Vodafone Ireland partners with Furious Tribe to offer mobile apps consultancy and development

Today, 2^nd April 2012, Vodafone Ireland announced an exclusive partnership with Furious Tribe, a multi award winning Irish technology company. Furious Tribe will provide a consultancy service to Vodafone business customers to develop their own mobile applications strategy. The partnership will also enable Vodafone and Furious Tribe to build and deploy specific mobile applications for Vodafone’s business customers.

Under the partnership, Vodafone customers will receive access to Apptivate, Furious Tribe’s unique content management system, enabling a company to manage their mobile applications easily without having specialised IT skills.

Businesses are now using mobile applications to maximize employee productivity, increase efficiencies and to provide service channels to their own customers. Under the exclusive agreement, Vodafone will be the only communications provider in Ireland to provide the specialised consultancy service offered by Furious Tribe.  Vodafone and Furious Tribe will work alongside the customer right through from inception to design and development. Vodafone will act as a one-stop-shop for the service, managing the contractual and billing relationship with the customer.

“Vodafone is a market leader in bringing innovative propositions to the market as the world of mobility evolves at lightning speed,” said Fergal Kelly, Vodafone Ireland Chief Technology Officer.  “Mobile applications are becoming a major strategic focus for companies and business customers are increasingly coming to us for advice on how they can implement a mobile app strategy. With Furious Tribe’s expertise we now have the ability to add value to our business customers, through this highly specialised consultancy service.”

Commenting on the new partnership, Patrick Leddy, CEO Furious Tribe said, “Partnering with a brand like Vodafone is huge recognition of the reputation that Furious Tribe has carved out in the market. We are a highly innovative company in the mobile applications sector and by combining our offering with Vodafone’s customer focused propositions, we believe that we have a truly unique service to offer businesses.”

For more details visit www.vodafone.ie/business-mobility-solutions. Vodafone customers can also contact their account manager.

About Vodafone

Vodafone is Ireland’s leading total communications provider with 2.47 million customers across mobile, fixed line and DSL.  At 31st December 2011 Vodafone Ireland’s mobile telecoms base was 2.24 million.

Vodafone is one of the world’s largest mobile communications companies by revenue with approximately 398 million customers in its controlled and jointly controlled markets as at 31 December 2011. Vodafone currently has equity interests in over 30 countries across five continents and more than 40 partner networks worldwide. For more information, please visit www.vodafone.com

About Furious Tribe

Furious Tribe are a multi-award winning Irish technology company that provide a consultancy service on developing a mobile app strategy. Their relentless focus on user-experience design, strategy and quality has earned Furious Tribe international visibility. Furious Tribe are headquartered in Dublin but they also have satellite offices on London and New York. They have one of a kind proprietary technology called Apptivate, which allows enterprises to build and maintain mobile apps in house. This simplifies the maintenance of apps for non IT-specialist staff so enterprises can constantly keep their app up to date.

In the early hours of Wednesday, the 15th of February 2012 (after weeks of hype) a new iPhone App was finally released from Apple’s review process. This is hourly news here at the Tribe and there are so many Apps that go unnoticed, but this particular App came to our attention a number of weeks back and we were excited. Nick Cunningham and April Meyer have now explored how it was promoted and whether or not it was worth the hype.

Nick - The application started gathering interest at Macworld | iWorld 2012 where Realmac Software, the creators, gave previews to interested users. While the Brighton-based company was in San Francisco spreading the news of their new App, word spread online. Twitter, blogs, promo videos, articles, word of mouth – you name it. The simple promo video created for this new App was only 51 seconds long, but it pulled you in and made you want to actually reach out and touch the App.

In the week following Macworld, Realmac Software kept interested parties and users at arms length by not giving away much information on when this App was going to be released. One response to a tweet asking when it was going to be released was simply “February ”. Then on the 6th of February came a simple but effective tweet: “In Review”. It had to be close now, didn’t it? But no, there was silence for four days. Four days! Do you know what you could do in four days? You could drive non-stop from New York to San Francisco and back again with four hours to spare (depending on traffic, of course)! That’s over 5,820 miles. Why you’d do that I don’t know, but that gives you an idea how long us App enthusiasts were wondering and checking for updates.

