Stevens Interactive

Providing web, game, mobile and ui design and development services since 1996.

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Kiosks - The amazing hardware to content shift 15 years in the making.

When we started in 1996, one of the areas that we enjoyed the most and loved to direct our focus was interactive kiosk development. These projects were few and far between for several reasons. Fifteen years ago there were only a few areas that these type of installations made sense. Places like museums and aquariums that provided additional content to the static or living exhibits were ideal places for an interactive kiosk. However, the majority of the content development for these establishments were either done in-house or on a shoe-string budget. Let’s assume the average budget for an installation is around $10,000. Which brings me to the first reason - hardware. Hardware for installations in 1996 were so expensive that it ate up the lion’s share of the budget. Consider that a PC that is less powerful the the majority of smart phones on today’s market cost around $5,000. That doesn’t even include the input device or a monitor. Does anyone remember how deep and how heavy a 21” CRT monitor was? Or how awkward using a trackball the size of your head was to control a cursor? It was less than ideal to use, but worse, it also added at least another $2000 to the price of the hardware set up. That is 70% of our assumed budget before we even start developing an application. Enter 2011. At Stevens Interactive, we recently purchased a set of testing hardware that we use for all of our touchscreen development projects. It consists of a Lenovo IdeaCenter PC attached (with the included bracket) to the back of an Acer T230H 23” touchscreen monitor on a desktop swing arm mount to allow for rotation to either portrait or landscape orientation. It is the ideal testing platform for any HD capable touch enabled application and it cost less than $700. For those keeping score that is 10% of the hardware costs from 15 years ago for an infinitely more powerful machine and the ability to interact with a larger (and flat) screen tossing out the trackball altogether. Here is where the numbers make an important shift. The assumed $10,000 budget that in 1996 dedicated 30% to content development can now dedicate 90%. The result is better, more engaging and more effective content being delivered to end users. To magnify this discrepancy also consider that the software tools that were used in 1996 to create this content were infantile compared to today’s wide ranging suite of tools. This reduction in hardware costs and advancement in development software allows the interactive kiosk to break free from limited locations and be placed in more everyday situations. Consider this article from The Economist. Out-of-home advertising, once the domain of posters and billboards, is now being invaded by interactive digital content and is now the second largest segment of advertising behind Internet and ahead of Radio, TV, Newspapers and Magazines. After 15 years of experience developing kiosks, I believe that it is finally going mainstream. Lower hardware costs and increasingly more powerful software tools will get better content in front of more people in new and exciting locations. This is good news for advertisers and even better news for developers like us who are already seeing an uptick in the number of kiosk projects.

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Google trying to close Pandora’s box

After touting the advantages of their Android operating system and its’ open architecture, Google is finally starting to see the darker side of open systems. The mere fact that Android is open means that anyone can implement it in any manner. This can get very frustrating to the consumer (and the manufacturers when you take it away). Most consumers don’t have the time to figure out what hardware spec they need nor do they want to have to. They believe that if they go and pick up a pre-paid android phone from the local grocery store that it should run all the same apps and have the same experience as the HTC Thunderbolt (or whatever is top of the line by the time I finish writing this). Google is starting to see that users are getting frustrated by the fact that buying an Android phone does not guarantee the same experience across all Android devices. Recently, Google completely closed the Android Honeycomb Tablet OS and is now starting to put restrictions on phone manufacturers. This is in addition to an "anti-fragmentation tool" they released about a month ago. I talked about this in a previous entry because it is painfully obvious to developers like us that have lived through a decade of mobile development that if you don’t set limits you can’t guarantee a consistent experience for your users. And for that, your users will leave for something more reliable. Hopefully, Google is learning from the fragmentation mistakes of others. Microsoft, Nokia, we're looking in your direction.

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iPad2 lines 10 days later. Amazing!

I popped in to the Durham, NC Apple Store this afternoon to check the availability of the iPad 2. I was aware that stores have been receiving "blind shipments" on a daily basis. This means that the store (nor the shopping public) knows how many or what configurations have arrived in the shipping crates sent to the retail location.

It was recommended to me that if I want to pick one up to be there at 7:00 am because by the time they open there is a line around the outside of the store. I know the demand is high and supply is short but 10 days after launch people are still getting up early and waiting in line for one? I am amazed, surprised, and overjoyed as an Apple developer and user.

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You too can be an Android developer, but can you remain one?

So you want to be an Android developer, eh? Great, where do you make money? How do you sustain a business when the majority of Android users refuse to pay for content? You don’t have to look far to realize that the revenue model for developers is completely different on iOS and Google’s Android platforms. Let’s take Angry Birds for example. It is selling for $.99 on Apple’s AppStore for iPhone and $4.99 for the HD iPad version. As a developer, the revenue stream is a cut and dry 70% of sales. The same game is available on the Android Market for free and uses an ad supported model presumably because the Android Nation won't shell out the buck for a quality product. I am a firm believer that when you install an ad based revenue model it dilutes the experience for the end user. If your ads are implemented in a way that doesn’t impact the experience than the ads are ineffective. Once implemented correctly, is it really worth it to a user to sit for 15-30 seconds between levels to see an ad just so we as developers can stay in existence? Well, that IS the catch. With ads the experience becomes cumbersome and disjointed making it less enjoyable and diminishing its’ value. That results in fewer replays, fewer ad impressions, fewer click-throughs, less revenue. Now, I’m not going to say that everyone needs to pay for apps because I believe that everyone makes a choice as to what is valuable to them. Maybe, that $.99 is better spent on 1/4 gallon of gas or a few cups of milk. However, if you do think these apps add value to your life, pay for them. If nobody pays for Android apps, the developers that create quality products are going to migrate to the platform that makes them the most money. Simple economics. Don’t let all your iPhone friends get all the cool stuff. Support your developer community.

