In my mind, this is a pretty big mistake on AT&T’s part, in terms of the experience they provide for the iPhad. As Chris Andersen likes to say, there’s a big difference between $0.00 and $0.01, or in this case, 2 GB and unlimited. Even though AT&T claims that 65% of their users would be content with the 250 MB plan, and a further 98% with the 2 GB plan, there’s still a big difference. One of the contributing factors is that the average person has no idea what 250 MB or 2 GB looks like*. Nor do they know how much data each of their individual actions takes up – how much data is a Foursquare checkin? A tweet? An email download? This, by the way, is the same problem that people have with counting calories. Many will just try to cut back, and be mindful of their data usage – calling the theater instead of checking Fandango, etc. And the experience of the iPhad is ruined (my bet is that Jobs is pissed. All you that have been waiting for a Verizon iPhone, well, I’d start paying attention now).

It might seem that this is the only option for AT&T, as this little chart shows, data usage is going up. Way up. But that’s not necessarily true.

Let’s start by doing a quick and very, VERY oversimplified rundown of how AT&T’s (and others) cell service works. These telecoms have backbone networks underneath all the areas of the U.S. that they service. These are the same cables that deliver internet service to your house. As I understand it, these cables are chugging along fine, and aren’t really in that much danger of being overwhelmed. The problem lies in the cell phone towers themselves – cell phone towers connect to a limited number of cell phones or wireless devices in its covered area, transferring and connecting data to them. The cell towers are connected to the network infrastructure in the ground. So, the issue is when too much data centers around one tower – that’s what makes the network run slow and shitty. That’s why I can’t post tweets during a Sharks game at HP Pavilion, yet have no problem with posting about my favorite chocolate at Woodside’s fairly underpopulated Robert’s grocery store.

It’s true. Limiting data plans will decrease the overall load on the network, which will include these overloaded cell towers. But why not try by addressing the problem directly – those overloaded cell towers? How might AT&T recreate the experience on overloaded cell towers so as to provide better service to all its consumers? I don’t have the winning answer to this, but I think you could get creative about it. Here’s one solution I might try.

While the status updates are already a little much – at the top of my screen, I get my network information (signal strength, 3G or EDGE network), the time, and my battery life. But it might be worthwhile to put in a fourth – the amount of bandwidth I have in this connection. This could actually be limited (for example, if 5 users are connected to a cell tower, each gets 20% of the bandwidth, or more likely, a more complicated model), or just a “suggestion” (there are 50 other people on this tower, so that means you ought to aim for a lower data consumption).

Tragedy of the commons aside, we really do know how to share resources if you put us in the right position. I’d even argue that we know how to share bandwidth (I think of slow connection days with my brother yelling at my sister to stop streaming Hulu so he can play video games). But we get the concept of “our fair share,” and we don’t hold people in contempt if they relegate us to our fair share. Having information about how much bandwidth is available due to the number of other people on the network can start to dip into strong social instincts. Researchers have found that sharing how much energy neighbors use will decrease heavy energy-users use. So, even if you don’t actually limit the amount of bandwidth so everyone is getting a “fair” amount, people will naturally begin self-regulating and this, in turn, will naturally help AT&T’s issues with network usage.

Further, even just having feedback and predictability about the service quality we’re getting will reduce anger about it – partly because the user can now take steps to do something about it (they have more control). Having more control over a situation almost always reduces stress about that situation. When I can’t place a call in an area with 2-bars, I gently curse AT&T, move to an area with better signal, get over it and make my call. If I can’t make a call with 5 bars, I curse AT&T and don’t know what to do about it. By limiting the amount of data I have available to me on a crowded cell tower, I might realize that Union Square is not the place to be streaming Netflix, and I might opt for a lower-bandwidth activity instead**. In addition, this change would encourage iPhad users to connect to wireless networks instead of cellular networks naturally – there’s nothing more rewarding than a big fat 100% or full 5 bars – further helping AT&T’s network load.

