Famine City

Meet the New Digital Native

In full disclosure, the child in the video is one my children. While he is my child, my hope is this post does not appear narcissistic. 

Meet Brady. 

Brady is 4 years old. 

Brady knows how to read. 

Brady knows how to do basic math. 

Brady knows how to use Facebook. He doesn't have a profile, but he likes to play Fishlife on Facebook.  

Brady plays games on the Wii.

Brady knows how to use the Tivo. He also knows how to skip your commercials using the Tivo. 

Brady knows how to watch his favorite cartoons via Netflix.  

Brady likes to watch movies on YouTube.  

Brady knows how to use Google.

Brady knows how to use an iPhone.

Brady is a digital native. 

As a reminder, Brady is four years old and he knows how to use a variety of digital technologies. He is the new testing standard if an application is designed well. If someone needs to explain how to use your application, tool or website, you might be in trouble. And Brady isn't alone. 

Our little digital natives are raising the bar on digital design, whether on hardware or on your website. I was discussing with a colleague at another company and we were exchanging thoughts about how our four year olds use technology--desktop computers, websites and mobile devices. We were discussing the question of usability, especially around the Apple devices. Has the usability of the devices become so good that our digital natives can figure it out without prompting? Or might it be they don't have any "ghost rules"? Meaning they don't have preconceived notions about the way things work. Therefore they aren't annoyed when things don't work the way they expect them to and hyper-learn around any usability issues. Welcome to our future consumers.

How can a four year old child use the applications and devices that still confound many adults? After much thought on the subject, I'm going to borrow the thinking and approach from Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, it's rapid cognition. Our little digital natives have been exposed, actively and passively, to so much digital behavior that the usability of technology, hardware or software, they are able to rapidly deduce the usability of our devices without thinking. They don't deliberate on how something works or why it should work in a certain way. They simply find the critical pieces of information and try something else, but without actively thinking of it. If it doesn't function one way, they apply the other hundreds of other ways to use/consume the information. They no longer actively "think" about the technology or usability. They simply act with critical pieces of information. Our digital natives may grow up to be the most transactional users we've ever seen.  

In the new world of applications and devices, they have to work like you'd expect them to work or so easy that a four year old could use it. Perhaps we need to stop testing with all of our target markets and bring in legions of pre-schoolers. Then ask them if they can find or locate a desired result on our applications or website. See what happens. While this is partially tongue in cheek, get ready for the new users of our applications and websites. Our little digital natives are going to be more transactional than ever. With so many digital tools at their disposal, they'll navigate around whatever experience you want them to take--obvious implications for marketers everywhere. You'll get two clicks on your website, if you're lucky. Be usable or be forgotten. 

Our digital behaviors are having major impacts on media consumption as a whole. Little digital natives no longer need to watch television, though they will. They can find their favorite shows on YouTube, Netflix. Sure we can still market to big audiences on the big tube, but gone soon enough will be the days of channel surfing. It will be channel searching. The most important screens won't be the ones in the living room either. It will be the ones in their hands. Transactional behaviors and omnipresent media will be the expectation not the exception for these little folks. 

Where to start? Easy. Make sure your apps and sites are so easy a four year old could use it. Ask the adults about brand impression or favorability. Ask the kids about the usability of it. They don't think. They use. Start there. 

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Comment: I expect some feedback about my kid's use of digital technology from a parenting perspective. We are probably more conservative than most about the information they consume, it's a constant conversation in our house. We are a digital household, my wife and I are both into technology for work and play. Our kids will be digital experts. I appreciate comments about the core point of this piece. However, if you are thinking of leaving a comment about parental education or proselytizing to us about how we're raising our children, please don't bother.  

follow me on twitter @marty_b

I don't know how interesting I find the core disagreement between Kevin Smith and SouthWest Airlines, but I will tell you it's one helluva a story to consider as social media meets customer service. It's like they kicked off the wrong fat man. I commend Southwest for trying to live their equity in the space. They've responded and contacted Kevin. However, at the core there's a lot of interpretation to the Too Fat Too Fly rule. It's pretty gray. That's not judgement on either side, but there's clearly not a winner in this situation. It's that gray matter that always gets in the way of real progress. It's also where most of life occurs.



It's never anything rather intellectual that gets our attention. It's something personal, deeply personal here. I'm fascinated to watch this little debacle transpire. I admire Kevin for dealing with a tough situation, personal insecurity in a public space, very difficult. On the flip side, Southwest is trying their best to live up to their social media style. Surely, it'll be an Adage article soon enough. However, I stick with my initial assessment, stupid rule with too much gray area to be effectively enforced. Sad.