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C’mon Google. We’ve been here before... and it didn’t turn out well.

Before anyone gets worked up about open systems vs. Apple’s managed environment keep in mind that I am writing this from a production point of view. I’ve been down the device fragmentation road and having to create iteration after iteration to reach all the devices on a certain OS. This was going on in the ‘90s and it is happening again. I know Google has no desire to tell folks how to implement their OS. They only care that it lands on as many devices as possible because it supports their core search business. Google is leaving it up to device manufacturers to set standards for themselves which is counter-intuitive. As a matter of principle manufacturers will do anything and everything to be different from their competitors and devise elaborate marketing promoting why their differences are better than their competition. Add to this the rush to market to catch the iPhone’s momentum compounded by the component shortage caused by the smartphone explosion and you end up with first-run devices that get quickly replaced by another model, then another, then another. Each one with a better processor, higher resolution screen, more memory and so on. Starting to sound familiar? It is 1997 all over again. Say what you will about the App Store and Apple’s ecosystem but for developers, we are targeting two device generations at a time, at most. Android's device fragmentation is growing exponentially as more devices are introduced over such a short period of time. How is a developer supposed to reach the entire Android Nation? In short, we can’t. And it is not just because of fragmentation. More on where to buy apps later.

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Mobile Platform: Fruit of the tree.

In 1997, I was fortunate enough to be the Producer (and lead artist) on the first commercially released game title for the Windows CE platform. If you are not familiar with CE, it was a platform used in many Personal Data Assistants (PDA) manufactured by HP and Compaq among others and a lot of embedded systems. This experience gave me an early peek at the mobile world and the challenges that it needed to overcome. Unfortunately, it has taken over a decade and a device that came out of the blue to settle things down. While Windows was battling with Palm and Blackberry for mobile OS share, none of them realized that they were fragmenting the public. They just wanted more market share and tried to one-up each other. This made it incredibly difficult for the masses to decide which platform buy into, so the majority just didn’t. Apple on the other hand was able to see that outside of the techno-geeks and hardcore work-a-holics the public remained unimpressed with mobile computing.  Back to ’97 for a moment. While developing this game was a blast it also had its technological hurdles. Each device we were targeting had its' own set of unique specs. We had to accommodate for ARM and MiPS processors, graphics that ranged from 2 color up to 16 bit, multiple screen resolution and multiple screen aspect ratios. You’d like to think that we have come a long way since then but sadly, no. Not until the iPhone came along, anyway. About a year ago we completed a mobile game project that targeted a large international audience. At the time we started the project Nokia was the major international player with regard to handset penetration and thus we targeted Nokia’s devices. We already knew the hurdles we’d need to overcome. Just as in ’97, we still needed to accommodate a number of different devices all with different device specs. I found myself wondering how technology innovation seemed to bypass mobile devices for a decade. This is not a slam on Nokia by any means, all device manufacturers were the same way. Reviving my Fruit Tree metaphor from my last entry we now see that the mature fruit is Apple’s iPhone. (Bad pun, I know, sorry) It is the one device that consumers gravitate to because the technology is presented in an easy and useful way. For many developers this is great news. One platform, one set of specs, one development cycle to reach millions of potential customers. From a developer’s perspective we overcame a decade of stagnation and device fragmentation with the drop of an apple (last one, promise). Or did we... Next time, repeating history.

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Technology Maturation: Early fruit is not always consumable.

Being involved in media development since the mid-‘90s has given me an interesting perspective on the industry. Until recently, technological jargon has been reserved for conversations between colleagues and other tech-heads. But now it seems to be integrating with the social norm. I find my self talking about Flash, Photoshop, 3D animation, video encoding, HTML5 and CSS in day to day conversations and I’m not getting as many of those blank stares. You know the stare that says, “I have no idea what you just said, but go on”. Or, “I wish you’d stop talking because you are boring me to sleep”. Yeah those stares. When the mainstream catches on to technology like this it means something incredible is happening for developers, the industry itself is maturing and stabilizing. As a developer, we always strive to be on the cutting edge of where technology is going. But at the same time we have to temper our enthusiasm until we see how that technology presents itself to the public. Building technologically advanced products is a lot like growing fruit trees. When a tree first starts out it really produces no fruit and we invest a lot of labor training and working with the tree to help it mature. As time moves forward we see the fruits of our labor and dream about the possibilities for that early fruit that we worked so hard to produce and realize that they are just not ready for consumers. So we set them aside hoping their seeds will start a new generation of fruit some time down the road. What the tech industry is experiencing now is the maturation of the tree. The perfect example is the mobile platform... we’ll talk about that next time.

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