NY to San Francisco

When more news finally came through, just like before they kept us at arms length.

Sure, five more days couldn’t hurt. In these five days they gained more and more followers on Twitter and more and more articles were written, building the buzz even more. They did a very good job tweeting back to people’s questions, even if they had answered them a few tweets previously. The 14th came and I noticed in my Twitter feed.

Wait, so not only did they make us sit on edge but they’re now doing individual country releases? People on the opposite side of the world are playing with this new gestures based App and we can’t. No fair! Then it hit Ireland and Europe at €0.79 cent? Sure, no problem Apple. My feeling is that they did such a good job building it up through social media and the interface looked like nothing else out there that they made you want to buy it without thinking twice.

So what does this App do that it warrants the interest of not only me and the rest of the Tribe, but thousands of other App lovers… it’s a To-Do list! Yes, you read correctly, a simple but effective to-do list. And what’s the name of this magical App shouting around the internet? Clear and as the tag line says “Life is messy. Simplify with Clear”.

April - So now that we’ve had a chance to play with Clear, I must say, it is a brilliant concept. Very simple, very clean and a pure delight to use — which is after all, the whole point! Its lovely to see an interface that is so uncluttered, it lets the user focus on the content (their long list of things to do) and getting back to actually doing real work. On a more academic note, by replacing the typical tap-instead-of-click interface with one that uses swiping, pulling and pinching gestures, this is one of the first Apps I’ve seen that really transitions from GUI towards NUI.

One of the things I was most anticipating about this App was seeing how they handled the first run experience. How on earth were the developers going to teach users how to interact with this?! They opted for a handful of tour-style screens and I feel this actually let the App down. I know it’s pretty minor and has no impact on how well the App is built, but the pictures of a hand using Clear on a phone (stills from the promo video maybe?) were, well, dull. I’m aware of the irony here, having praised simplicity only  a paragraph earlier, but sometimes a little added visual interest is needed to engage users and these images and their lackluster text left me with some easily-avoidable disappointment. As good ol’ Mr Norman tells us, a typical user may hold on to this negativity and judge the App before ever getting to the good bits – but I am not a typical user. My perseverance paid off quickly as the second half of the first run is an interactive demo that I thought worked very well. That, along with the little hints that appear in context, make me think that the first run would work just fine without the boring images.

Clear First Run

The first run aside, I find the gestural interface really intuitive and the sound effects are so happy I can’t help but smile every time I mark an item complete and there is that little audio reward. I admit I still have to pause on some actions while remembering exactly what I am supposed to do, however I think this will happen less and less as I use the App more.

With a nod to my last blog post on Interaction 12 and the difficulties raised in developing software for an international audience, I imagine that this App was/will be relatively easy for the developers to localise – no traditional button labels to struggle to make fit, just a few contextual prompts and modal windows to replace. With any luck, developers will take note of this and more Apps in the future will be accessible to wider audiences through a combination of tap-able buttons and gestural interactions.

Marking Item Off

But will I actually use this App on a daily basis? Unfortunately, I’m really struggling to decide. There is no shortage of to-do Apps out there, and while this is infinitely faster and more fun to use than Apple’s own Reminders App, it lacks some features that I would really appreciate. Personally, I need a little push to get things done and tend to schedule notices or alarms for myself to do this or that at a particular time. Clear’s very distilled functionality means it won’t make my phone beep at me and thus it becomes just a list maker instead of a to-do tracker. And I don’t make many lists. What’s more, I also like to be to reference URLs, locations, phone numbers, etc in my to-dos and Clear doesn’t allow this either. Thus the only thing that I see using Clear for is my shopping list… and I don’t think that is worth €0.79 when Notes comes pre-installed. As a designer and a developer, I really love what Clear is trying to do with gestures. It’s a step towards the future as we break away from the click-able, analogous interfaces that desktop computers exploit. But it feels like a nifty way of interacting has taken precedence over more valuable functions… or perhaps I’m just not the target market.