Southwest's side: http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blog/my-conversation-with-kevin-smith-0



Kevin's side: http://silentbobspeaks.com/?p=393

Delta Electronic Boarding Pass = WIN

A couple weeks ago I had the good pleasure of visiting Vegas. As a technoid and a traveler, I was pretty excited to see there was an electronic boarding pass option for my flight when checking in on Delta's website. Finally, an easy way to get my boarding pass to my phone, one less piece of something that I need to think about during travel. Previous to this experience, about a month ago, I tried an to use an electronic boarding option for United with no success. So I was excited to see the option and used it successfully, but not without considerations. 

Correction: I received a tweet with the more accurate standard. If you're interested visit: http://2d-code.co.uk/iata-standard/

So what is an electronic boarding pass? It's a QR code, or more accurately 2d bar code that contains all of your flight and ticket information which allows TSA and the gate agent to scan the details of your ticket. For Delta, when you select an electronic boarding pass during check in on their website, they ask for your mobile number. You are then sent a link via SMS message which you can then browse to via your mobile device to retrieve your electronic boarding pass. This allows for any phone with SMS and mobile web browsing to use the electronic boarding pass functionality. The QR code appears as a JPG on your phone. You present it when needed at TSA/gate. Simple enough. 

While traveling out to Vegas, my comrades and I mostly used the electronic boarding passes. I was surprised to hear the gate agent say this was the most that he had seen on any single flight--personally I was waiting for sirens to go off, but all went off without a hitch on the way out. <<< Notice the use of foreshadowing here, eighth grade literature wasn't lost on me Ms. Jenkins :)

What would make this little bit of easy even better? Being able to sign in from their mobile website and send the electronic version of the boarding pass back to your phone. This way, you can completely bypass the whole desktop user experience. Well needless to say, it's available. Delta uses a portal technology, Usablenet.com, which basically creates a mobile site from your existing site. It allows you to check in, change your seat and send the boarding pass to your phone. I'm in love with taking one less thing with me and had zero problems with this. It's expected that by 2011 all airlines will be using this technology. If it's not available to you today, it will be in the near future. 

As a sidenote, if you are a frequent traveler consider adding http://www.usablenet.com to your boormarks or favorites. They have content for many hotels and transportion options via their mobile portal. Good to have handy. While I've talked to a few folks that are not as keen on the mobile site from Delta and other Usablenet.com supported sites, I'm to the minimalist side of things. Provide basic functionality, verify it works and then extend the functionality as mass use comes to fruition. 

Like many things, this electronic boarding pass system is far from perfect. We had one person that had the electronic boarding pass up on their phone before they arrived at the TSA agent. He switched browsers or something on his iPhone and when he got to the TSA agent, he could not show it to the agent. This was problematic. However, if your phone happened to run out of juice that could also be a problem as well. The worst case scenario in either case is that you'd have to go request a paper ticket. This did not cause any significant delays for him, but if you were tight on time or something like that I could imagine some stress. However, these odds are about the same as other travel woes in my guesstimation. 

I love this system of of airline boarding. It just makes sense and is a great use of technology. Though this has been available in Western Europe for a number of years, I'm very excited to see it take place in the airline industry. The airline industry is what I would consider a highly protected industry. If QR codes and 2D barcodes can get government adoption, I imagine that things like mobile coupons will have a much better opportunity to be adopted if standard is set in the airline industry. 

Adopting new technologies one day at a time. 

follow me on twitter @marty_b

Aww schnapp. Finally, you can order software for the Wii to watch/use Netflix through it. Solid.

To iPad or not to iPad

The much ballyhooed iPad will be arriving pretty soon and there is a ton to think about with this device. Apple clearly built on their successes and even took a few issues with them into the new product offering. Whether or not you buy this device, it’s a step forward for network computers and lightweight computing. Surprisingly enough, one of the winners with the iPad might be Google (again). The other winner might be higher education. The question is whether or not Apple is taking aim at its future business model, publishing? Finally, if you are a marketer, how you should approach the iPad.

If you said the iPad is an overgrown iPhone and you’d be pretty much on point. The iPad is taking advantage of all the successes that the iPod started creating almost ten years ago. Some of the successes include:

• Capitalizing on a scale user base
• Centralized app store through iTunes: This facilitates an easy way to purchase, install and remove applications on the device.
• Simplified control interface: Controls are highly similar across many applications, in location, modification and configuration. This simplifies usage of the device, which is especially important for the iPhone.
• Centralized developer services: While there may be people pro or con about Apple’s management of the developer resources on the App Store/iTunes, there are very few people that I hear complaining about crashes with core functionality of the phone, web and email when installing new applications. This means they probably have quality control down pretty well.
• GPS services: The device uses A-GPS, assisted GPS, for the ever growing location based service industry.
• Uses many of the same core applications on the device, from iTunes, Safari and email.
• It uses network computing or lightweight computing to its best ability, using and obtaining data for network services as needed instead of loading it onto the hard drive of the device.
• Good battery life.
• Backwards compatibility with your favorite iPhone applications

With that being said, there are some incumbent problems that are also being inherited from the iPhone as well:  

• The AT&T’s G-network coverage is not exactly stellar.
• Lack of Flash support.
• No camera on this device: Rumor has it this might change.
• No video streaming with the device: Streaming may be possible, but local storage probably not a great idea.
• No additional memory option.
• OLED screen: An OLED screen uses much less power and is easier on the eyes.
• Will not run multiple applications simultaneously.
• Lacks support for multiple users, not an issue on the iPhone, but certainly for the iPad. 

