Author Archive
BBC Labs Days 2 & 3 – Users, the BBC and a mind reading bat called Plasma…
It’s nice to be on Welsh turf and as with many Welsh web related gatherings there are some familiar faces. The guys from Cube are here with their idea for following news stories, and are also blogging their experience and Peter Gill & Associates are here trying to bring ‘new music to the masses’.
Day two was spent focusing on the users, we worked on personas, their experience of using our service and how it effects and works with their day-to-day life.
Working with a mentor and another team (we had the help of Matt Cashmore who is organising the labs and CMS Video with their ‘Play Music’ project) this exercise gave us a real insight into what the user needs and stands to benefit from signing up to our service. However it also gave us a couple of things to think about and demonstrated that we still have a bit of work to do before Friday.
We also found out yesterday why the BBC warned us about our idea being pulled apart. I think two days of ‘constructive critisism’ started to take its toll on a couple of the teams (ourselves included!) but we’ve been assured that by Friday we’ll be glad that it happened and will see the benefits…
Day 3
Day three of the labs, the sun is shining in Llangammarch Wells and it’s commissioner day. This morning we split off into our teams to go to and do a bit of fine tuning before we get a half hour with the commissioners this afternoon. The attitude today is slightly more positive and I think that some of the teams are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel!
As for us, our idea is growing…
We’re also learning a little bit more about our mentors, Frank Boyd (who has been great) did a magic act involving a mind reading vampire bat called Plasma once upon a time, who I’m hoping will make an appearance later today as I’m sure mind reading skills could be quite useful for the rest of the week!
*** Claire
Add comment April 30, 2008
Here’s to a future filled with ample parking spaces and better mobile phone apps…
I would like to take this opportunity to talk about Dan’s favourite subjects of journeys and serendipity. I found myself in Newport last night, not the most exotic of locations but I was there for a gig (the awesome Kooks to be precise). The doors opened at 7pm so leaving Cardiff at 5:45 I thought I’d have plenty of time to get myself in before the first support act came on.
For a change I was organised, before leaving the house I checked driving directions, traffic reports and parking facilities. Making good progress in rush hour traffic I found myself in Newport by 6:30, however what Google maps hasn’t told me is that half of the roads that I need to use are closed due to road works! Mild panic sets in but it’s OK because I’ve got half an hour until doors open and my trusty Cardiff and Newport road map which I never leave the house without, is at hand.
6:45pm – Making my way around the back streets and one-way systems of Newport, I decide to drop my boyfriend off at the venue so we at least get a decent place in the line, you see I can see the venue, but due to a couple of core road closures I can’t figure out how to get there, but it’s OK, I spot a tour bus with the support band still in it so I still feel positive I can still get there in time…
7:00pm – Doors are open and I have finally found my way to the venue, where the website tells me I can park for 50p… bargain! So I pull up, only to find the car park is closed as they are resurfacing it! But it’s OK, there’s a car park down the road so I set off back through the maze of back roads…
7:25pm – Five car parks later (all of which were full or closed) and I pull over (in a rather flustered state) to take a call from my boyfriend who is wondering where I am, I can hear music in the background and I’m cursing the promptness of sober bands, if I were going to see Amy Winehouse I’d be guaranteed that the gig would be delayed by at least an hour!
7:35pm – I finally find a free, legal parking space outside a chip shop and spend ten minutes stuffing anything that might resemble anything valuable into the boot… iPod, bag, empty McDonalds wrappers (well you can never be too careful). I then realise that having been driving in very odd circles for the best part of an hour that I actually have no idea where I am in relation to the venue, so I spend another ten minutes running around Newport feeling a bit like an unfit Anneka Rice in an episode of Treasure Hunt. Finally getting to the gig at about 8:00!
11:00pm – Upon leaving the gig I realise that I have absolutely no idea where the car is and spend another half an hour wandering around the streets of Newport looking for familiar chip shops…
As the only piece of technology that I carried around with me the whole night was my mobile phone I find myself thinking how much easier my journey would have been had my phone been able to tell me where the nearest car park was that had spaces, what roads were closed and alternative routes and used GPS to show my location (and indeed the location of my car). When I got to the venue it could tell me where my boyfriend was and if anyone else that was in my phone book was also at the gig, it could have warned me that it was going to be raining when the gig finished or the crime levels of the area that I’d parked in…
So, with the labs starting on Monday, I’m hoping for a relatively uneventful journey, with plenty of free parking spaces and hopefully a successful week!
*** Claire
Add comment April 25, 2008
Is the mobile web dying… or merely resting?
So advertising researchers have finally cracked it, no not my eternal question ‘why was the Cadbury Gorilla such a big deal?’ but how to reach that elusive 18 – 34 audience… male audience to be more specific.
A report released by M:Metrics this week (just in time for the Mobile Marketing Forum in London) finds that ‘young males are a rich target for mobile advertisers, as among mobile phone users 36 percent of 18 to 34-year-old men accessed mobile media in February. Men in this age group are also highly receptive to SMS advertising, with 9 percent responding to an SMS advert they received, versus a 4 percent market average.’
The figures speak for themselves and show that young consumers are redirecting their attentions to their mobile phones. According to M:Metrics 18 to 34 year olds comprise 56% of mobile media users, compared to only 29% of TV viewers.
