed at Palm when, after making a game for them targeted at 320×480 on the Palm Pre, when they started shipping the Palm Pixi with resolution of 320×400. What kind of sadist company would do that to their developers? Don’t get my started on what it is like to test for a Nokia app. That fragmentation made it quite difficult to develop for them. The recent spat of resolution changes for the iPhone line, though, changes that Apple advantage (but don’t worry about Apple just yet).
Why would Apple do this? Well, partly, of course, is that they sorted of needed to get higher resolution screens for the iPad. But for the iPhones, those little screens are good enough, and Apple has never been known for introducing technology with out a corresponding and compelling uptick for the user’s experience. I think this is part of their strategy for culling their massive app catalog of the crappy apps. I don’t think you can underestimate how many of the apps in the app store basically don’t make any money. Stories abound about the app producer that spent $30,000 in development but only harvested $1,000 from the app store. There are countless more, and I know from first and second hand experience, of apps that, although costing less to develop, are only earning $100 in revenue over the life of the app. So, arguably, most, but not all, of the apps, just suck. Those developers will simply not re-invest the time and money to port them to the iPad or the higher-resolution iPhones.
This is win-win for Apple and the consumers. Apple still gets to rightly claim an un-godly number of apps in their catalog, but as the newer devices come online, those consumers will only normally see the apps designed for their device. As a new iPad owner, I really felt compelled to remove every iPhone app, except for the one or two that didn’t have an iPad equivalent and were actually important to my daily workflow.
My recent apps that I upgraded for to the iPad, Nightlight and Powernap: Forty winks anywhere meant some significant re-thinking of the app. I couldn’t just rely upon iPhone emulation mode – things didn’t look good without re-designing. Redesigning for a different screen is a big deal. The investment is significant. The looming changes in screen resolutions out of Apple is also having me revamp my whole programming workflow – something difficult for less sophisticate programmers and developers shops to pull off. Developing for the iPhone OS line just became a lot tougher.
What Apple could have done to make me think different? While in emulation mode, when zoomed in at 2x, I would have expected to see the fonts, for example, re-scaled. Imagine when you zoom-in in Safari, the text still looks awesome. Not the case for iPhone apps on the iPad. Graphic images also could also have been resampled/interpolated, like when you plop a DVD into a player attached to your fancy HD TV. Those DVDs, without extra processing, look pretty crummy. That crummy image was, originally, a big marketing angle for Blue-Ray purchases. But with good processing, a DVD actually looks pretty decent on an HD TV. Apple is a smart company – they could have done that, too, if they thought it important enough – they just didn’t.
This is all pretty good stuff. Apple wins. Consumers win. And, I think, independent developers will win because of fewer get-rich-quick developers out there trying to win the app lottery, undermining the economics. I, for one, welcome our new varying resolution Apple overlords.
iPad as Nightstand: The Apple iPad Case and Docking Station
So I harbor fantasies of making the truly ultimate alarm clock. I’ve actually schemed about the finer points of alarm clock design since I was a kid, with my college years serving as my main inspiration. I think the iPhone and iPad can both be great alarm clocks that sit on your nightstand, but I’m running into some practical problems with my iPad – it’s case.
Yesterday I bought the Apple dock for the iPad so that it can charge overnight and safely run an app throughout the evening without draining the battery. When I brought the dock home, I discovered that I couldn’t mount the iPad onto the dock.
I have a case for my iPad and it was interfering with my dock. It is the official Apple case. A decent, even if terribly overpriced, case.
Do I need the case? I live in a house with a two year old and a six year old, so the thought of a naked iPad makes the muscles in my back tighten-up with nervous tension. Hmmm – what to do.
Ok – so out come the scissors! I expanded the cut-out in the bottom of the case where the dock goes. I also opened up a rectangular area in the back to match where the back-rest of the dock will sit. Now – the dock mounts fairly well.
So – I hope this little trick works for others. I wish the case had been designed to work with the dock in the first place – I hate hacking with scissors.
Nightlight now on the iPad – first impressions.