While the promise of HTML 5 (don't let it escape you that both Google and Apple contributed to tech specifications) makes the need for Flash non-existent, it’s a miss on the web today. This takes the multimedia capabilities of this device considerably less, think Hulu or Netflix. HTML 5 is still a promise and not ready to deliver to the consumers today. Therefore, not supporting Flash is a huge miss. However, like most things Apple I would expect some type of fix for this to be in the pipeline not long after the release. My suspicion is that when full video is released for places like Netflix and Hulu, it will be a WiFi only service. Today, the rumors have it that the network simply cannot handle the extra load it would create on the network. Again, Apple tends to have some type of “fix” for deficiencies that usually end up profiting their business.

One of the main successes pf the iPhone platform is the lightweight nature of the applications. The iPad will also capitalize on this success. The applications on the iDevices are a graceful mix of utility and marketing quite often. The iPhone personifies application marketing better than any other product/service, sans Google, providing users both service and utility. Look for this trend to continue on the iPad by providing lightweight and network dependent applications that utilize technology better well.

Another exploit for the iPad will be the realization of the network computing dream (at least it is closer). For the 70-80% of consumers that simply need email, word processing, web browsing, search and some multimedia usage, the iPad will handle these services gracefully. The reason why this will work on the iPad vs the netbook is simple: The netbook is so much like a laptop, our consumer expectations and behaviors are the same—we were disappointed when our netbook did not function like our desktop computer. The form and function the iPad provides will set that expectation correctly, providing lightweight network applications efficiently.

When you do think of network computing, perhaps the clear owner of this in the consumer arena is Google. They will also benefit from this device. At the core of the iPad it is a network computing device that relies on networks to be present to really have any level of functionality. They have a suite of applications like, Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, Latitude and Google Search that will be ready to deploy on the iPad the second it ships. Google has mastered the art of creating usable network apps. The iPad will simply add to Google’s scale.

Apple has learned from history. If you want to be indoctrinated with generations to come, you get them when they are learning consumer behaviors like in college. The iPad is going to be a mainstay in higher education institutions. My prediction is there will be adoption at colleges by the fall of 2010. The iPad is a boon for the classroom, especially at the college level where connected classrooms are growing. Better battery life allows the device to make it through an entire academic day. The iPad provides an easy way to interact with connected classrooms—answering polls, comments and such in real time. Remember, engagement doesn’t just happen on your website any more. It’s going to happen in the classroom as well. Students are growing to expect this as part of the classroom experience. Finally academic institutions can begin to control the costs of books which are ridiculously high. Publishers like this because they are finally going to be a hero. They can actually lower the cost of a textbook and keep more of the proceeds from their sales. It’s a win-win for Apple, textbook publishers and higher education. Remember: Students want Apple products. There is an implied equity and purchase path/history. Education was always an equity mainstay for Apple and they are returning to this heritage.

The real question is will Apple change their core business model. The publishing model in terms of applications, music and textbooks might prove to be an easier, more sustainable business than their desktop computing division over time. They simply provide the purchasing mechanism, scale audience and serve as a quality gatekeeper for their platform, making money off the transactions between publisher and consumer. For Apple to continue this model, they’ll need to keep delivering on the elegance of the Apple experience, new innovations every 2-3 years. They have a unique ability to create products people want. I think this is a unique advantage over other ebook platforms. The Apple experience isn’t just in the utility of the product. It starts with the packaging. It’s a bit of a luxury product that delivers at every step of a transaction, three equal parts of elegance, utility and want. Therefore I believe that the iPad will be successful. Apple has transformed the music industry. If they succeed in college publishing, expect magazines and newspapers to quickly follow. In fact, Apple just might save newspapers for a few more years, finally providing them a viable subscription model. Then it’s on to the biggie. Television. If Apple truly enters the television market, looking like a Netflix partnership in my mind, watch out cable companies.

As a marketer and wondering what the iPad means for you? It's easy. Focus on what you do well. Then extend your brand onto the platform. Think of products and services like Spark People, Mint or Pandora. They simply extend their desktop functionality onto your mobile device. It’s a wonderful convergence and a natural extension of their brand today. Like the iPhone, the iPad will continue to dissolve the lines between the mobile web and web. The brands that succeed in this space will be those that actually provide a service or utility on the device. Don’t try to do everything well. Find natural information or service you brand can own on the device and start there.

Follow me on twitter @marty_b