I hardly watch commercials on TV anymore, since we skip through a lot of them using our DVR. This has had the unexpected result that when we do watch a show live, more commercials actually seem entertaining to me, I suppose due to the lack of over-saturation from TV ads.

And of course half the fun of watching the Super Bowl stems from seeing what great new campaigns are being launched.

Increasingly, Superbowl ads, and TV advertising in general, will feature a mobile component: Nearly 60 percent of mobile users planned to look at or use their mobile device during the Super Bowl, according to a survey from Velti and Harris Interactive.

So, how will we engage in these “Second Screen Experiences”?

Get your QR code scanner ready

I’ve observed an increase in the use of QR codes in TV commercials. While QR codes are everywhere these days, I feel a 30 second commercial is often not enough time to whip out your smartphone and scan the code in time. But special offers, QR based coupons and exclusive timed deals may have some folks ready to “quick draw”.

• To me, QR codes are more suited to static / printed media.

Apps

I would predict that there will be a host of apps advertised or mentioned in Superbowl TV commercials, perhaps too many to open and interact with. From the NFL’s official superbowl app to Domino’s Pizza’s “Pizza Hero”, there will be many apps to interact with.

• Will there be time to watch the game anymore?

Mobile Ready Web Sites

Having mobile enabled web sites will be a big advantage for second screen advertising, as few people will be using laptops as their “Superbowl Second Screen” of choice. It is far more likely that smartphones prevail in this category.

• For brands advertising during the Super Bowl, a mobile ready web site, with flexible content layout optimized to smartphones will be a huge plus.

Messaging and Social Media

I feel text messaging and pusgh notifications will be used sparingly by brands, as the annoyance factor could be quite big. However I see push notifications as being central in the use of Social Media apps, and I think much of the interactive “Did you just see that!!!” conversions will happen on Facebook, Twitter, SMS and the like.

• I hope SIRI can cope.

In 2011, Nielsen found that Super Bowl ads including social media tags that directed viewers to a link on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube were more 33 percent more memorable for viewers. “Advertisers are seeing second-screen opportunities as a natural move to drive engagement in the moment of big-screen advertising – especially when it comes at such a premium as the Super Bowl,” said David Hewitt, Atlanta-based global mobile practice lead at SapientNitro. “Adding an interactive component on smart phone or tablet both extends the time spent, gives consumers an opportunity to participate, and leverages a more cost-effective and measurable channel to continue the brand conversation.”

Read the Full article at mobilemarketer.com

The possibilities are unlimited! For an overview, watch this:

True, it can be a faster and cheaper way to get into the app store and/or onto your customer’s Newstand shelf (we talked about this in Put Yourself on the Shelf), but there’s a possible cost associated with such an approach.  Of course it depends on your objective for being in the app store, but if high visibility and sustainability are important to you,  then quality matters.

As Adage.com reports “Magazine and newspaper apps’ quality seems to be the most important factor in their success with consumers, according to the first annual “The State of the App” report from McPheters & Company’s iMonitor service, drawing on iMonitor’s evaluations of 3,000 apps from publishers around the world.

Findings from our Polymash survey of mobile usage among professionals validate the same response:  quality comes out on top of what users value most in apps.

Moreover, iPad owners are a pretty sophisticated and tech saavy bunch which translates into high expectations when it comes to the apps they choose to download.  These customers naturally expect to see a certain level of design elegance rub off when you move your content to an iPad.  If they don’t, they are likely to be disappointed and may never come back.

Apple Store Approval does not Necessarily = A Quality App

It is surprising, given Apple’s standards, that apps amounting to little more than conversions or a wrapper with a bunch of files that looks no more sophisticated than the contents of a file folder manage to slip through the app review process.

So just because you made it through Apple’s gatekeepers doesn’t mean your app will satisfy the expectations of tablet or smart phone users.

Quality Content Deserves Quality Design

Besides, if you have high quality content why not present it in a high quality way?

There was a time when great words on a page were enough to reach people.  Yet in today’s fast paced world with short attention spans words alone may not be enough to get your message across and keep people coming back for more.

