I want my MTV, I mean my workforce apps

MTV was in the news this week, as the venerable network of 'Video Killed the Radio Star', 'Beavis and Butt-head', and more recently 'Jersey Shore' celebrated its 30th anniversary. Over the 30-year run MTV has certainly changed its focus, direction, and strategy, and as many observers are quick to note, the network doesn't really have that much to do with music anymore as it has long since morphed into a more general entertainment property.

But even noting these changes in MTV's purpose, it was kind of surprising to me when I received an email Press Release pitch with the title - 'Latitude and MTV Networks Uncover the Meaning Behind Our Addiction to Apps', referencing the results of a recent study on mobile application usage conducted by the research firm Latitude on behalf of MTV Networks.  Since (shockingly, I know), I am old enough to remember when MTV was stil about playing bad Journey videos, I had to check out the press release and some of the study's findings about mobile application uptake and the important app value propositions - after all what workplace or HR technology solution is not making a move (or already has arrived), in the mobile and app space?  And as smartphones and tablets are taking over on the consumer side as gateways to the web, there's no doubt the same will (or is already) happening inside the enterprise.

For context here are some details on the purpose and the methodology of the study from the Latitude release:

The study investigated the underlying psychology and current behaviors surrounding app adoption, use, and abandonment for heavy app users, and ultimately uncovered top characteristics and features of a successful app. The study included a round of initial qualitative interviews, a deprivation phase (normal app users were asked to go app-free for three days), and a quantitative survey of more than 1300 app-engaged smartphone owners between the ages of 13 and 64.

So what did the study show the main benefits are of app usage and therefore are the primary drivers of longer-term adoption and reduced the chances of app 'abandonment?', (again, from the Latitude Press Release):

• Apps Create Me Moments: Apps allow intense personalization and hyper-focus, filling our idle moments with “me time” on-demand. This expectation for powerful, instantaneous “me focus” is making its way into desired in-app entertainment and ad experiences. Personal context is king!87% of participants said: “Apps let me have fun no matter where I am or what I’m doing.”

Implication for designers of 'workplace' apps: Smartphones and tablets are really personal devices, much more so than the standard-issue company PC or laptop. Apps therefore need to maintain and leverage this personalization of experience, app users like to see their apps as almost personal tools, and not just extensions of a bland or generic enterprise solution. 

• Apps Make Everyday Life Better: Apps are enhancing our day-to-day experiences directly by enabling productivity, achievement of our personal goals, and so on—and indirectly through the resulting creation of free time, improved mental well-being, opportunities for positive discovery, and more. 

Implication for designers of 'workplace' apps: Sort of obvious, but the main point of emphasis is that the enterprise apps, particularly ones that might be transaction driven, need to do more than just replicate processes typically performed on PCs in corporate systems. They need to make the experience and process better - more efficient, simpler, more enjoyable. If the staff hate the process and the tool while using it in the office, simply porting it to an iPad won't make them feel any better about it. In fact, they might rebel, wondering why they can't seem to escape from it.

• Apps Open Us to New Worlds: Whether it’s learning new languages or gazing at the stars, the possibilities seem endless as apps open people’s imaginations to the new and “magical.” As mobile technology rapidly innovates, people increasingly envision apps as complementing and transforming traditional media experiences into “something new.” 91% of participants said: “Apps expose me to new things.”

Implication for designers of 'workplace' apps: How about approaching your app strategy beyond simply taking what you have in the office and porting it to a mobile app and think about what you can deliver that is brand new? What value can you add to the employee experience that they can only get via your new app? Whether it is new learning content, a tool that mashes up data in your CRM with social web content, or simply a syndicated feed of news and events about your company or industry - consider building something brand new and exclusive to app ecosystem.

What's your take - can the designers and workforce technology experts learn from the MTV crowd?

Or perhaps a better question - will you be watching the retrurn of Beavis and Butt-head to MTV this Fall?

What's more valuable, the content or the platform?