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Uncategorized on April 3rd, 2010
Happy iPad day. I picked up my iPad at Pentagon City this morning. We made it a family outing and my six year old son was at least as excited as I was. We got in and out of the Reserved line a in about 20 minutes, so really a pretty good experience.
I like the iPad so far. Nice screen. Nice keyboard. Nice heft. Very few things to complain about.
Here are my complaints. My home button is a bit loud. A little too loud if you are typing in bed and don’t want to wake your partner. It would be too loud for a meeting, too. I seem to recall, though, that my last iphone had a loud home button, but that it quieted down with use, so take this complaint with a grain of salt.
I also resent that I can’t seem to use my old iPhone cable to charge my iPad. It’s like a big loyalty tax. What is is up with that? Correction: The problem wasn’t with the cable, it was with what it was plugged into. If I plug into my older MacBook pro, then it won’t charge, but it will charge if I lug it into the wall. What is up with that. More correction: charges sometimes on the MacBook a maybe when the iPad is turned off?
All in all, a great product, though. I’ve had a lot of fun with it so far.
I launched an upgrade to Nightlight for the iPad – check it out. Although I was stoked to have that out on opening day, I’m really bummed that I’m still having issues with getting my Powernap upgrade out the door. It’s seems to work fine for me, but apparently crashes on Apple’s test rig – arghhh. [Update: Powernap: Forty winks anywhere is doing just fine.]
I also launched a simple, but useful upgrade to Elegant Quadratic and launch a Pythagorean equation solver and generic math expression solver called Lil Math. These three are using a new technology that I’m developing to streamline app development – especially cross platform stuff. More about that later.
My Talk from Blackberry Developer’s Conference: Cross Platform Strategies + PhoneGap
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities on November 18th, 2009
I recently returned from the excellent BlackBerry Developers Conference where I gave a talk on cross-platform development strategies.
Adam, from RIM, posted his top…
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Business of Software, Uncategorized on October 29th, 2009
Adam, from RIM, posted his top anticipated sessions (http://bit.ly/4he1bv) for upcoming Blackberry Conference. My talk is highlighted!
Grope Control, Better than Voice Control when Walking
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities on July 1st, 2009
So, I’ve been designing an app that is basically meant to be used by car drivers. It’s tentative going to have full Voice Control for enhanced usability and safety. It’s going to be a great app. I think.
Although I can totally identify with my lead user, a salesman type of guy that drives all over town, the app wasn’t really resonating with me now that I work out of my home office and spend most of my ‘commute’ either walking, biking, or on mass transit. My automobile time is often with wife and family, so Voice Control would be terrible in-effective over the dins of a car full of talkers. So what about me?
I’m a big fan of Apple’s new Voice Control, but although society apparently now accepts hearing one side of a phone conversation from people walking down the street, are they ready to accept that somebody saying, to no one in particular, ‘Next Item’, ‘Back’, ‘Postpone’, ‘Play songs by the Shin Shins’, isn’t a little crazy, or at least a little socially inept? I’m not ready to be that bold trend setter.
Some grope motions we can recognize
So, how can we interact with our mobile devices while walking down the street? If I presume that I’m wearing headphone, then I can image holding my phone in my pocket and using my phone for input if my app is giving me adequate audio feedback. The phone could say into your ear “Your next appoint with Mr. Smith is in 15 minutes. Tap once to acknowledge or tap twice to remind you again in 10 minutes.” I’m excited about this and can image a whole set of utilities and games that I can use while moving around the city. I’m calling this method of input “Grope Control,” though I’m hoping to get suggestions for a more politically correct name.
For the sake of completeness, I’ve started to enumerate some common input and output methods and came up with some names for some of the combinations, namely Classic Control, Voice Control, Grope Control, and Spy Control. I like to name things. I think the introduction from The Non-Designer’s Design Book put it well when it’s introduction concluded that “Once you can name something, you’re conscious of it. You have power over it. You own it. You’re in control.”