When the cell phone was invented, it was invented purely for the purpose of making voice calls. Or, if I was feeling really adventurous, I might send an SMS, but that still traveled over the voice network. If I wanted to make a call, the quality of said call was purely a matter of how well connected I was to the nearest cellular tower. Nowadays, we’re connected to two different, completely separate modes of data transfer – that same voice network, and the newer data networks. But instead of building a mental model that these two modes are different (as they have by providing a separate signal for wi-fi connectivity), cellphone hardware’s reliance on those little signal bars communicates to consumers that they’re one and the same. It makes sense to delineate these different networks, because they are different. One of the basic tenants of interaction design is to provide feedback. Currently, no provider is doing that for these data networks. So, it just makes sense that we do. The fact that this feedback might change our behavior is just a plus. Sure, we might have to rethink this when we start on 4G networks, but for now, that’s a ways into the future for the AT&T locked-in iPhad users.

* Sure, the users most likely to know what this looks like are those data hogs that AT&T is going after. But really, soon we’re all going to be datahogs (video on iPhone 4, anybody?), and even while we’re not, it still ruins the experience for the rest of us.

** When you think about these examples, you realize these types of behaviors might even increase the sales of AT&T Microcells and similar products – if I understand that bandwidth is a shared resource, and I can pay a one-time $150 fee to have my own personal stock, this might make more sense to me than paying $150 to access a network I’m already paying for.

The post A Creative Solution to AT&T’s Data Plan Problem appeared first on The Faster Times.

- Mark Zuckerberg (via)

I believe Facebook would make more money if they allowed more privacy in their system. To me, regardless of whether Facebook’s privacy policy is “good” or not, I think from Facebook’s perspective, they’ve missed a huge opportunity to re-imagine privacy – to their benefit. There was a chance for Facebook to take their customer’s expectations for privacy and turn that into a real opportunity for themselves. To me, the difference between Facebook and Google, both data mining companies, is this: Google creates products built for me and my needs and uses data to pay for it, versus Facebook, who is currently building a product to get my data. I believe Facebook could be in a position to balance both, and do it well. So, let’s take a minute to consider a little informal history of Facebook.

Three or four years ago, Facebook was actually a very private place. In the midst of the internet, a place that at that time was open and flat, Facebook came up. Instead of having any given comment, quip or photo broadcasted to the millions on the internet, these morsels were broadcasted to friends and peers. When you thought about what that experience was like for the users, they believed Facebook was a trusted source for managing their identity and communications with friends. I say trusted, because they knew who they were talking to, they weren’t worried about information escaping this closed system – on a scale that was revolutionary for the internet, Snapfish aside. They had their own space, space where they could collect messages from their friends, and display their photos – they had control over your profile. At this point, users were complaining they didn’t have the customization that Myspace allowed. The other users of this system were students, generally at their own school, and this affected how students created their profile – think, classic Facebook party photos (things you actually probably wouldn’t want to share outside of your friends), versus the resume they might put up on Linkedin. Even when high school students were brought onto Facebook, the dynamic was very similar. Also remember, at this stage, how recruiters began spying on student’s Facebook profiles before hiring them. There was a general outrage over this because it broke the social standards and conception people had about Facebook use.

Then Facebook got big. When Facebook opened its doors to the world, all of a sudden, it was no longer a place for students. Suddenly, people were not just talking to their peers, they were talking to their family and work colleagues and god knows who else. They had to figure out how to display an identity that can fit for all these different components of their life. The separation between work and play had suddenly been yanked down. Think of the Facebook conundrum of, “Should I friend my boss on Facebook?” Even new users weren’t sure about how to manage this new paradigm, since they’d been privy to a story about Facebook use that centered around their friends and social circle. At the same time, changes in people’s Facebook profiles meant that these were no longer their spaces, but rather a center for information about their actions, statements, and what was said about them. As people lost control over this space, and more action moved to the News Feed, the sense ownership over this space fell quickly.