It is no secret, at least here in the USA, that the traditional newspaper and print publishing industries have been forced to undergo significant change, adaptation, and even re-invention not only to thrive in the new digital economy, but merely to survive. While the last decade has seen the rise of new information sources architected completely for the digital age, and some other long-time industry standard bearers adapt to this new world, many others have failed and have declared bankruptcy. Being in the print news business certainly has not been easy, and for those organizations still fighting the battle for reader's time and attention with the incredible array of options for news and information that are available, it certainly seems that creativity, innovative ideas, and fresh thinking might be the only way to get by.

Two such enterprises, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News think they have one of these fresh ideas. They plan to buy Android-based tablet computers, pre-load them with their news organization's content and apps, then re-sell the bundle (at a discount), to try and generate interest and ongoing subscription revenues for their digital content properties.  Some additional details from the Ad Week piece describing the plan:

On July 11, the two papers plan to announce a pilot program under which they will sell Android tablets with their content already built in at a discount. Icons on the tablets' home screen will take users to digital replicas of both newspapers as well as a separateInquirer app and Philly.com, the papers’ online hub.

The idea of giving away or selling devices has been widelydiscussed in the publishing industry, but the Philadelphia experiment seems to be the most aggressivepush in that direction thus far.

Greg Osberg, CEO and publisher of the Philadelphia Media Network, the entity that includes the papers and Philly.com, believes the company is making history with the program, the cost for which he estimated will come in somewhere in six figures. The deal lets the Philadelphia papers keep all the revenue and the consumer data, though, which will give it a read on how people consume newspaper content on a tablet.

A pretty bold move for sure. The Philly news organizations (correctly), get that the tablet market is where tremendous interest and consumer adoption are taking place, they can see hundreds if not thousands of locals riding buses and trains playing Angry Birds reading the news of the day on tablets and smartphones, and therefore want to create and exploit an opportunity to try and merge a real consumer need - 'I want a tablet', with a manufactured need - 'I want to read the Philly Inquirer'. 

It seems today that every publisher, consumer website, online productivity tool, and even increasingly enterprise technologies meant to support functions like recruiting, performance and talent management, analytics and the like are developing solutions for mobiles and tablets, and aggressively marketing the same. And this makes perfect sense given the market's reaction and almost insatiable desire for all things mobile and tablet. 

I wonder, particularly in the HCM enterprise technology space, if we will see a 'Philly Inquirer-style', marketing approach soon as well. One where the solution provider does more than simply demo their tablet-ready solution to an eager buying audience, but rather offers the entire package, pre-loaded pre-configured, and ready to work. Walk out of the meeting toting your brand new, ready to rock, Human Capital Management tablet. I know I am oversimplifying, but you get the idea. How many of us try on that new pair of kicks in the Foot Locker and just have to wear them home?

Corporate IT departments have been doing this kind of thing for ages, supplying staff with PCs and laptops with the 'official' image and set of applications that are supported. But today, I wonder if this process is too slow, too inflexible and not designed for today's much more demanding consumers of enterprise technology.

Any vendor out there in the space already doing this? If you know of someone, drop me a comment.

Is it your turn to shut up? There's an app for that...

A couple of months ago I joined my friend Kris Dunn the HR Capitalist, and Mike Carden the CEO of Human Resources technology vendor Sonar6 for a webcast titled 'Please Shut Up: The Idiot Proof Coaching Tool for Managers'. The presentation was about some simple, yet powerful strategies managers could use to become more effective as performance coaches.  You can still access the replay here. And you should give it a listen. The audience feedback was phenomenal, save for the one person that complained that perhaps the three of us were a bit 'too jocular'.

As you may be able to tell from the Sonar6 webcast presentation title, shutting up was a big part of the coaching tool that we talked about - the main point was that all too often managers tend to dominate these kinds of performance discussions, prattling on and on about what the employee needs to do to become more effective, to stop acting like an idiot, and to finally come around and see the bosses way of doing things.

As those of you with kids understand, this kind of browbeating, 'dominate the conversation' approach really begins to lose effectiveness on them at around age 11 or 12. Maybe sooner.

So maybe you buy in to the notion that whether you are in performance coaching conversations with employees, or interviewing candidates for open positions, that shutting your trap just a little more often would be a good strategy. Or maybe you are trying to convince hiring managers or recruiters on your team that 'actually letting the candidate talk' might be the best way to help make some of those tricky cultural fit judgments, then be cheerful, as is the case for almost everything these days - there's an app for that.

