Plastic Mobile’s Candy Shop Shares the Love at eTail

Plastic Mobile's Candy Shop Visits eTail!

Plastic Mobile and our infamous Candy Shop are sharing our sweet treats and mobile innovations at eTail this week. There to show attendees of the electronic retail conference how mobile is poised to change the face of the storefront, the Candy Shop team is handing out delish sweets and working on changing the way retailers connect wit their customers.

Melody Adhami is also there, chairing the conversation about the rapidly evolving retail space and what’s in store for the future of shopping.

Stay tuned for our follow up on highlights from the conference later this week.

Are you at eTail this week? Tweet us @plasticmobile and let us know what you’re finding interesting – and don’t forget to stop into the Candy Shop to say high and get some Blue Jellies and Berryliciousness!

We have always known that putting the user first is the cornerstone to any successful mobile solution. And we know that our clients have the utmost confidence in the quality work that we do. That being said, a little nod like being profiled as Forrester Research’s poster child for mobile UX/UI and design gives us that warm and fuzzy feeling all over.

But we won’t gloat too much – mostly because we are just really excited to see mobile UX getting its day in the sun. The international research giant put out their case study, “Pizza Pizza Cooks Up a Successful Mobile App” because they felt that “Firms new to mobile and even those that are planning second- or third-generation mobile offerings can learn from Pizza Pizza’s example.”

Plastic Mobile’s award-winning Pizza Pizza iPhone ordering app revolutionized the pizza ordering game by pairing down the ordering process to give the user what they want, faster and simpler. The app offers a complete and immersive m-commerce experience that allows customers to customize their pizza, repeat a previous order and save their favourite locations in just a few quick taps.

Reports such as this Forrester study really highlight the distinct gap in the market between mobile solutions that are approached with user TLC, and those that are built quickly and technically, without designing for the user.

Our president and COO, Melody Adhami, has been talking about these missed opportunities for a while and often says that as a result of approaching mobile from a technical perspective ”agencies are not putting enough focus on usability and design, and the end user is left unsatisfied – tech should help, not hinder, the user’s experience with mobile.”

The Forrester Research report details the challenges, best practice guidelines and some of the tremendous results of the mobile app. Read the entire report on our site, and learn more about the importance of designing for mobile UI and UX.

The Smashing Cartoons by Smashing Magazine

A couple of weeks ago, we covered the success story of the Instagram app, which allows users to snap photos, add various filters and share over a plethora of social networks – including one of its own.

As Instagram gained momentum, climbing the App Store ladder all the way to the top, I started to see the magnitude of its potential. I knew it would only be a matter of time before I saw similar apps for sharing video. What I didn’t expect, however, was the incredible speed at which this new style of app-only social network would fully catch on.

Enter Viddy, a multi-celeb backed, Instagram-style app for sharing video that climbed to #1 in the App Store’s Top Free list in no time flat.

Viddy! The new Instagram for video

How it Works

The entire process, as well as the interface is very similar to that of Instagram. Users can shoot a video (or import from their camera roll), add a filter and then share the video with their friends over a number of social networks. Also like Instagram, Viddy is its own social network. Users can follow friends’ videos as well as popular and trending ones from across the entire Viddy network.

Cool Features

Unlike Instagram, Viddy gives users the ability to adjust how heavily a filter is applied to a video. Also, users are not limited to the pre-loaded filters. They can download additional filters within the app for free.

Moreover, filters come with their own corresponding soundtracks and users are given the ability to adjust the balance between those soundtracks and the audio in their recordings (so cool!).

Super Cool.

15 Seconds of Fame

One downside to Viddy is that it limits the length of videos you can record to 15 seconds. Also, any imported video has to be trimmed using the in-app trimming tool.

Having to trim imported videos in Viddy reminds me of having to crop imported photos in Instagram. I can’t help but wonder if this is mainly done to minimize file size for quicker uploading, or to keep things more uniform and consistent?

Nobody likes to wait!

Users can watch their videos instantly before applying a filter, but have to wait for the filters to be applied. As users don’t like to wait, especially on a smartphone, wait times should be minimized. Failing to do so will negatively impact user experience.

SO, to make the wait a little less noticeable and annoying to its users, Viddy encodes the video in the background and allows users to navigate elsewhere by tapping the minimize button. Users can always keep track of the encoding progress, as it will be displayed in the iPhone’s status bar.

While being able to complete other tasks helped, I never truly forgot that I was still waiting for something.

Interface

Viddy’s interface is polished and aesthetically appealing, but can sometimes feel a bit cluttered – especially when compared to Instagram’s interface. Although very similar in layout, Instagram’s interface feels less cluttered and distracting.