Now, of course, we have the outcry around Facebook privacy – websites like Openbook driving that, and commentators from the NYT to various personalities crying foul. Facebook didn’t think clearly about the thing that attracted people to their product in the first place, and so not only did they undermine the reason to use their product for many people, but they also destroyed the advantage their brand held in the realm of privacy. I believe that Facebook is trying to create opportunities to make data more “sellable” or “mineable,” and also encourage new areas of conversation on Facebook – instead of discussing who dumped who, but the latest movie or new album release. It’s not a mistake that the second class of items is vastly more sellable than the first. But in their rush to do this, they’ve gone after models they see that work – Twitter being a big and not so subtle influence on Facebook – instead of trying to re-imagine what they could do given their product and the relationship people had with it. And when they do this, they’re implicitly comparing Facebook to Twitter, as if the two services were offering the same thing to customers. But they’re not the same.

It’s clear people are happy to talk to people they don’t know online – they even want to do so. But many people want to have relationships and conversations online that are different, and often protected from their real life identities. Chatroulette, the current iconic leader for talking to strangers online, offers a certain level of privacy – the lack of even a username to track a person down leads to anonymity. And the Internet, from Fake Steve Jobs to Poblano, is littered with mythology of anonymity. Indeed, one of the advantages of anonymity is the flattening effect it has – the Korean nobody who became a leading economic commentator, the 14 year old leading a guild, and the women finding second careers on Etsy who overcome their real world situation to craft new identities online. Not only that, but this diversity is part of what makes the conversation so fantastic. But for this type of exploration, conversation and behavior to take place on Facebook’s turf, there has to be trust in Facebook, trust that multiple identities can be managed from one account, that things won’t go spilling out from one identity to another. This is a huge challenge in terms of experience, interface, and structure, but it’s something I believe Facebook could have tackled head on. It is hard because there is no current model for what this could look like, but that’s also what makes it such a large opportunity.

Moving forward, regardless of whether Facebook’s privacy policy is “right” or “wrong,” or “good” or “bad,” Facebook needs to think about the business case for leaving the policy as is or changing it. Facebook had, at one point, a strong sense of privacy throughout their network. Facebook seems the ideal tool to managing your network of friends, family, peers, colleagues and acquaintances. The thing is, if Facebook leaves more control over what is shown to who, people will use it to share more. And it doesn’t matter whether a person is starkly segmenting their different identities, or if they’re an open book. Facebook can connect that data under one account, and paint a very sellable, mineable picture of it’s users. After all, you can’t read what’s in my email account, but Google definitely “knows” that my Flickr pro account is about to expire, that I run a blog about design, and even about my not-so-secret obsession with Alexander Wang (all very sellable information).

You can check out the original post at my blog.

Photo by Andrew Feinberg

The post How Facebook Could Make More Money By Protecting Our Privacy appeared first on The Faster Times.

I’m going to assume that there are three types of risk:

The first type of risk is the “out of left field” risks. These are the risks that you didn’t know about, and couldn’t possibly predict – some might refer to these in other circumstances as “black swans.” For example, the risk that a volcano in Iceland explodes and grounds all air traffic to and from Europe for a week. These are indeed dangerous, but there is not much to be done besides doing a healthy amount of research so we make sure these risks are really coming out of left field and not something we should have known about. Indeed, doing more would probably be a waste of your time.

The second type of risk is the type of risk that people are most familiar with, and good at, assessing. These are the “know all about it” risks. We find these through our research, and we can get pretty good at knowing how much of a risk they really are through research. Most importantly, though, is the fact that we can prepare for these risks, and do things to minimize them. No one teaches risk assessment without also teaching risk management and minimization. We know what they are, so we’re prepared to do battle.

