Why Browsers Suck (Cathy Edwards)

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why browsers suck: widgets as a better interface for data Cathy Edwards 1

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Presentation on mobile widget user experience by Cathy Edwards, delivered at the Mobile Widget Camp Austin on 7th of September 2008.

Transcript of Why Browsers Suck (Cathy Edwards)

Page 1: Why Browsers Suck (Cathy Edwards)

why browsers suck:widgets as a better interface for data

Cathy Edwards

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who am i?

• Apps/services strategy for Telstra CTO

• Product manager for 3jam

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Had 2 main obsessions at Telstra - widgets and evolved SMS. Now working in the latter, but still interested in widgets in my spare time :)

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browsers suck

4 reasons why widgets are better:

1) Conceptual, functional chunks

2) Push data, not pull

3) Better distribution

4) You can charge!

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Browsers are a fundamentally bad way for people to access data. They are an underlying technology, not a complete UI. Instead I propose a widget model. This model has 4 main benefits. (1) is about usability. (2)-(3) are about driving use. (4) is about business model

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what is a widget?

• Notifier + quick launch for webpage

• Integrated with device APIs

• Maximum impact on the idle screen

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Slightly expanded definition from typical widget modelsPush notifier which is a widget or icon, but also launches browser on webpage. Gmail notifier app is a reasonably good example. Users acquired via either site’s webpage or a store - are customisable on the phone. Integration with device APIs is a must to provide the functionality that will drive use. Need camera, location, calendar, contacts, messaging etcOnly get maximum benefits if on the idle screen. Still some benefit if not though

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conceptual chunks

• 250000 years of evolution

• Conceptual, functional chunks

• Physical representation

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Humans have evolved highly sophisticated ways of interpreting large amounts of complex data - they chunk it up into conceptual, functional, physical objects. Physical metaphors have been highly successful on the desktop - icons are objects, clicking on them=interacting with them (e.g. use the letter writing object - the Microsoft Word icon). Mimicking physical animations in apps (e.g. iPhone screen transitions) is more effective than breadcrumbs in helping people locate where they are in the app. Need to bring the world of physical metaphors to the web. Currently a browser is a physical object whose function is to allow you to access the internet. Unfortunately, people don’t understand what the internet is. Instead need to provide them with functional items like “find out the weather” or “get my email”.

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googling for URLs

• www.3jam.com search keywords:

• 3jam.com/www.3jam.com - 15%

• 3jam/3jam.com/www.3jam.com - 40%

• Google results = clickable representation

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What evidence do I have that people don’t understand the Internet? The percentage of people who put URLs into search engines. Analytics for 3jam.com show this. Why do they do this? My hypothesis is that people don’t understand that a URL is an address, and so are using the only interface they understand - the search engine. The UI is simple - put in the thing you want to do, then a list of clickable objects (search results) are returned. If this is the case, then it is very strong support for the widget model over the browser model

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push beats pull

• Drive usage by notifying users when content changes

• Particularly relevant for web apps, real time content

• Key reason for growth of SMS

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Unlike desktop apps, the data on websites is often rapidly changing. Users have no way of knowing when a change has occurred (e.g. there’s news, or they got an email). Push notifications are more useful to the user (assuming they can pick which ones they see) and drive usage of the site. This is particularly relevant as we start to see more and more web apps which are interactive rather than just informational content. Push is one of the reasons for the growth of SMS over any other form of mobile messaging. (Note: push and pull are used here in a non-technical sense. While the widget may actually be polling for updates, from the user’s point of view the information is still being pushed to them - they don’t have to act to go get it)

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easy to find

• Search and browse are both important, particularly for “conceptual chunks”

• The web has no store anymore - distribution of webpages is hard

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Searching and browsing are equally important, but quite distinct, methods for finding content. Physical shops have established a clear metaphor for browsing for physical objects (again, this includes software). Browsing used to be more important back in the early days of the web (e.g. Yahoo categories), but has largely been overtaken by search only. Thus discovery of new services is very difficult - you have to be searching very specifically for something before you find it. However there is a well established paradigm for browsing in the physical world - stores. Widget stores would provide a very effective distribution method for data services

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webclips vs apps

• iPhone webclips were never as popular as native applications have been

• Why? Discovery

• Some directories, but “install” experience was poor

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Why is this needed? Evidence of webclips vs native apps on the iPhone. Webclips had been around since the very early days of the iPhone, yet were nowhere near as successful as native apps. However this wasn’t to do with functionality - most of the native apps that have been launched could have been implemented as webclips. It was about discovery (or the lack thereof). The app store provides the best, most effective discovery+payment+install process, right on the phone. While some webclip directories were published, they weren’t presented as a store, and there was no single click to install. We need to learn from this when considering widget distribution

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make money!

• People expect to pay for objects

• Bundle data with widget object

• Easy to understand data pricing

• People are willing to pay for personalisation content

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People expect to pay for physical objects. This metaphor largely holds true on the desktop too. However web has established itself as free, so there is a significantly lower propensity to pay. Widgets will create an additional revenue stream for web businesses. There is also the opportunity to solve the data pricing problem via widgets. Currently pricing per kb is a very poor user experience. Users don’t understand what a kb is, and even geeks like me can’t predict exactly how many I will use in a web browsing session. This uncertainty has severely limited the uptake of mobile data services. However if the data service is bundled into a widget subscription, users will feel in control of how much they’re paying. By bundling the data with the service, you avoid commodotisation of the bits as well (so can make even more money!)Widgets on the idle screen are also personalisation content - they express the identity of the owner. The success of ringtones, personalised covers, custom branded phones etc shows that people are more than willing to pay for personalisation content too

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iPhone app store

• 60M apps downloaded in first month

• $30M in sales

• I Am Rich app downloaded 9 times

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iPhone app store is a great example. The launch applications were typically very simple and could be duplicated in the widget model proposed here. People very willing to pay. Also evidence that personalisation content is worth a significant premium - I Am Rich app, which cost $US999, was downloaded 9 times before Apple pulled it from the store

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why mobile?

• Screen size

• New frontier: link OS and browser

• Pervasive use

• Also applies to desktop widgets/site specific browsers

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Everything that I’ve said thus far could apply equally well to desktop widgets and single site browsers. However I think there’s a better opportunity in mobile. Why? (1) it’s not yet a fully established platform (Pew Internet Report - only 30% of Americans under 30 with phones are using mobile internet), so there’s scope to bring something new to users. (2) screen size means that you can’t have complex pages open - cut down widget front ends make much more sense in this context (3) The ownership wars for who owns the OS and who owns the browser are still being fought, so the opportunity to do something that tightly couples the device and the browser is much greater on mobile, and (4) the context of use of mobile is uniquely suited to push updates (because it’s always with you - your personal notifier device) and brief glances into data (because users don’t tend to have dedicated web browsing sessions)

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some caveats

• To be successful, need:

• Cross platform, standards based

• Developer ecosystem

• Easy to use store

• Security model

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To be successful a standard needs to emerge to enable developers to develop easily. Widgets are fundamentally niche products, so it only by supporting the developer community that the range of widgets required to appeal to mass market audiences will be developed. Store is important as mentioned before. This requires an identity model and a micropayments model - both difficult things. Security is crucially important - any way of accessing a webpage without typing in the URL is vulnerable to phishing, so that needs to be fixed. Also access to device APIs needs to be tightly controlled from a security point of view.

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questions?

Thanks for listening :)

www.twitter.com/cathye | [email protected]

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