The Talk-O-Meter is an iPhone app that uses voice recognition and biofeedback to calculate, in real time, which person in a conversation is doing most of the talking. Simply fire up the app, set the iPhone on the table in between the participants, do a quick voice level and tone calibration, and from there the Talk-O-Meter monitors the conversation in 1, 3, or 5-minute intervals. At the end of each interval, the app displays a bar split into two colors, representing the ratio of who spent the most time jawboning.

Face it, almost all of us like the sound of our own voices. It can be really hard to warm up to the notion that the other person might actually have something important, interesting, and relevant to add to our own little daily soliloquies. I get that.

But a simple little tool like the Talk-O-Meter might be just the thing you need to get a bit of self-awareness going, and may even help you see just how much you are dominating the proceedings, be it a performance review/coaching session or an interview.

Or when faced with your next meeting with Mr. or Ms. Knows it All and isn't afraid to make sure you know that they know it all, just do a quick, and sly Talk-O-Meter drop on them and show them the error of their ways.

What do you think - would this kind of an application be a useful coaching tool?

Foursquare for Kids, or Technology Means Never Having To Let Go

I was a little late to the Foursquare hype, but in the interests of wanting to stay up to speed on the latest developments in technology and social networking I did, eventually create an account. I wrote a little about that experiment here. I still do use Foursquare pretty regularly, although my long reigns as Mayor of both the local Bruegger's Bagel Bakery and my son's elementary school have yet to pay off in the form of free bagels or a hearty 'Welcome Mr. Mayor!' from the principal on days I pick up Patrick from school. 

Certainly like all other social applications, the real value is in the interaction and insight you can gain from friends' Foursquare activity, but since my Foursquare friends are scattered all over the country the knowledge that Sam Higgins is eating breakfast in Austin, TX has not really paid off for me all that much. But still I persist, somehow comforted that if I ever go missing, someone could look at my Foursquare check-in log and attempt to track me down.

Like many parents the idea of your kids growing up, becoming more independent, moving about the world much more freely can also engender those same feelings of worry and concern - 'What if little Timmy does not come home one day?' or even the more benign but common lament - 'Where the heck is that kid, he was supposed to be home an hour ago?'

Most parents elect to try and mitigate these concerns by giving their kids cellphones. In fact, in most areas of the country you'd be hard pressed to find many 12 or 13 year-olds that didn't have some kind of mobile device. The story plays out mostly the same way everywhere. Kid starts begging for a mobile phone at about age 11 or 12, kid assures the parents that the phone will let them stay in touch at all times, and that they will always and immediately answer calls and texts from the parents, and voila - everyone is happy and content in the understanding that mutual assurance or location and safety is just a text or phone call away.

But after a short time for many kids and parents reality sets in, and increasingly persistent calls and texts from parents get slower and slower responses, kids' excuses that start with 'I forgot my phone at school' or 'The battery died' get more frequent, and many families end up sort of where they started - maturing and adventurous kids out making their way in the world, with nervous parents at home to wait and worry. Sort of the way life has played out for, well, pretty much forever.

Enter a new application (currently in private beta) called 'I'mOK'. I'mOK is a location-based check-in service (think Foursquare), for iPhone that helps parents monitor the whereabouts and activities of their children. Every time a child checks in with the app to let the parents know where and who they are with, they are rewarded with points that can be exchanged for parent-supplied perks such as TV time or allowance money. Check out the video below for an overview of the service (email and RSS readers may have to click through)

ImOK Intro Video - Knowing without the nagging from I'mOK on Vimeo.

The service's tag line is 'Knowing without the nagging' and while I suppose the idea is sound in behavioral modification theory, (kid checks in a lot, earns points and rewards for checking in, parents feel good about knowing the kids are safe and thus are happy to provide more rewards), I wonder if application and the others like it that are bound to come, are pushing some of the less appealing aspects of the social web further down the demographic chain.  I feel a little silly letting my 10 or so Foursquare friends know I am at the gas station, but I know that no one is really watching or monitoring my movements (at least I don't think so).