Nick - Can I see myself using it? Yes, I probably can as I make lists for everything and with Clear, creating a new list item or marking something off is so easy, it just comes naturally compared to other to-do Apps. As April mentioned though, it would be handy to be able to tie alarms for a certain items. If Realmac Software do go down this route, I look forward to seeing how they keep the flow of the current App. Then maybe I can use it to list all the places I want to see on my mad trip from New York to San Francisco… and back.

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to attend Interaction 12, the IxDA‘s annual conference in Dublin’s shiny new Convention Centre (the staff of which deserve a round of applause for keeping us endlessly feed and caffeinated). Unfortunately, I could only attend on one day, but the full schedule of events included workshops at IADT, three days of speakers in the Convention Centre and lots of evening gatherings.

The highlights of my day included the keynote talk from Luke Williams of Frog. Williams is the author of ‘Disrupt‘, and his talk The Disruptive Age: Thriving in an Era of Constant Change followed these lines with my favorite quote of the day “A disruptive hypothesis is an intentionally unreasonable statement that changes your thinking”. He tied this to interaction design by pointing out that we make cliches of interactions to make processes easier but balanced this with stating that disruption for the sake of disruption is a bad thing. However, when the correct balance is struck (like Littlemissmatched who sell socks in sets of 3, none of which match) a business can make a real success of shaking up the status quo.

The next memorable talk came from August de los Reyes from Samsung (who would not reveal exactly he does for them) on Design and the New Modern: Three Things You Should Know. Influenced by the time he spent with designer Massimo Vignelli, this (beautifully styled) presentation focused on how a UX should uphold the principles of being semantically correct, syntactically appropriate and still be practical. De los Reyes emphasised and that we are shifting from vertical structures (narrow and deep) to horizontal ones (broad and shallow) and drew the correlation between prevalence of scrolling interactions verses swipe interactions and ended with another of the poignant quotes of the day, “Interaction designers create not just interfaces, but states of mind’. Much of this was further driven home by the next talk I attend from Kel Smith, whose talk Innovations in Accessibility: What We Can Learn from Digital Outcasts featured an example video on Virtual Pain Distraction, showing just how powerful a state of mind can be.

After a leisurely lunch of networking, I attended Giles Colborne’s (from cxpartners) talk Artificial Emotional Intelligence: Designing Interactions for Emotional Awareness which emphasised that there is a right and a wrong way to fake emotional intelligence in our everyday digital interactions. The right way focuses on empathizing with positive and credible responses while the wrong way is opitimised by Clippy from Microsoft Office. Colborne employed methods described in ‘Dealing with Difficult People‘ to help understand a user’s behaviour and by matching that personality to the interface both designers and users can get better results. I later asked him how this could be incorporated into the interaction design process and was intrigued to find that he recommended applying it as another layer rather than as part of the personas commonly used in developing and testing user interfaces.

Rachel Hinman, a researcher and designer for Nokia later took the stage to discuss the Mobile Frontier, as a place of remarkable opportunity for innovation if we just stop trying to replicate traditional metaphors that eased people into digital interaction such as ‘desktops’ and ‘pages’. Instead, she backed up August de los Reyes and promoted a shift from graphical user interfaces (GUI) to natural user interfaces (NUI) where we design for systems in which content unfolds by being is its own interface.

Anthony Dunne, head of the Design Interactions programme at the Royal College of Art in London closed the day with his keynote What if… Crafting Design Speculations that focused on how we can be more innovative by broadening our spectrum of thinking on the future of innovation to include not only what is probable, but also what there is the potential for and all that could be possible. While many of the projects he featured were very experimental he showed that there is a whole other world of human-computer interaction out there and drove home that innovation requires stepping outside the comfort zone.

The only damper on the day came from Katey Deeny & Søren Muus’ talk Celsius vs. Fahrenheit: Degrees of Difference Between EU and US IxD. It was the one I anticipated most as a US expat now working in Ireland, so I was disappointed that they focused on identifying what differences exist rather than what is being done to overcome them. Some practical advice included using symbols instead of words, exploiting shared cultural references and that lengthy explanations are not required when you can allow for a learning curve. Personally, I think there are some good examples of how this can be achieved, such as Clear (a mobile app that is about to be released and contains no buttons or labels in its interface) and the iPhone itself (go on, switch yours to a different language to see what changes and how easy it is to use once you are used to it) and would have enjoyed more positive discussion on this.