Output Options
| Eyes | Ears | Touch | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| X | X | X | Great when the device has the users undivided attention and the user is holding the device. |
| X | X | Good when the user is not holding the device, say, its sitting on a desk or is mounted to a wall or dashboard, but the user can still focus on the device. | |
| X | Great when your hands and eyes are occupied, like when you are one the move, either driving or walking. | ||
| X | Would be great for silent two-way communication, but the mainstream technology is currently limited to vibration on most devices and little 'clicks' on some devices like the Blackberry Storm. |
We’ll ignore mouth and nose as useful output options, though its fun to think about. Hmm, my phone smells musky, and tastes bitter, it must be time for my 3:30 appointment.
Input Options
| Gesture | Tap, Pinch, Zoom, Twist - requires two hands or a mounted device. One to hold the device and one to make the gesture. |
|---|---|
| Gesticulate | Waving the device around, like shaking the device to 'undo' for the iPhone, or bowling for the Nintendo Wii. Requires arm movement. |
| Thumb | One handed thumb control, where you hold the device in, say, your right hand, and then use your thumb for input. |
| Voice | Say a command. Good in quiet places like car or living room. Not good for a bus or subway because its too loud and people would think you are crazy. |
| Buttons | Some Apple headphones let you single click the button on the microphone to stop the song, double click to advance to next song, and press & hold. |
Named I/O Combinations:
| Name | Outputs | Inputs |
|---|---|---|
| Classic Control | Eyes, Ears, Touch | Gesture |
| Wild Classic Control | Eyes, Ears, Touch | Gesture, Gesticulate |
| Wild Muted Classic Control | Eyes, Touch | Gesture, Gesticulate (Wild Classic with the Mute on) |
| Voice Control | Ears | Voice |
| Grope Control | Ears, Touch | Thumb |
| Wild Grope Control | Ears, Touch | Thumb, Gesticulate |
| Spy Control | Touch | Thumb |
| Specialized Control | TBD | Buttons or specialized hardware |
Scenarios
| Scenarion | Attributes | Solutions |
|---|---|---|
| Driving | Limited Eyes. Good audio. Not holding the device, so no haptic (touch) feedback. | Voice Control |
| Walking down the street with headphones | Maybe loud. Don't want to make a scene of yourself. Hands want to be in your pocket during winter weather. | Grope Control |
| Walking down the street w/o headphone. | Maybe loud and you don't want load noises coming from your pocket where you are holding your phone. | Spy Control |
| Business Meeting | Don't want others to hear or see your inputs. | Spy Control |
| Movie Theater | The phone is in your pocket, you can't see the screen and you can't hear the commands | Spy Control |
| Standing in line at the airport | Your hands are free, you aren't doing anything useful, but you don't want to draw attention to yourself. | Muted Classic Control |
| Being old | Many older people are moving away from computers, let alone iphone, because poor eyesight are decreasing finger control makes mouse usage difficult. | Voice Control, (Wild) Grope Control. |
Implications for the app producer
- Know your user personas. How and where will they be using your app? Ask yourself whether you want to limit your app to a single I/O combination, or do you want to allow, and budget for, multiple IO combinations?
- You might also plan on spending some extra marketing effort in explaining and showing the benefits of your non-classic I/O options. Can you imagine the virus buzz you’ll get as the first Spy Control app published. Can you make a killer YouTube video to go along with it?
Implications for the app programmer
- You’ll simply need a solid gesture library. Apple is clearly working in this direction and now has a built-in and refined “Shake” detector.
- Have a standard voice control browser for your platform would be useful. You can test your voicexml stuff at voxeo.com’s site before putting into your app.
- What would the voicexml equivalent for SpyControl be?
Implications for the DoD
- Patent 6899539 addresses putting a trackball onto a weapon to provide (http://bit.ly/Patent899539) some mechanism to get feedback into a computer w/o taking your hands off of a weapon, say, your rifle. The trackball approach presumes that your see a screen, which means you are not focused on your target. Fundamentally the soldier needs more combat appropriate input methods.
Image from patent with rifle and trackball
- Software robustness: If, say, a screen is damaged or, untrusted, should there be another input method available to the operator?