We all know that a simple, uncluttered and intuitive interface is extremely important to providing an overall great user-experience, particularly for new users trying to explore and learn an app.

You Heard it From Plastic:

An Israeli based company has created an app called Mobli, which allows users to share a combination of photos and videos. Mobli is gaining popularity and is building a substantial user base at a rate of 10,000 new users daily. Look for Mobli to be one of the next up-and-comers in this space.

Mobile Shopping Spring Summit 2012

From our luxury press release on Tuesday in Toronto and New York City, to our presence and presentation at San Diego’s Mobile Shopping Spring Summit, this week has been a flurry of cross-continent activity for Plastic.

For the Mobile Shopping Spring Summit in San Diego this week, Plastic Mobile took our Candy Shop on the road to spread the word about retail’s new store front – mobile! For the second time since Dx3, the Candy Shop has been a success. Mobile Shopping Spring Summit attendees left the candy shop with an insightful message, and a serious sugar high. Attendee’s flew in from across the continent and a few of our fellow Canadians from Beyond the Rack, Montreal, and Central1CU, Vancouver, joined us in the not-so-sunny San Diego. Locals assured us their weather is normally more balmy, but at least bad weather is always a good ice breaker!

Also at the Summit, our president, Melody Adhami, spoke in an impact-full presentation on making mobile UX count. Read the article in Mobile Marketer.

Plastic Mobile and Luxury Institute: How the Wealthy are Using Mobile to Shop Luxury Brands from Plastic Mobile on Vimeo.

Award-winning mobile marketing agency, Plastic Mobile, recently partnered with the independent, New York City based Luxury Institute in a study to learn more about how wealthy consumers are using their mobile devices and luxury brand applications.

Watch our video of the findings and learn how mobile is set to change the luxury brand retail landscape by working to enhance the in-store experience.

Amazing Acrobats Playing PLastic Mobile's Twist 'em!

Yesterday at the Spring IAB Mixx conference, our Plastic Mobile take on an old board game favourite was revealed at IAB’s MIXX conference and turned out to be a huge success among attendees.

“Twist ’em” allowed two players to compete to knock down the opposition’s bendy acrobat – yes, there were real acrobats on the unique Twist ‘em board. The two players combat using an iPad application to light up the positions and colours on the Twist ‘em board, causing the contortionists to try to twist away without falling over.

The iPad apps allowed the users to choose one of four colours and one of the left or right hand or a left or right foot (very similar, if not exactly the same, to Hasbro’s Twister). The mobile twist came of course from the mobile app controller on the iPads, as well as from the Twist’em board, which was 16 iPads that would light up to identify which square the acrobats should use. The person with the bendy acrobat left standing, won, and it was very challenging because those contortionists were REALLY flexible!

Needless to say, the Twist ’em game was a huge success for event attendees so we can’t wait to play it again!

One of our favourite tweets of the days was: “Wow, flavored oxygen at @TCTranscontinen and acrobats at@plasticmobile, bringing out the big guns! #MIXXCanada@iabcanada“

Stay tuned for our video of “Twist ’em: The making of…,” a documentary of sorts (not really) about what happens when a creative agency decides to take their event booth to a whole new level…

In my weekly blog post, I normally prefer to comment on some of the large scale challenges or successes affecting the mobile industry, but this was too special to pass up.

Our team  made some time earlier this week to mobilize our Ping Pong matches. It all began with one of our Android developers creating a tablet app that could actually keep a proper game score (there seemed to be a recurring discrepancy in the scoring of our afternoon table tennis matches). The idea was that an Android tablet would sit atop the Ping Pong table and the app would keep an accurate, un-biased score of the Ping Pong games while in action.

How it works is pretty awesome. The “Plastic Paddle,” as it has now been dubbed, is good for a single’s or double’s match, and scores in terms of three sets per match and follows the proper rules of Ping Pong prior to 2000, meaning every 5th point the server changes. You can pre-set the serve, or use the server randomizer by clicking in the middle. A voice not entirely unlike Siri (but, better) will tell you who’s serve it is based on the scoring system. She will also tell you who’s advantage it is or if it is a deuce. To compensate for the inevitability of human error (if you click a point on your side when you did not actually receive a point) you can minus out the score. Last, when you win, the voice will tell you that you are the winner, and then a prompt will appear to allow you to post your results to the server.

It proved such a huge success around the office that it’s currently being developed for web to include such things as player stats with loss and win ratios and real-time tracking so matches can be carried over and rivalries can be tracked.

While this is an amazing first step, I’m looking forward to an even more advanced Ping Pong tracking system – Got that, team?

A big congrats to our developers for their ingenuity and drive to maintain a civilized game playing environment, and stay tuned for the coming improvements!