The iOS devices showed us communication and design are inextricably linked.

How are you leveraging the best of the communication tools and technologies available today to communicate in a way that maximizes the impact of your ideas and your words?

For a free consultation on how you can transform you rcontent into an exceptional experience on mobile devices and take your place in the app marketplace contact us.

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In this post I hope to outline some of the challenges as well as offer some resources based on independent developer surveys and industry standard guides.

As part of our agile app delivery model we often recommend starting with a mobile requirements definition and design engagement, which has the added benefit of ensuring that the app development effort fits into the overall strategy of the brand, and considers User Experience and persona development dimensions. In the next section we will list industry examples and the full Polymash Agile App Delivery Model

The full Polymash Agile Delivery Model is available here:

Industry examples

I recently came across an excellent article Pad Gadget published on the topic, and it does an great job of breaking down the dimensions that contribute to tablet (and smartphone) development costs:

The Cost of Building an iPad App | PadGadget

Regardless of who actually develops the app, let’s look at what it takes to build it. An iPhone or iPad app typically takes anywhere between 2 weeks to several months to build, depending on the complexity. Building an app is not just about coding, as it requires:

Design:
Unless you have the proper skills to do the design yourself, design will cost you money, especially for more advanced apps. Expect weeks of work to build all the app screens, and this job cannot be off-shored. At $50 to $150 an hour, U.S. based designers will likely bill you anywhere between a couple thousands of dollars for a basic app, to several dozens of thousands of dollars if you’re building a higher-end app that requires many screens to be designed.

Coding:
Similarly, writing the app’s code will usually take several weeks to several months of work. This work can be off-shored, and several outlets in Europe and Asia do this job for a living. If you decide to off-shore, you will likely save some money, however, keep in mind that off-shoring requires a lot of coordination, as you will have to manage teams that may not speak the same language, work different hours, and have hundreds of customers like you to deal with. A U.S. based team will likely cost you more, but these teams are local and are usually a lot easier to deal with.

Testing:
Nobody wants bad reviews in the App Store. In other words, you will need to spend days playing with your app, trying to identify bugs and find out what could go wrong. Again, depending on the complexity of the app, this job could take one person a couple days, or five people two weeks. Expect a lot of “back and forth” between the testing and development teams, in order to get rid of all bugs identified within the app.

Infrastructure:
Unless your app does not require any interaction with external servers, keep in mind that server development and infrastructure is critical for the app to succeed, as a slow server response and/or overloaded server will likely lead to bad reviews and poor sales, even if the app is great. Don’t be shy and expect to invest a lot of money on the server side of the equation, especially if you expect your app to be wildly successful. Good infrastructures do not come cheap, and keep in mind that recurring monthly fees will have a direct impact on your revenue.

Validation:
When you are ready to launch, the last gate is the validation. Passing the validation could take anywhere from a couple of days to several weeks, depending on the app and depending on the number of Apple guidelines your app may be infringing.
Project Management: The more third parties involved, the bigger your headache!

 

For a nice but simple app, the design work will likely take a designer about a week, which will cost you about $6,000. The server side will likely require a developer about 2 weeks of work, or about $12,000. Similarly, the app could be written in about 2 weeks as well, another $12,000. Add $5,000 for project management, hosting fees for a year, debugging, unforeseen delays, and your total budget is around $35,000.

 

For a nice high end app, like a high-end game, numbers are usually much higher. Design will likely cost you $30,000 alone. Development will be in the $150,000+ range. Hosting fees and extras will cost another $30,000. At the end of the day, your app will likely cost you at least $200,000.

 

read the complete article here…

In another article written at Appmuse, Mark Stetler compiled and shared some interesting statistics on average app development costs. Below a small excerpt:

Appmuse Article – How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Mobile App?

Alex Ahlund, former CEO of AppVee and AndroidApps, and later an advisor to Appolicious, wrote a guest blog article about app sales on TechCrunch.  According to that article, a survey of 96 mobile app developers showed the average cost to develop an app was $6,453.  An article on OS X Daily about iPhone Development Costs reported that the development cost range for “small apps” is $3,000 to $8,000 and that “more complex or recognized brand apps” can cost $50,000 to $150,000.