My thoughts 3GS’s speech recog…
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Uncategorized on June 25th, 2009
My thoughts 3GS’s speech recognition with implications: “Voice Control is the new Touch, almost.” http://bit.ly/Xo3A7
Voice Control is the new Touch, almost.
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities on June 25th, 2009
I’ve been playing around with my new 3GS for a few days now. As you might know, it has some built-in automatic speech recognition (ASR) capability that Apple brands as Voice Control, good for making calls and operating the iPod. There is now, however, no programmer interface to allow its system to control 3rd party apps – bummer. I’d bet, however, that we’ll soon see Voice Control as a core iPhone capability for all apps – perhaps next year. When will it come to the PC? The future is murky. Importantly, though, the basic iPhone technology works pretty well. Better than anything else I’ve used. A thousand times better than the built-in bluetooth voice dialer my last car had.
For the first time in years, I found myself exploring my music collection. “Play songs by Johnny Cash” begets “Playing songs by Johnny Cash,” and then the classic crooner laments about love gone bad in Memphis. This is even safer than using the in-car stereo because I kept my eyes on the road the whole time. I found myself calling people. Of course, driving while distracted is bad, but it was actually practical to call the house and tell the kids that I was on my way home without having to take my eyes off the road. When ASR works well enough, you’ll want to use it. And use it in circumstances that were previously off-limits or much more dangerous.
There is a related technology in the iPhone called VoiceOver. Designed for people with vision impairments, this uses a text to speech (TTS) voice synthesizer and basically verbalizes what the person’s finger is touching. When you swipe between app screens, you’ll hear “Screen 3 of 11″ followed by a listing of every app on that screen. Touching an app like PowerNap, prompts “Power Nap, double tap to launch.” A double tap, anywhere on the screen, then launches the app. This system works too, but not well enough. Among its various drawbacks, it still requires a lot of tapping. So, although you don’t need to use your eyes, you still need to use your hands.
Key Technologies
- Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
- Text To Speech (TTS)
- Automatic or Semi-Automatic Voice Transcribing – for recording voice memos, and converting them into text.
Implications
… for the application producer
- If your app would likely be used by somebody walking around, then start thinking about Voice Control now, while still in your design phase.
- Improved voice control, with high quality voices and better recognition, may be worth an in-app purchase/upgrade.
- With the Silver Market (retiring baby boomers) increasing, their eyes getting worse, their fingers hurting more, then maybe Voice Control is the way to bring/extend apps to that huge market.
… for the developers
- Think about Voice Control early in the design phase. Don’t count on being able to elegantly retrofit your eye & finger focused app into both eye & finger and ear & voice. Don’t believe me? Then ask yourself how many of the mouse & click focused apps were easily ported to the iPhone’s finger-based system?
- Jump-start your mind by testing out some existing apps with Accessibility turned on. It was an enlightening experience for me.
- Open-source SDKs here are seriously lagging behind the commercial implementations, but they might be good enough to act as a preview or teaser, and allowing only serious users to purchase the upgrade.
- The commercial implementations are just now starting to think about licensing their SDKs.
… for R&D and DoD
- Imagine mobile applications that are useful w/o hands or screens. We’re used to thinking about the field utility of such systems, but what about the non-combatant, or at least those not all the way on the front line.
- To following this line of thought, haptic feedback is just coming to the consumer space – so if you can’t imagine soldiers chatting away all day to their PDAs, can you imagine them gesturing to one, without ever seeing the screen.
-
Not sure these are quite the right commands
-
- For application survivability, if the screen is damaged, say, by a bullet, shouldn’t the software still be able to function via alternative input methods, like voice? It might not be as efficient in some cases, but perhaps it would be better than nothing.
- Low power consumption: software capable of voice control wouldn’t need a screen.
- Weight: No screen equals lower weight.