It was hard to choose which talks to attend on Thursday and am disappointed that I cannot go to the likes of Fabian Hemmert (whom I had the opportunity to talk with about his ‘weight-shifting, shape changing, life-like’ mobile phone prototypes’) so I hope the IxDA post videos or, at very least, slides online soon for all of us to draw out as many nuggets of wisdom as possible. Even without the luxury of re-watching the presentations, the main thing that I took away from Interaction 12 were to take control of how we use mobile devices by employing UIs that break the conventions many OS have imposed on users and developers.

As an aside, I was also struck by the similarities between what we as interaction designers do, and what architects do in regards to creating environments. This has been a recurring topic for me personally as I have an avid interest in architecture and it was encouraging to hear both August de los Reyes and Rachel Hinman allude to this. I also had the pleasure of speaking with two former architects during lunch who reiterated this and I am interested to explore what architects can teach interaction designers about process and vice-versa. If you have any thoughts on this or anything else raised at Interaction12, drop me a line here or on Twitter at @aprilmeyerft

At Furious Tribe we’ve been quietly working away for the last few months on improving our Apptivate platform.

When we first launched Apptivate in 2010, we created a highly disruptive business model that allowed enterprises to build and manage their own Apps for iPhone.

Since then, we’ve sold thousands of Apptivate licences all over the world and we’ve also added multi-platform support and a host of other new features to better meet our customers needs.

Today we’ve added the biggest and most exciting feature since Apptivate’s initial launch and we think it’s going to be a game changer for both our product and our customers.

We’ve introduced an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) into Apptivate so our customers now have total control over their Apps. Using our IDE, our customers now have the power to break free of our pre-built modules and templates and completely customise everything about their App, from the placement of a button to complex user interactions. Now our customers can edit or create code within the Apptivate IDE and make use of web technologies like jQuery mobile, CSS and javascript to make their mobile Apps come to life.

Files and folders are easily created and saved, and users have the option to choose their preferred colour theme to code in.

We’ve changed the user journey for creating new Apps a little bit. Users now have the option to create either a ‘Simple’ or an ‘Advanced’ App. Users can only use the IDE with an Advanced App, however for clients who don’t need the IDE our pre existing modules are still available via a Simple App. Within our new system, users can create multiple Apps within the one account, and you can assign version numbers and notes to go with each App.

We know from working with some of our Enterprise customers both locally and internationally that this is exactly the kind of feature our clients want to be made available to them. All our product development is directly influenced by what we’ve learned by working with clients such as RSA, AXA Global Distributors, Davy and Danone to name a few.

We’ve recognised that there is a strong demand from the Enterprise market for strategic mobile consultancy coupled with innovative technology that allows enterprises to have control over the maintenance of their Apps. We believe the Furious Tribe offering is meeting our clients’ needs but we’re not stopping there. We’ve already moved on to developing new functionality and we’re looking forward to releasing even more innovative features for Apptivate in the very near future.

The Irish Internet Association are having their yearly Net Visionary Awards on the 30th of September 2011.

Furious Tribe and our Creative Director April Meyer have been nominated and put forward to public vote for the “Best Mobile App Developer” category sponsored by Nokia.

So what is this award?

The Best Mobile App Developer Award recognises an individual or company that have excelled within the mobile development space. The winning entry will be an individual or a company that has demonstrated ability across a range of mobile platforms and has met the highest standards in technology, innovation and design.

So what have we done to deserve this?

April and the whole Furious Tribe team have been hard at work building mobile Apps for all walks of life.

Our Apps are for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry and range from the new mobile App experience that delivers rewards to O2 customers to RSA Insurance App the main feature of which allows users to file a claim from their mobile.

In addition to these global brands we’ve worked with large Irish brands such as TV3, where we made Ireland’s first Video on Demand Platform for iPhone, and for RTE where we created an App that focused on Gaelic football content and marked the beginning of the Irish GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) season.

And how do you vote?

Voting is simple and takes less then 15 seconds (it really does take that long no long winded forms here) so why not vote for April and the team here: http://furioustri.be/qhkHM8

In the highest towers of the Google, the executives must be delighted with the hype that has ensued with the release of Google+.  Every blog website across the internet, has details about the new social platform. A real competitor to Facebook has finally arrived!

