We’re asking people what they see as the highlights of Mobile World Congress.  Would you mind saying a few words to camera?

I have lots of respect for both Ewan and Rafe, so I was happy to respond.  I expressed a few top-of-mind thoughts about Microsoft Windows Phone 7, the networking opportunities at the event itself, and about the growing interest in embedded connectivity (also known as “machine to machine” communications).  The result is here, as Episode 148 of MobileDeveloperTV.com: “David Wood’s take on MWC“:

As you can see, I had the opportunity to say a few words at the end of the clip about the Humanity+ UK2010 event I’ve been organising.  Once the filming stopped, the three of us continued chatting informally about this topic – which is (of course) a big and fascinating topic.  Never someone to miss an opportunity, Ewan started filming again. The first question this time was “What films about the future do you like?”  One answer led on to “just one more question” and then to “a final question” and even “a really final question”…

This became episode 149 of  MobileDeveloperTV.com: “David Wood speculates on the future of (mobile) technology“.  Ewan explains:

I grabbed the opportunity to ask David what his top 3 sci-fi movies were. What follows is an absolutely fascinating ‘real-time’ riff from David on where he sees the future going — in terms of technology augmentation — and what to do about the human race becoming far too reliant on technology that may well turn against us. Or that we simply couldn’t do without.

Many thanks to Ewan and Rafe for taking the time to edit and publish this second video, even though it’s some way outside their normal field of coverage!

• It’s harder for users to locate the exact function that they wish to use at any given time;
• It’s harder for users to understand the full set of functions that are available for them to use.

This has led to feelings of frustration and disenchantment.  Devices are full of powerful functionality that is under-used and under-appreciated.

Recognising this problem, companies throughout the mobile industry are exploring approaches to improving the usability of multi-function devices.

One common idea is to try to arrange all the functionality into a clear logical hierarchy.  But as the number of available functions grows and grows, the result is something that is harder and harder to use, no matter how thoughtfully the functions are arranged.

A second common idea is to allow users to select the applications that they personally use the most often, and to put shortcuts to these applications onto the homescreen (start screen) of the phone.  That’s a step forwards, but there are drawbacks with this as well:

1. The functionality that users want to access is more fine-grained than simply picking an application.  Instead, a user will often have a specific task in mind, such as “phone Mum” or “email Susie” or “check what movies are showing this evening”;
2. The functionality that users want to access the most often varies depending on the context the user is in – for example, the time of day, or the user’s location;
3. The UI to creating these shortcuts can be time-consuming or intimidating.

In this context, I’ve recently been looking at some technology developed by the startup company Intuitive User Interfaces.  The founders of Intuitive previously held key roles with the company ART (Advanced Recognition Technologies) which was subsequently acquired by Nuance Communications.

Intuitive highlight the following vision:

Imagine a phone that knows what you need, when you need it, one touch away.

Briefly, the technology works as follows:

1. An underlying engine observes which tasks the user performs frequently, and in which circumstances;
2. These tasks are made available to the user via a simple top-level one-touch selection screen;
3. The set of tasks in this screen vary depending on user context.

Intuitive will be showing their system, running on an Android phone, at the Mobile World Congress at Barcelona next week.  Ports to other platforms are in the works.

Of course, software that tries to anticipate a user’s actions has sometimes proved annoying rather than helpful.  Microsoft’s “paperclip” Office Assistant became particularly notorious:

• It was included in versions of Microsoft Office from 1997 to 2003 – with the intention of providing advice to users when it deduced that they were trying to carry out a particular task;
• It was widely criticised for being intrusive and unhelpful;
• It was excluded from later versions;
• Smithsonian magazine in 2007 called this paperclip agent “one of the worst software design blunders in the annals of computing“.

It’s down to the quality of the underlying engine whether the context-dependent suggestions provided to the user are seen as helpful or annoying.  Intuitive describe the engine in their product as “using sophisticated machine learning algorithms” in order to create “a statistically driven model”.  Users’ reactions to suggestions also depend on the UI of the suggestion system.

Personally, I’m sufficiently interested in this technology to have joined Intuitive’s Advisory Board.  If anyone would like to explore this technology further, in meetings at Barcelona, please get in touch!

For other news about Intuitive User Interfaces, please see their website.

That was the challenge posed to me earlier this week by Rudy de Waele, the Simon Cowell of the mobile industy.

As in previous years, the Monday of Mobile World Congress week – when the mobile industry congregates in Barcelona – will feature an Mobile Premier Awards event.  This event will feature a number of quickfire pitches by companies selected by Mobile Monday chapters worldwide.  These companies are competing for a number of awards, including the Mobile Premier Award in Innovation.

By this stage in the contest, there are 50 candidates.  Each has been selected as the result of a process in one of the Mobile Monday chapters.  We’re now at the stage of reducing this list to 20, to avoid the event in Barcelona stretching on too long in time.  Responsibility for this reduction falls to a group of people described as “an online jury of industry experts”.

I was honoured to be asked to take part in this jury, but at the same time I was apprehensive.  It’s a considerable responsibility to look at the information about each of 50 companies, and to find the most deserving 10 from that list.  (Each jury member picks 10.  The organisers aggregate the votes from all 25 jury members, and the top-scoring 20 companies are invited to make a pitch at the event in Barcelona.)

The guidelines to jury members asked that we evaluate each candidate based on:

• originality, creativity and innovation;
• technical and operational feasibility;
• economic and financial viability.

I created a spreadsheet for my own use and started following links Rudy provided me to entries for each of the companies on dotopen.com.  In turn these entries pointed to other info, such as the companies’ own websites.

As I anticipated, the selection process was far from easy!  I quickly found 10 companies that I thought definitely deserved to attend Barcelona – and I had only searched about one third of the way through the list of nominees…

Occasionally I thought that a particular entry looked comparatively uninteresting (for example, that it was a “Me too” offering).  But when I clicked onto the company’s own website and started looking in more detail at what they had done, I would I think to myself “Mmm… this startup has a strong proposition after all”.

However, by close of play yesterday I had made my selection.  It’s inappropriate for me to publicly mention any companies at this time.  But I will say that I expect the event in Barcelona will give strong evidence of some companies executing well on some very interesting business ideas.