Digesting last night’s HBS lec…
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities on June 24th, 2009
Digesting last night’s HBS lecture “Global Megatrends: Next Billion $ Opportunities”
Summary: Urbanization, Old People
http://bit.ly/75HTh
Technical: Scroll Home after Input Completion in Mobile Safari
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Technical: Guild News on April 21st, 2009
I’ve been experimenting with PhoneGap, a nice UIWebview wrapper for iPhone, Android, and ~Blackberry. Since the development happens in javascript, you spend more time working around the limitation of UIWebView.
I ran into the following problem. I have several input fields on a page. As the user moves to each input field on the iPhone, the screen rightly scrolls to the next input field. When the user has finished entering their data, the screen only partially scrolls back home. I got around this with the following – I hope it helps someone…
//**************************** jKeyboardGotDismissed() & jKeyboardGotShown() -BEGIN- ******************************
// This snippet give you a reasonable way to detect that the user is not currently input data.
// Motivation: On the iphone, when inputing data, the soft keyboard pops up. When the keyboard is dismissed, it doesn't
// usually scoll back to the original position.
//
// I know this is kludgy. There is probably some slick way to detect that a input box lost focus, but that it had
// moved on to onother input box, or not - but I couldn't find any examples. This uses a timer, and seems to fall
// into the good-enough category.
//
// Insturctions:
// Copy this block of code into your script
// Modify jKeyboardGotDismissed() & jKeyboardGotShown() as desired.
//
// Use Cases:
// Make sure the screen has scolled to 0,0 after the user finishes inputing data on the iphone
// add something like " window.scrollTo(0, 0) " to jKeyboardGotDismissed()
var bStoppedInputtingUnlessSomeoneTellsMeOtherwise = true;
var enumKeyboardStateThereGone = "Gone";//There, means the keyboard must be visible, "Gone" means it must be hidden
function _jFocusTypeHelper() {
if (bStoppedInputtingUnlessSomeoneTellsMeOtherwise == true) {
if (enumKeyboardStateThereGone == "There") {
enumKeyboardStateThereGone = "Gone";
jKeyboardGotDismissed();
} else {
enumKeyboardStateThereGone = "Gone";// why twice? Just so enumKeyboardStateThereGone will be set before the function call.
}
} else {
if (enumKeyboardStateThereGone == "Gone" ) {
enumKeyboardStateThereGone = "There";
jKeyboardGotShown();
} else {
enumKeyboardStateThereGone = "There"; // why twice? Just so enumKeyboardStateThereGone will be set before the function call.
}
}
}
// This function gets called whenever the keyboard is dismissed. feel free to modify it
// Motivation: I wanted to make sure the screen scolled back to the right spot after the last input
// Known Limitations: 1/4 second delay before jKeyboardGotDismissed is notified.
function jKeyboardGotDismissed() {
//alert("The soft Keyboard just got dismissed (if, in fact, this device has a softkeyboard)");
window.scrollTo(0, 0);//Scroll home after the keyboard is dismissed. Delete this line if you don't want that to happen. @TODO: Add smooth scrooling
}
function jKeyboardGotShown() {
//alert("The soft Keyboard must have just popped up (if, in fact, this device has a softkeyboard)");
}
document.addEventListener("blur",function() {bStoppedInputtingUnlessSomeoneTellsMeOtherwise=true;setTimeout(_jFocusTypeHelper,250);},true);
document.addEventListener("focus",function() {bStoppedInputtingUnlessSomeoneTellsMeOtherwise=false;_jFocusTypeHelper();},true);
//**************************** jKeyboardGotDismissed() & jKeyboardGotShown() -END- ******************************So, how would you use this? If you put this code in your page, it should just magically work.
Future of Newspapers and Journalism?
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities on April 14th, 2009
So, talking about the future of the newspaper industry is what all of the cool kids are doing. Some have said the that the better question is not whether the newspaper industry can be saved, but whether journalism can be saved. Ok, but let us talk about the newspaper industry. Can the New Yorks Times, Boston Globe, and LA Times be saved? It’s like asking whether Kodak, Poloroid, and Fuji Film can be saved. Or Xerox. The answer is that yes, they can be saved, but they look very, very different than they appear today, and even then, only if they are willing to go through the transformation.