But with a 'family' location-based tracking application, the ideas of constant connection, of small insignificant activities gaining more value in the form of rewards, and the feeling of never really having true and complete privacy and anonymity, even for a short time, seem to be a pretty high price to pay for peace of mind. 

Back in the day my parents (and I am sure many of yours), sent us out in the world to hang out with our friends, to play sports, to ride bikes - whatever. They had no practical way to monitor our movements. But even if they had such a way, I am not completely convinced they would have wanted that ability. Not because they did not care about our safety, but rather because they knew that we needed to learn how to navigate the world for ourselves, and that they couldn't or shouldn't always be at the ready, a phone call or a text message away from us.

What do you think - would you set up a 'family' based location network to keep track of your kids?

When work is always within reach

Last week the iPass organization issued their Global Mobile Workforce Report, a review of trends and preferences in technology selection, usage, and attitudes amongst those workers that classify themselves as 'mobile' workers.  These workers, mostly telecommuters, report an increasingly 'connected to work' lifestyle, enabled by the ubiquity of smartphones, and buoyed by the growing influence of tablets, (mainly the iPad).

Some interesting statistics from the report:

• 41 percent of mobile workers have a tablet and an additional 34 percent of mobile workers intend to purchase a tablet in the next six months

• 87 percent of mobile workers that own tablets use their tablets for at least some work

• 43 percent of mobile workers store their smartphone within arm’s reach when they sleep at night. Those that do this are 60 percent more likely than average to wake during the night to check their smartphone

• 29 percent of mobile workers find that their mobile technology usage causes friction in their personal relationships, specifically with their significant other or spouse

And finally a statistic that is not at all surprising given the hyper-connected, check-my-smartphone-for-email-at-3:00AM and the bring-along-the-iPad-while-I-watch-little-Joey's-baseball-game kind of culture we seem to be evolving towards:

• The average mobile worker works 240 hours a year longer than the workforce in general.

Again, interesting findings, if not exactly earth-shattering. Seeing friends, family, or colleagues tethered to their smartphones and tablets in airports, in auto repair shop waiting rooms, at professional events, and even at social gatherings is becoming so commonplace that we often fail to even notice or to regard it as unusual. And as more organizations, enterprise technology providers, media outlets, and other traditional institutions move towards creating new and better mobile (in all it's many forms), solutions and productivity applications, the urge and compulsion to have the smartphone or tablet within reach at all times will only keep growing.

Certainly the incredible advances in mobile solutions from both a device and application standpoint have greatly benefited that component of the workforce that demands increased mobility, for reasons of job design, personal circumstances, or those that simple find they are more effective not being forced or compelled to report to an office or 'official' workplace every day. Smartphones, tablets, and even the simple and old-fashioned laptop, and the development of applications and mobile solutions to enable connected, virtual, and flexible arrangements are almost universally seen as an important and necessary evolution in workplace technology, and that open up opportunities for many workers that for various reasons the 'normal' workplace and the typical schedule just simply do not work.

But with the growth and capability of mobile workplace solutions, the further blurring of the lines between work and well, not working, and with more and more of us sleeping with our smartphones, waking up in the middle of the night to respond to the gentle but persistent 'ping' of our devices, and more solution providers making sure that our iPads will become just as effective as the common laptop or office computer, there is the risk that we will become increasingly unable to truly separate from work as we used to. 

In some ways I guess it is the natural evolution of the work/life balance discussions - we know that even when we go to work, personal issues, concerns, commitments, responsibilities, etc. - never really go away, they accompany us at least in the back of our minds throughout the day. But it used to be we could leave work, and more or less not worry about it much until the next morning. Now, with the smartphone placed on the nightstand, work reminds us that it never really went anywhere once we left for the day.

Long term - will this be a bad thing?  I tend to think the net benefits of increased flexibility and capability that the mobile revolution has enabled do compensate for and actually exceed the negaitive or dark side of the 24/7 connection to work. But time will tell if sneaking off a few emails during the 3rd grade dance recital will ultimately be harmful to workers, relationships, and even society as a whole.

Sorry need to run now...

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