Great job team!

That was the question posed to me by our UX expert on Tuesday when writing our PM UX blog post.

So I thought I’d weigh in with my take on the tool tip. Here goes…

Our foremost concern when creating a mobile solution at Plastic Mobile is the end user – the person who will actually be using our product for their entertainment, everyday lifestyle or as a tool. Ergo, it’s my thought that if you have to explain your app, website, etc., you have probably missed the mark in terms of user experience; if they don’t get it right away, you’ve basically #Failed.

That being said, I am not naive. I understand and appreciate that certain things require subtle cues to prompt or gently nudge the user to properly deploy certain functions or get them started. For instance, on any iPhone, the very first screen has a sliding bar along the bottom. It actually says “slide to unlock” in faint type which is illuminated by a pretty sparkle that lights the path of the sliding bar. This is what I consider a subtle cue. Just a helpful hint to get the user started that, while clearly explains to the user what to do, doesn’t interfere with their experience. We’ve used a few of these similar nudges with various apps, including our award-winning Pizza Pizza app to help the user along the ordering process.

What I’m mostly taking issue with, is the idea that a mobile initiative should come with a manual, or require a tutorial or full explanation in order to make it useful. For me, that says that you over-complicated the application and didn’t properly consider the fundamentals of UI and UX.

What do you think? Are tool tips good, or would you rather it just be clear from the get-go? Tweet us @plasticmobile and join the conversation.

Shopper Marketing Forum, March 2012

The Shopper Marketing Forum, held on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, was a huge success. Canada’s leading conference for the development, education and advancement of Shopper Marketing had a number of great presentations, interesting speakers and interactive workshops. One of which was basically a lunch and learn. These round table discussions with topics varying from mobile to were one of the show’s highlights. Our President and COO, and resident mobile guru, Melody Adhami, was of course manning the mobile table. Her round table discussion may have actually been the most popular, with all the seats full, and more than five other people pulling up extra chairs just to join in!

One of the most interesting aspects of this conference focused on the changing consumer behaviours, was seeing the distinct limbo the industry is currently in straddling. With a community of senior marketers known for their traditional practices, paired with a group of new marketers who hold a more technologically inclined approach, the world of Shopper Marketing is at a cross roads of transition. However, by including areas like mobile to forums like this, we’re confident that the current divide will get streamlined and that we’ll see a lot more digital shopper marketing in the near future.

Ultimately, the goal of the forum was to enhance the collaboration between manufacturers, retailers and agencies, and, based on attendee feedback and our own conversations, we’re so pleased that they achieved their goal.

All you have to do is take a look around you to see that mobile is fast becoming a ubiquitous part of our society. Mobile is everywhere, but especially retail locations.

Specifically, the proliferation of mobile in relation to retail has left marketers scrambling in a frenzy to re-evaluate their audience and understand how consumers are interacting with mobile – and how to take advantage of this new relationship.

In order to do this successfully, brands need to better comprehend how current trends are shaping the mobile environment, who this new audience is and how to best interact with them.

This is no easy task. As a brand, where do you start? For me, I think there is an expanding dichotomy between retailers and the mobile + social spaces, which marketers should be conscience of for 2012.

Let me explain.

Many 2011 reports, like comScore’s 2012 Mobile Future in Focus, identify various mobile users demographics. Still, retail marketers seem to glaze over the 20- to 30-something GenY-ers (or, as this Mashable article calls them, “Generation C,” the C standing for “connected.” A bit cliche, but probably accurate), who I tend to think are the ideal demographic for brands as they use both mobile and social media for commerce.

Sure, the stats say that moms are the decision makers and dads are the money makers, but the “young influencers” are a generation of digital-hungry consumers who covet cutting-edge tech and are spending on everything from the latest tablet to Vegas vacations and chic urban condos.

Perhaps this demographic is so often neglected because, as Shane Smith of Vice Media pointed out at the Young Influencers Conference in Toronto last week, most brands don’t really “get” that generation. And, as he suggested, there’s absolutely no point focusing on that demographic just because you think you should – they’ll see through that kind of fake like a bad boob job.

Regardless, to me it seems obvious to focus efforts on a group that’s poised to shop and who’s lives are hinged on mobile, as well as social media – an area that has seen significant growth on mobile, with its overall popularity in accessing social networking sites on mobile devices becoming nearly common place last year. Basically, it’s the same people who are using their mobile devices for social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. who will then flip to a new browser window or app to research or buy that great item they just read about in a tweet or post.

I foresee this super trifecta of young influencers + mobile + social making an impact for brands in 2012 as marketers recognize this spectacular opportunity to increase customer conversation and conversion by tapping into the young influencers through the device that houses their entire life.