As an experiment, I’ve started a discussion regarding what a mobile version of Boston.com should have here.
By the way, Apparently Arriana Huffington (sp?) has started a foundation to sponsor lone journalists – which is cool, and a start.
Brushing up on my Guerilla mar…
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities on April 8th, 2009
Brushing up on my Guerilla marketing foo, which has apparently been rebranded as Social Media.
iPhone App Store Sales Optimization by Tracking Ads
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Business of Software on February 27th, 2009
So, you’ve just put your killer app on the on the app store. You celebrated with some Schramsberg. You sadly watch your sales asymptotically approach zero when users discover that you haven’t ‘quite’ got it right. Now, you’ve fixed that one outstanding issue and you’re ready to re-invigorate your money machine.
Ok – Not that you no longer have that new-app bump, you have to get your app re-recognized the old fashioned way, through marketing. That’s marketing, with a lower case ‘m’. Probably viral marketing, reviews, and advertising. So, as some rich manager said, “If you can’ measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Measuring advertising efficacy is a problem on Apple’s app store, because you can not, until now, measure the effectiveness of different advertising channels because they only report total sales, and not their referring source. In the 9 months that I’ve been developing iPhone apps (let’s birth this baby!) I’ve focused on executing as many experiments as possible, but I’ve only been able to do one advertising experiment at a time because it was too difficult to distinguish the effects from a particular advertisement from other factors, such as normal weekly fluctuations. Now, the smart guys over at Mobile Orchard has released a clever trick to track effects of individual back to individual sales. Check it out. I’ll update this post with my own results as I get them.
Mobile Orchard also has a good article on getting your app reviewed. Although I haven’t pushed reviews, yet, everthing that I’ve heard does indicate that it is a very personal process process. Although most sites keep a journalistic separation between the money and the review, some do not. And remember, these people are only human. Perhaps a good way to think about this is like getting a job where you have to get your resume recognized and have it stand out apart all of the other resumes.
How do you get your resume to stand out? Well, I think the first step to think beyond the resume. When I was still a cadet at the Air Force Academy, I was pretty miffed when I didn’t get a prestigious summer job at the school that I thought I perfectly qualified for. I was perfect on paper. After that job went to the other guy, I went to the decider to figure out what happened. He was too tactful, so I had to read between the lines and finally figured out that I had totally misunderstood, up to that point, the hiring process. You see, up to that point in my life, I had been chosen for things based upon “Who is the most deserving?” School admissions, for example, is, I think, a good example of that. Hiring, in contrast, is based upon “Which one will make my life easier?” It makes sense.
I believe that the getting reviews is sort of the same. The reviewers, deep down, want the most popular site possible with the least amount of work. Don’t be in denial about this reality.
Making money on the iPhone App Store
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Business of Software, Elegant Labs on February 19th, 2009
If you haven’t read it yet, Pinchmedia recently release a good report/slideshow on the market dynamics of selling products on Apple’s app store.
You can see it here:
Title: “iPhone AppStore Secrets – Pinch Media”
Link: http://www.slideshare.net/pinchmedia/iphone-appstore-secrets-pinch-media
I have about 10 published mobile apps at this point, and although I think the Pinchmedia presentation is great, and validating, I still think that they see the world through a certain prism that filters much of reality.
From my own experience, I had created my deck on lessons and experiments of publishing on the app store. I’ve identified about, oh, twenty experiments that i’ve performed, with more to come, and put them into this short slidesow. Since it contains a lot of confidential information, I’m saving it for in-person meetings, so contact me if you’re in the Boston area.
So here are two charts from my deck:
An with pretty decent staying power.
An app with less staying power.
I’ve put about 10x the energy into the second app. The interesting question is, or maybe the next question is, “What make the linear decay app” vs. “What makes the exponential decay” app? I think I know the answer. I think other people know the answer, too. I think that the answer knowers aren’t talking.
Now, knowing the answer, and monetizing the answer, are, of course, two differing things….
