I am interested in retail at the moment because I am porting an iOS app to Android for a London startup in the retail/payment/loyalty space.

Deloitte have some very useful reports on mobile in retail. The Dawn of Mobile Influence (pdf) talks of how retailers are struggling to fund initiatives that they need to pursue to capture consumers’ changing behaviours. While many retailers are concentrating on what seems to be an obvious need to pay via mobile, Deloitte say that the effort might be better spent on using mobile to drive sales. 

Another Mobile Retailing report (pdf) uncovers the following…

• When customers know more, they buy more
• Data analytics is a must have capability
• Instant gratification is the retailer’s best friend
• The boundaries between social media and retail apps are blurring
• Mobile payments are more efficient for everyone
• Mobile-empowered associates may deliver better service to shoppers
• An app alone will not do it

The Transforming Retail report discusses trends in retail across various retail categories, and provides some very useful concrete examples of how mobile technology can be used to to implement retail strategy.

My session was on the relationship between designers and developers. I spoke of how the ‘designer’ tends to be a combination of one or more of the product owner, graphics designer, web designer, another developer or in some cases a design agency. I expressed the opinion that none of these people are able to accurately assess full feasibility, platform specific idioms, underlying functionality (not just wireframes), variation of UX by form factor, knowledge of graphics families and formats and graphics creation. There’s no ‘perfect designer’ and instead we need to look at the process of design and development and make it more iterative. We need to involve the developer earlier and re-involve the designer throughout the product development.

During questions, the validity of my experience was questioned by one delegate and there ensued some very active discussions in the following breakout sessions. Although it wasn’t my intention, I seemed to open a wound between designers and developers that I wasn’t even aware existed. More than one designer subsequently told be they were tired of developers telling them things weren’t possible. However, several people approached me afterwards and said they had personally experienced what I was saying and I was brave to broach the subject. Aside from all of this, there was a thought provoking question from one delegate on whether designers should remain naive so as to not restrict creativity.

With hindsight, my presentation was probably a bit too black and white and not sympathetic to the expected audience. There are bound to be some designers who are able to consider the majority of the issues. However, I haven’t come across any and if the people objecting are anything to go by, they are in the domain of extremely well funded large companies. The people I tend to work for don’t have the budget for a full time UX expert. I often get given designs over which I have had no input. One designer I spoke to suggested I choose my clients better.

During the networking session a delegate gave me a thought-provoking observation that it’s interesting that developers seek to engage with designers but this often isn’t reciprocated. Another delegate reflected that it’s the same in the architecture design/build industries. I wonder why this might be?

Last Monday evening I was at Mobile Monday London where the topic was Finance, Incubators & Accelerators. John Spindler, of Capital Enterprise started the event with a whirlwind overview of finance in the UK. There followed a panel discussion consisting of Alistair Hill, from Device Research, Nic Brisbourne from DFJ Esprit, Sitar Teli from Connect Ventures, Michel Sabatier from Crelligo and Inmaculada Martinez of Opus Corporate Finance. Here are some insights gained from the event…

• Seed and VC investment are only suitable for a small percentage of companies. These are actually the most expensive options. They are suitable for companies that have big ambitions (to become multi-million companies) within a relatively short time (3-5 years).
• Investable companies usually have a ‘Hipster’ (domain expert who designs), a ‘Hacker’ (who develops) and a ‘Hustler’ (who distributes).
• Crowdfunding and kickstarter-type sites are great for smoke testing an idea and getting pre-sales.
• Metrics are important to prove you know what you are talking about and that the idea can scale.
• The time when a 100,000 download app was investable is over. Today, you need to build a platform, not an app. You should be able to prove the platform has width (to take on new pivots) and depth (able to scale).
• VC is mainly a referral business. You need to network and/or gain entry via others already in the finance industry in order to get seen.
• Raising too much money can kill a business. This is also a previous observation of mine.
• London currently receives a relatively small amount of seed and VC investment. However, there was 50% more seed investment last year than the year before.
• Near future opportunities are seen to be money (people started purchasing for the first time substantially via mobile last year), health, M2M and connected devices (devices connected to consumer phones).

IDC have some new stats and forecasts on tablet shipments. IDC have actually increased their forecast for tablet sales due to greater than expected demand for particularly sub-8" tablets. Of particular note between 2011 and 2012, Android slightly eroded iOS market share and Windows tablets gained insignificant market share despite the introduction of Windows 8.

 

An observation I have is that most Android projects coming my way seem to be predominantly smartphone rather than tablet-based. Maybe innovators/entrepreneurs are missing the Android tablet app opportunity?

I’ll be speaking at Make IT Mobile this year. The date has just been announced as 29 May 2013 and the venue will be the Strand Palace Hotel in London.

It’s free event designed around the interests of enterprise CIOs, Heads of IT, analysts and architects. It’s a mix of presentations, 1-on-1 meetings, informal networking and 5-star hospitality. It covers topics such as BYOD, mobile device management and security. You can view my insights from last year’s event. As I am speaking this year, I’ll be contributing lower level practitioner-based insights on device identification, management and security from an app perspective.

The brochure (pdf) provides more details and explains how to register.