I’m not surprised, in the not too distant future it won’t be obese children that parents need to worry about, or how to get them away from the TV… but I have a vision of rehab camps where teenagers are separated from their mobile phones, hospitals full of thumb injuries from over-zealous texting, Jeremy Kyle counseling young couples who pay more attention to their mobiles than their partners – yes the UK is breeding a generation of nomophobes! But hey, it could be worse, right?
Among Europeans the UK has the second highest mobile messaging audience at 86.9% of the total UK mobile audience, only just falling behind the Italians with 87.4% (and way ahead of the US with 48.6% – with an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry reporting that excessive text messaging may be a sign or mental illness with a high rate of relapse and in some cases requiring hospitalization!).
The M:Metrics figures are amazing, and as an ex-advertising gal I found them quite an eye opener. But I also found it quietly reassuring for our proposal that the mobile trend is growing and in particular mobile messaging as opposed to mobile media is an incredibly effective way of reaching your audience.
Ironic too that these results come in a week that is reporting that the mobile web is dead following the decline of mowser.com (a start-up that ‘translates’ websites into mobile-friendly versions) due to lack of demand.
I’m not so sure, I wouldn’t say the mobile web bubble has burst, but is merely waiting for the next ‘blow’ and thanks to the birth of the iPhone and Android I think the next year will see some incredible developments in the world of mobile phone technology, I’ll just wait for the text message telling me that it’s started…
*** Claire
1 comment April 16, 2008
Nomophobia (no… not a fear of gnomes)
Less than a month to go to the Labs. Dan and I are going to spend a week in an intensive workshop in deepest darkest mid Wales where our idea will be poked, prodded and ripped to shreds before we have to present the tattered remains to the BBC. So you would imagine it’s the fear of failure that wakes me up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, the fear of not being good enough… but you would be wrong, my biggest fear is ‘will I be able to get a signal on my phone?’
I would appear to be one of the 53% of mobile phone users suffering from ‘nomophobia’, no that’s not a fear of gnomes, but a fear of being out of mobile phone contact.
But it’s comforting that I’m not alone and also promising for the service that we’re proposing. Text messages, love them or loath them, are a great way of quickly communicating information to an audience. As they are ‘pushed’ out, we only have to rely on people;
a) having their phone switched on
b) having a signal and
c) checking their phone
If the user is expecting to receive a text message at a certain time then (a) and (c) shouldn’t be a problem, in fact as I mentioned in a previous post, the ‘reachability’ addictiveness means that those who would opt in for this service would be checking their phone on a regular basis anyway and the prospect of having their phone switched off would probably give them nightmares!
(b) however poses a slight problem as the information that we are distributing is time sensitive – getting an alert about traffic jams an hour after you have reached your destination wouldn’t be very helpful, in fact it could be confusing and annoying which would not promote the service.
But is this something that we need to worry about? In an age where the terms ‘nomophobia’ and ‘mobile junkies’ are being coined and mobile coverage is increasing, surely reachability shouldn’t be an issue…?
*** Claire
1 comment April 2, 2008
To text or not to text: when just enough becomes too much
I’m quite pleased that I have kicked (or at least cut down on) one of my more annoying and very unsociable habits. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that everyone is entitled to their vices but I was getting fed up of the looks that I was getting from my friends when we were on a night out, so I decided it was time to cut back…
I am of course referring to my addiction to text messaging!
Wikipedia tells me that a study at Queensland University in Australia found that text messaging is the most addictive digital service on mobile or internet (although I’m not sure if that is still the case, thanks to Facebook), and is equivalent in addictiveness to cigarette smoking.
However, there is a difference between receiving text messages from your mates, and receiving them from a company or service that you have subscribed to.
When I was buying a house I subscribed to text alerts from an estate agent, thinking that it would be helpful. But before long I was being bombarded with information on houses that just weren’t suitable, so after a while I started ignoring the texts.
I’m now quite wary of signing up to ‘SMS alerts’ through fear that my inbox will become full of mindless sales rubbish (rather than the mindless general rubbish that my friends send me!). So what would it take for me to sign up to a service again?
As our BBC project relies heavily on users subscribing to the alerts in the first place, and then actually paying attention to them – critical questions that we need to work out the answers to are ‘how do we persuade people that this is a service that they really need?’ and ‘how many text messages is too many’?
***Claire
Add comment March 27, 2008
A bit of background…
In November 2007, an elite team of two from Box UK attended the BBC Innovation Labs Launch day in Cardiff.
The BBC Labs are a series of creative workshops aimed at independent media companies with a track record of producing innovative new media & vision products. Split into 4 regions, each workshop offers ten companies an opportunity to work with BBC commissioners and other mentors during an intensive 5-day period to develop an idea and prepare a final pitch.
On 31 January 2008 Box UK submitted a series of proposals which competed with over 250 applications submitted UK wide for one of the coveted 40 workshop places.
Finally on Tuesday 4 March, after much page refreshing on our part, the nail biting was over when the BBC announced that we were one of the winners of the Wales and West Midlands lab.
We are overjoyed at getting such a fantastic opportunity and thought we’d use this blog to track our progress through fine tuning the idea and taking part in the labs. So, the question now is how do we make our idea so utterly fantastic that the BBC can’t refuse…
*** Claire
Add comment March 12, 2008