Use AppViz to track your iPhone sales
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Business of Software on February 13th, 2009
If you sell apps for the iPhone, the you really can’t live without App Viz. I’m not sure how I missed this before now.
[Updated: After using AppViz for a few months now, I'm totally in love. Recommended.]
Wallet Zero Launch
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Uncategorized on February 10th, 2009
I got a wonderful email from Apple today telling me that my “app is ready for sale.” So, Wallet Zero launches today. My partner, a very sharp HBS grad, has really helped guide this along. This app could be quite successful.
Wallet Zero is designed to solve the problem of the physical wallet. The problem, other than the dearth of money in it, is that is just too thick. Among things that fill it, are a plethora of loyalty cards, gym membership cards, frequent flyer cards, etc.. Wallet Zero tries to get as many as those, as possible, out of your wallet and onto your iPhone. It is just that simple.
The technology:
For cards that have a barcode, we reproduce that barcode. For those without a barcode, we just show the account number. We also show the support phone numbers for each of the cards.
I’ve had pretty good luck with scanners being able to scan the barcode, but your mileage will vary. Scanner technology seems to vary by region. The CVS by my old house in Florida could read it just fine, but the CVS across the street from me here in Boston can’t scan the barcode, so the clerk enters it manually.
Each barcode is different. We’ve been steadily going through every popular loyalty card and matching the bardcode. This process includes matching the barcode “font” as well as check digits and a few other tricks. It’s a hassle and a lot of work, but it’s great once it’s built.
This is my first free app that isn’t meant to drive sales to another product. The business revolves around back end sales to businesses. This should actually also provide an even better experience to the end user. This first release of the app is mainly a reality check, but I’m hopeful of launching some great upgrades in the near future.
[Update] Wallet Zero is now a Top 50 Lifestyle application!
[Update] The coolest part here: When on the iPhone’s App Store, if you start typing ‘wallet’, it auto-completes to Wallet Zero!
Adding content from laptop, not my browser
Posted by admin in Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities on January 28th, 2008
I’m writing this post from my Mac’s email program. Not, importantly,from inside a browser window. I’ll submit this post by sending it toa secret e-mail address, where it will get posted automatically. Thisis cool. In an age where novels are written from cell-phone, contentsystems need to be more aware of ways people really want to interactwith their data, not just through the browser. Although I’m writingthis particular post on my laptop, I intend to write other post on myTreo 650 (I know – sooo, dated), and my via the new e-mail abilitiesof my iPod touch.I don’t think the future is posting via e-mail – I think the future ismulti-access. E-mail is great, what about IM? What about SMS? Whatabout reading on my iPod or on my Kindle?
Oh yah, and then there is the whole formatting issue – but I’ll savethat for another time.
Alternative Access
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Technology Trends & Looming Opportunities on January 23rd, 2008
I tried posting to this blog via my Treo 650 by sending an e-mail to a super secret email address. It didn’t work. I suppose that I’ll resolve the problem at some point, but regardless, the concept rocks. Imagine having a flash of insight while waiting in line for movie tickets. You whip it out, and jot down your thoughts.I suspect bi-directional communication would work better – sort of like cached Outlook access for those power travels that catch up on their e-mail while sitting on the plane.Amazon’s new Kindle calls to me – I love that it bypasses the computer altogether, yet still allows the computer to play an, optional, role.
[update 2/2009: I'm writing this update from my iPhone. This is the future. Rich smart phone apps are changing everything regarding how people imterect with the data that matters. What Blackberry did for mobile e-mail, The iPhone is doing for all the other personal data]
I’m running out of disk space …
Posted by JJ Rohrer in Uncategorized on July 11th, 2007
I’m running out of disk space on MacBook so I’ve velcroed usb drives to the lid. It makes it heavier, but I’ve gone from 100 G to 460G.
[update]: 2 1/2 years later (Dec, 2009), I’m using the same MacBook Pro. The primary drive is now a 128Gig solid state drive and the CD-Rom has been replaced with an internally mounted 320Gig HD. My external, velcro mounted, drive is a 500 Gig HD dedicated to backups.
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