Google+ seems to clear up the privacy issue that has been a thorn in Facebook’s side, with its circles setting. You can choose simply what you want your friends on Google+ to see.  One problem at present on Google+, that is that the ability a new user can gain access to the site. At present the only way you can get onto it as we all know is by invite. This no doubt will evidently change and the real battle between Google+  and Facebook will begin.

Now Google+ could be really great platform as you can have all your information and data in one place (Mail, Docs and now Social Life).  Many present Facebook users could therefore change their online social life to Google+.

Facebook will know this and they already took action.  Facebook have announced an app for all types phones, not just us smartphone lovers.  The Facebook for Every phone app is a Java app, though different versions of the app, are expected to be released.

This will anybody with any sort of internet access on their mobile to get access to check out the photos of last night on their page. Now here in Furious Tribe we not bias to either Facebook or Google+. The competition will drive each company to create better user experiences. The thing we are amazed with is that Facebook have just opened a market that everyone forgot about.

There are millions maybe even billions who do have access to a smartphone or even constant access to a computer. Everyone in mobile is looking forward to create better mobile experiences on smartphones. Facebook realised that their are still many users on older devices across the world, who they could still access.

Fairplay Facebook, its your move Google.

Source IntoMobile

On the 8^th of July, two iPhones will be aboard the last shuttle launch ever Atlantis!  The iPhones have had an App installed, Spacelab for iOS. The astronauts on board will then use the iPhones to conduct experiments. The four experiments are:

• Limb Tracker- The astronauts will take a picture of the earths curve, this then will be allow for the iPhone to calculate its altitude.

• Sensor Calibration Tool- This uses the phones pictures and the inbuilt motion sensor to attune the phones gyroscope (allows the phone to know which way it is facing) and accelerometer (measure the acceleration force).

• State Acquisition- Using images of the earth from the phone, this will calculate the iPhone’s position in relation to where it is passing over.

• Life-cycle Flight Instrumentation- This will monitor the effects of radiation on the iPhone. In space everyone maybe exposed to certain level of radiation, not just iPhone’s!

The Spacelab App can be bought in the App Store, which will allow for users to gain the ability to conduct some of these experiments. Though some of the experiments will be simulated due to the fact we live in a gravity enriched environment.

Apple this time has out done themselves.  Though they probably had nothing to do with suggesting putting iPhone on a shuttle. They will be delighted even 200 miles up, a group of individuals will be going “wow that’s a cool app, I must get that one”.

Source: Venturebeat

Here at Furious Tribe we are always fast onto new research on mobile Apps. This morning we came across some research, done by MTV, which was found on mobilemarketingwatch.com. Which is aptly named “Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em: Adoption, Abandonment and the App-Addled Consumer”. The research’s objectives was to find out why consumers keep and cherish certain apps and delete others minutes after receiving others.

Everybody’s favourite music channel took 1300 app users and gave them in depth interviews about their usage and interest of apps. The study produced, that Apps are an extension of a users life and that this extension was done through digital means- Deep Stuff!

83% of people studied admitted to being addicted to certain apps. Here at HQ we know what that feels like, we shed a little tear every time one our apps, leaves our doors to the big world of the App store.

The study produced that 68% of men would give up coffee for a year, to have their favourite apps. While 68% of woman would give up Fizzy drinks to have their personal much-loved Apps.

The study concluded what we always knew here at Furious Tribe, that Apps are not just a simple gimmick on your mobile but can become an essential and integral part of an individuals activities throughout a day. For instance the study shown that 77% of people think of apps are their personal assistants. Everybody can now have an entourage.

So we believe its now time we listen to our doctors and give up the caffeine and get a new fix with your favourite apps!

A lot of times when we are talking to clients about our process here at Furious Tribe, they ask about personas. Often personas are not something prospective clients have even heard of and they don’t understand the role of personas in the design process.

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Further to our nominations for the Appys, we discovered today that the App we developed for TV3 has been shortlisted in the Mobile App category for the Eircom Spiders awards. Very exciting!