A Seismic Shift

Of course there are too many dimensions to this questions, but I’d like to go into one facet briefly: The tablet based delivery channel matters because it represents not only a new technology meme, but seismic shift from current computing experiences and practices. It is the harbinger of more liberating ways of interaction with computers, information and entertainment. Pediction: These trends will continue to fully take shape in the next 10 years, but the tablet experience is the first instance of this future right here and now, and people want a part of it, with a completely new interactive and gesture enabled way of computing, completely new usage scenarios and use cases, completely new interfaces. In short: It is all about a new user experience that is self-directed, intuitive, integrates with your life.

The “mobile aspect” is important for things other than just mobility. Mobile is important because it creates and leads to the user experiences of the future.

Why have  mobile smartphone apps been so important in shaping user experience of modern tablet apps, and the web?

Mobile (smartphone) apps have been a precursor, important insofar as that they introduced new design thinking: they have forced us to re-design interfaces and human computer interaction from the very beginning. Over the last 20 years computing had become increasingly complex, requiring high skill levels, geekery and knowledge. Mobile has reversed this trend, sent designers back to the drawing board to simplify, to create intuitive experiences, and opened up computing to the less educated masses, to broader use cases. It has tackled complex tasks (payments, ordering, inventory management etc) in such a simple way that these once complex transactions can be easily completed on mobile phone.

And the iPad and tablet apps now represents a slight design expansion from the smartphone design contraction: A new form factor to apply the knowledge and best practices gained with mobile phone apps, and with it’s larger screen real estate now can create experiences that are still intuitive, easily understood, but also more attractive, more akin to reading a sheet of paper, a more natural human size for interacting with information, for gestures with more than just a thumb, less contrived than some of the overly spartan experiences of smartphones.

And looking at the statistics, the tablet has introduced an ecosystem of apps that are about more than just games and utilities, and have real educational, business and brand experience value in addition to being entertaining.

Deal with Disruptive Change *** Discover your Strengths *** Dream & Design your Best Future

This app supports you in embracing change – personally and professionally – in your relationships at home and at work. Just about every change has high points and low points. This app helps you deal with change and disruptive forces, whether you chose them or not.

You follow a world-acclaimed method and practice, (Appreciative Inquiry and the 4-D cycle: Discover, Dream, Design, Destiny), that allows you to discover your own strengths in dealing with change; you go on to envision how to apply your strengths, organize yourself and identify resources to embrace future changes. This app works for individuals and teams. The approach taps into your imagination and is sustainable.

To find out more visit iTunes or the app’s page.

Where are the Tablets?
I was hugely excited about various tablet concepts to the point of swooning every time the rumor mill turned, and having been an early adapter of Boxee and streaming net content to your large home theater TV flat screen, I bought into some of the concepts of a flat Apple or Crunchpad tablet becoming the new  couch surfing, home media center, ueber iPhone, controller, e-reader, kindle killer gadget to own.

I’m still excited by the prospect, but Michael Arrington‘s “Crunch Pad”, originally outsourced to Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan’s India company called “Fusion Garage“, evaporated at the 11th pre-launch hour, and is now relabeled  “JooJoo” as part of a completely disastrous falling out between Michael and Chandrasekar. It will likely be rendered irrelevant by years of litigation that is sure to follow the acrimonious, rapid and reality TV worthy meltdown of the US vs. India partners involved in this promising project. Rising from the ashes is not the only thing that has gone up, so has the price. (video on engadget for a high level review)

Jolie O’Dell writes in her original ReadWriteWeb post entitled “Top 10 Failures of 2009“:

All we wanted was a $200-500 flat piece of glass and plastic with some fancy gizmodgery inside so we could look at the Internet from the comfort of our couches. And what did we get? Rumors, Photoshopped gadget porn, promises – lies, all lies. We’d have been better off if we’d spent those months drawing the Yahoo! home page on an Etch-A-Sketch.