It’s the last type of risk that really gets us. It’s the “didn’t assume it would be an issue” risks. What exactly does that mean? Exactly what it implies – we actually knew about the risk, we just didn’t assume it would be an issue. It was a self inflicted blindspot, something we’re not monitoring as we would a risk we knew about. And why would we do that? Quite simply, we make an assumption. We don’t often take the time to test our assumptions. But these are crucial to our success – if we’re assuming something, we’re generally not concerning ourselves much with that assumption. We understand this intuitively, we tend to pity those who have been damned by this tendency – the music industry, publishing industry and soon the tv industry.

But think about your own projects you might be working on… Are you making a news reader and assuming people still subscribe to RSS feeds? Are you starting a bookstore and assuming people still buy books at bookstores? Are you building an iPhone app for TV and assuming people want to watch TV all by themselves?

What fascinates me is the opportunity for some of designer’s softer skills to help here. So much of the design process is just about testing assumptions. Design research, that initial stage, is said to be most successful when you “look at the world through a child’s eyes,” questioning everything. This allows you to make assumptions based on what you see actually going on in the world, as opposed to preconceived notions of your predictions. Then, one refines the assumption’s language and credibility through continued research. But everyone’s favorite way to test assumptions is prototyping, building something to test that assumption.

Here’s my generalized advice: I’d begin by making a list of key assumptions you’re making – a lot of these happen to be the main features of your project, and your justification for why you’ll succeed. Then, plan out how you’re going to make sure you’re right – questions, research, and prototypes (even if it seems obvious, spending a minute to double check even in just a vague manner isn’t a bad idea). Then go out and try to kill your blind spots.

Crossposted at Young & Brilliant.

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“The power of influence is ever present in this discussion, which is what social media tools add to viral marketing. The crowd mentality is heavier within a social-media community, which makes it easier for viral marketing to do its job. Honestly, it seems like marketing through social media is the new form of viral marketing. That’s the wave of the future in marketing, a new and improved marketing platform.” – Organized Chaos: Viral Marketing, Meet Social Media by Curtis Silver The power of social media for viral marketing seems to be the “it-statement” these days. We trumpet the power of the hot combination of social media and viral marketing, trumpet something about creating content that doesn’t suck, and then go about tweaking and refining our metrics and viral loops.

Woo-freaking-hoo. Thank you captain obvious.

In our rush to start virally marketing our wares and messages, I think we’ve overrun one crucial step. We’ve started to refine our implementation without solidifying the theory. For all we know, we might be like the astronomers, refining and refining equations describing the planet’s movements around the earth and then, wait, oh shit, nevermind, the earth’s not the center of the universe afterall. So, if we were going to take a step back and look at the theory, where would we start?

I think it all starts with augmented intelligence. Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of the mouse, was preoccupied with this idea. While computers and Google have opened up an entire new world for us, social media has also grown into this tool of augmented intelligence – augmented social intelligence. Social media has allowed us to develop a new view of our social landscape – instead of being on the ground floor, we’ve gone to the top of the building. Newsfeeds, Tumblr dashboards, Twitter lists and other streaming tools help us get a general view of the conversations going on around us. And, individuals can regularly and easily communicate ideas to tons of friends at once. Our messages and thoughts can be broadcasted more aggressively (this is precisely what makes social media so enticing to marketers). And now that we’ve had this fundamental shift in social circumstances, we need to ask what the basic impact shift is having on us: How has this augmented social intelligence changed and inflicted our behavior pattern?

As we become more intertwined with our tools, it’s impossible to separate our social interactions from these social tools, which means that these tools are increasingly important for viral marketers to understand.

When I play the role of design researcher, these are the types of questions I ask myself. To do this, I usually choose to narrow down this broader question into more focused questions that can help me construct an answer. Here’s my jumping off point:

What are the social media networks, tools, and apps that we use? How do we use them? Why do we use social media? What advantages do we perceive? How does this new type of interaction make us feel? How do we choose to portray ourselves in social media? How do we use social media to augment our interactions in real life? How do we use social media to create a shared cultural narrative? Has our “standard” for messages we distribute changed? If so, how, and why? How much importance do we assign our friend’s “messages”? What are the ramifications of the new tidal wave of relevant information available to us?

Cross posted here at youngandbrilliant

Photo by luc legay

The post Social Media and Viral Marketing: What Do We Really Know? appeared first on The Faster Times.

Not windows in the sense of Windows, Microsoft, etc. but windows, as in overlapping, tiling, click and drag, close and resize, etc. More than anything, that’s what I wanted to see on the iPad. After the ‘ghee whizz!’ of being able to surf the web on my iPhone, I found that I barely ever used it for surfing the web. Ok, so I was refreshing Engadget like all the other Mac fanboys earlier today, and I look up movie reviews or restaurant numbers, but other than that, I don’t really use it as a content browsing machine. The biggest issue is that so much of the content I find worthwhile ends up here, on this blog, or bookmarked and saved for later, or at least saved to my list of “Things I’ve Read.”

I was about to resign to the old, “This isn’t aimed at me,” “I’m a power user,” justification, but then I stopped and thought about it for a minute. Is that really true?

The classical desktop metaphor spawned the idea of “paper” lying on a desktop – the original idea was that these windows could be shuffled, and like the edge of a piece of paper peeking out from under a pile, we could pull those “papers” to the front. This is an interesting metaphor, and one that was very successful in getting the masses “used” to using a computer.

But as the years have gone by, I think it’s impacted our work flow. Certainly, as I wrote this, I jumped around to look up the windows (computing) page on Wikipedia, jumped around a couple of those pages, opened up a few of those sources, and then hopped on to a Google search, before switching back over here. Whoops, let me go hop back to Wikipedia to get you guys a link to that… Part of the wealth of the web is the ability to quickly hop around and educate yourself in a ten minute stretch about something you previously knew nothing about. And you can leave what you were doing open and waiting for you. Sure, Nicholas Carr blames this all on Google and wonders if it’s making us stupid and psychology professors freakout about our multitasking brains (see: Gary Small, Clifford Nass), but the fact remains, this is something people are choosing to do. Steve Jobs surfing the web on the iPad was not how I surf the web. There’s less of linearly hopping about the NYT, and more rabid Levy flights – I find myself opening five of those articles on the front page, letting them load, and skimming them before finding one interesting enough to read.

But enough about me. Is this how other people use the web? I suspect so, though I don’t know. But what I can say is that for the majority of people, the web has gotten a lot more social. What does this have to do with the iPad? Well, essentially, people might not be hopping between web articles or trying to post it to Tumblr, but they’re certainly flipping between the content they consume and Facebook (apparently, a more popular medium than email). Even something simple that we don’t really think about is IM: I always have Adium open, and I suspect that’s true of a lot of young people. Check out this Pew Internet Report from 2004 that says 46% of internet users use IM. Forty-six. In 2004, no less. And what about iWork for iPad? When was the last time you made a slide show without importing statistics, quotes or images from the web?

And that’s when it hit me: the overlapping windows thing, it’s less about me, and more about an effect of computing: it’s all networked together. That email I send has to do with the IM conversation I’m having, which is turning towards the webpage I just clicked on, which I found on my Twitter client, that just compelled me to change the song I’m listening to… Apple made the decision to make a machine that is a great multimedia device. A beautiful screen that let’s you focus on what you’re looking at, without all the other “distractions.” But those “distractions” are part of the modern day viewing experience. And while Steve is leisurely strolling through the NYT, clicking page by page, keeping his audience holding their breadth as the page loads (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds of staring at a white page), all the Apple fanboys were surely furiously clicking “refresh” on Engadget while flipping back and forth to Twitter and IM.

Oh, and did I mention the thing doesn’t even do Flash?

Cross-posted here at youngandbrilliant.net

Photo by mattbuchanan

The post How the iPad Gets the Web Wrong appeared first on The Faster Times.