And while fresh Apple tablet rumors resurface every 3 months, all these rumors have done is to move dates from the originally expected mid 2009 time-frame into late 2010, which to me places Apple into a reactionary rather than visionary category, and by which time larger home media market shifts will dilute any innovation, novelty or wow factor.

Wipe-Out: Google Wave

I very much connected with that the web has come a long way since email, which now is 40 years old. The concept with Google Wave was to introduce a new metaphor for communication, incorporating all the collaboration successes and phenomenons of the last couple of decades. The merging of email with forums, wikis, micro blogging, real-time content generation just made so much sense.

Image via Wikipedia

The reality hits home hard, there are few use cases, waves are difficult to manage, and the marriage of asynchronous versus synchronous communication methods in the same tool, and within the same UI, just simply does not work. Is it because the UI is not usable, or is it because there is a lack of use cases? My own hypothesis is that at the center of usability there has to be usefulness, and this is where wave falls short.

Related articles by Zemanta

• First impressions of the JooJoo tablet (seattlepi.com)
• Fusion Garage JooJoo Tablet Hands-On [Joojoo] (gizmodo.com)
• Hands On With the JooJoo, Formerly Known as CrunchPad (wired.com)
• Joo Joo tablet maker says Michael Arrington had ‘flair for the dramatic’ (telegraph.co.uk)

However, I think this is a mis-direction, as I would point out that there is already currently a Windows Mobile version of Slingplayer that is fully functioning over ATT’s 3G as well as over Edge networks.

Rather I think ATT is using it’s iPhone monopoly to position it’s own video service that will be launched later this year.

I think the critical difference here is that ATT’s monopoly as service provider for the iPhone is strongly trending into consumer unfriendly lack of options, applications, innovation and flexibility.

We may see a WiFi only version of the Slingplayer (like Skype), but how does that compare to the fully enabled version for Windows Mobile?

According to PC Reports:

Meanwhile, another possible reason for SlingPlayer‘s ban from the App Store could be AT&T’s speculated plans for its own mobile video services. The wireless carrier silently changed its terms of service at the end of March, basically prohibiting services like Sling is offering from its network.

But if AT&T won’t get to keep its exclusivity with the iPhone, maybe this kind of won’t happen anymore. That would allow users a bit more freedom with which apps they can get on their phone and how they actually use their (already capped)

mobile Internet.

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• SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry Exits Beta, iPhone Version Looms (appscout.com)
• T-Mobile Germany banning Skype for iPhone (macworld.com)
• SlingPlayer for iPhone submitted to app store (tuaw.com)

Most of the advancements are focused on the app developer community, and while I agree that these will enable this community to produce far better and innovative apps, one feature in particular I think will change the application landscape for the iPhone completely: the ability to have optional paid content and subscription models within an app.

iPhone 3.0 in-application payments

In general I am in favor of multiple business models for developers to monetize their apps, however I do see this eventually resulting in a completely changed application landscape compared to what we know today, where freemium vs. free will reign, and where I believe a majority of applications will have limited functionality and some sort of premium concept.

Now Apple promised that free applications will indeed remain free, “no new taxes, read my lips”… But I think the temptation for re-designing existing apps to build in monetization will prove too tempting for the app dev community, and will result in fewer free apps in general, and fewer choices for consumers eventually.

Additionally, the concept of getting prompted via a fairly intrusive pop-up boxes to purchase content, or sign up for a subscription, rankles me a bit. My iPhone experience is based on being used to pay for an app once, and then enjoy seamless service, and the user experience of reading something only to be then prompted for premium content mid-stream does not sit well with me. Signing a once a year subscription may be OK too, if I value the service, but I don’t know if I’ll like to “pay as you go” for content.

Let’s hope that the bevy of OS3 features announced will make it all worth it in the end, and that the resulting increase in innovative apps will be just so cool, we will all be happy to pay for them, one subscription at a time.

What do you think?

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• The iPhone OS 3.0 Announcement Scorecard (mobilecrunch.com)