reDesign mobile

June 23, 2011

Why the foursquare and American Express deal is really big

Filed under: deals, foursquare, mobile — Rocky Agrawal @ 7:45 am

Screenshots from foursquare's AMEX integration

Foursquare’s new deal with American Express will allow AMEX cardholders to save money on purchases at select retailers including Sports Authority and H&M. As important as the deal is, I think the technology is more important.

We’ve heard a lot about NFC lately. Products like Google Wallet can talk to the payments network and transmit your credit card, loyalty program and promotion information.

I’m sure it will happen over time, but the benefits are marginal at best. Yawn.

What’s really exciting is what you could do if you flipped the model and had the payment networks talk to your phone. That’s exactly what foursquare is doing. When you redeem an offer, American Express sends a confirmation to your phone.

The payment network can reach out and touch your phone. That’s huge. That enables a lot of possibilities:

  • Risk reduction and increased convenience. If you’ve ever been traveling and had a card rejected because it was flagged as suspicious, you know how frustrating this can be. Instead of declining the transaction, it would be routed to your phone where you could authorize it. This also saves a phone call to unblock your account. Fraud reduction, more transaction volume and operations cost reduction. A credit card company’s trifecta.
  • Online transaction authorization. Similar to above, a notification to your phone could be used as secondary verification of online transactions.
  • Parental authorization. Parents could provide a restricted prepaid card to children. On every transaction, they could remotely approve or deny it. Some merchants could be automatically authorized. This would be a great addition to American Express’s PASS product line.
  • Promotions. Offers based on your recent purchases and location could be sent while you’re in a shopping mood. If you just made a purchase at mall, you might get an offer for discounts on dinner and a movie.
  • Access for the blind. A text-to-speech engine on the phone could provide an overview of the merchant and amount to help the blind.

An application like this also eliminates the two-sided market problem that NFC has. As much as Google would like to have NFC terminals everywhere, that will take a long, long time. Merchants don’t have to do anything to the installed terminal infrastructure to make this happen. It’s all between the backend and your phone. It also works with a much broader base of phones than NFC.

This type of integration also eliminates the need for training retail employees and doing POS integration. These are both significant hurdles to running promotions.

June 12, 2011

The importance of staff training and POS integration

Filed under: foursquare, mobile, mobile search, square — Rocky Agrawal @ 8:00 am

foursquare offer at RadioShack

I stopped in at Radio Shack last week to take advantage of foursquare’s 20% off newbie special on an iPod Touch. (It’s a great deal. 20% off a current generation Apple product is tough to find.)

The clerk I talked to had no idea what I was talking about. He reluctantly brought over the manager. She had no idea what I was talking about. She stared at the offer on the screen and couldn’t figure it out. She tried calling another store. Again, no idea what was going on. Then she called Radio Shack’s POS support line and was on hold for about 20 minutes.

If I were an ordinary customer, I would have been fed up and left. But I like to see how these things play out and consider it market research, so I let it go on. I amused myself as the manager spent her time on hold trying to sell me batteries, extended warranties, screen protectors, armbands and pretty much anything else that was within reach.

I asked if she could just override the system and add the discount. No, store managers don’t have that discount. Finally, she randomly entered promotion codes and figured it out.

Thirty minutes after I entered the store I left with my iPod. During that time she couldn’t help other customers. It was’t a great experience for me, the other customers, the store or foursquare.

Clearly the offer code was not a single use code or she wouldn’t have been able to guess it. Either Radio Shack needs to get much better at training or they need to put POS instructions right on the foursquare offer. (They also need to better staff their POS support desk. No one ever picked up.)

This isn’t limited to foursquare or Radio Shack. I run into this all of the time when trying to redeem mobile offers. My default expectation is that it won’t go smoothly.

That’s one thing that appeals to me about Square’s Card Case and Register. Because the POS system is integrated with loyalty rewards and promotions, here shouldn’t be a disconnect between the offer that I see on my screen and what the merchant sees on hers.

May 31, 2011

Opt in vs. opt out in tipping

Filed under: mobile, payments, square — Rocky Agrawal @ 11:51 am
To tip or not to tip

To tip or not to tip?, that is the question

The tip line. A somewhat passive-aggressive solicitation for money. It’s long been the norm at full-service restaurants, but it also appears at many places where I wouldn’t ordinarily tip. If I order and pick up my food at the counter, a tip seems unnecessary. If I pay cash, there is no default expectation of a tip. (Though there might be an easily ignored tip jar somewhere.) But paying by credit card, the tip is closer to an opt out. I have to explicitly draw a line through the tip line and write in a total. I’ll admit to tipping at places I wouldn’t ordinarily tip because of the subtle pressure. Sometimes I’ll pay with cash to avoid the situation.

Changes in payment systems are changing this dynamic. Increasingly, credit card companies aren’t requiring signatures for low-value transactions. With MasterCard’s Quick Payment Service, transactions under $50 can be processed without a signature. It’s faster for the consumer, moves the line quicker, but removes the opportunity to tip on plastic.

Square’s payment service offers a tip option:

Square's tip button is off to the side

This implementation is the equivalent of the physical tip jar: if you go through the normal transaction flow and just sign, there is no tip. You have to explicitly click the box in the upper right corner to add a tip. (I haven’t seen what the tip experience is like with Square’s new Card Case.)

Is that the right experience? It depends on whom you ask.

One merchant I talked to would prefer that the tip was part of the default transaction flow, as it is with a credit card slip. On a $5 food cart transaction, even a $1 tip is huge. As a consumer, I prefer the opt in experience. As a product designer, this is a great example of how even small changes can have big impacts.

Either way, the customer doesn’t have to do math. That’s already a huge improvement over the paper experience.

May 23, 2011

What Square’s new Register and Card Case means for small businesses

Filed under: local search, mobile, square, wireless — Rocky Agrawal @ 12:19 pm

Square today announced its Register and Card Case products to complement the existing Square reader and smartphone applications. While Square has been focused on the merchant experience, this move expands its role on the consumer side. (Consumers have been able to receive receipts by email or text message when making purchases at Square merchants.)

With the new application, customers will be able to search for nearby Square merchants, see what’s on their menu and view receipts for previous transactions. Customers can also pay right from their mobile phone and the payment is confirmed on the merchant’s iPad.

Merchants will have the ability to accept a payment without swiping a card. They can also keep better track of what they’re selling. A loyalty program allows businesses to reward loyal customers. Unlike check in based systems which involve users to self-report, this system would be harder to cheat.

One open question is whether these transactions will be treated as card present transactions for Square. I expect that Square will charge merchants the swipe rate for these transactions. If they’re paying out the card-not-present rates, this will eat into their margins.

What we’re seeing here is only the beginning. There are a lot of important problems that can be solved with the data that Square will be collecting:

Consumer problems

  • It’s 2 a.m. and I’m hungry. What’s open? This is a problem that search generally handles poorly. Yelp has done the best job of collecting this among anyone I’ve seen. (Google tries, but its data is less comprehensive.) Even when the data are collected, they are often inaccurate. (Holidays, business was slow so we closed early, etc.) The Square Register could contain a virtual Open and Closed indicator that is visible to consumers.
  • I have a craving for a dosa. Where can I get one? With menu item data, Square could answer that question — at least for its merchants.
  • I have a receipt, but I can’t remember who I was with. The Square app could allow users to flag tax-related transactions and record notes like who you ate with.
  • I want to tell someone about a place I ate at, but can’t remember the name. (And want credit.) People are generally bad at remembering place names. Merchants could also offer rewards for new customer referrals, much like online merchants do.
  • I’m in a hurry and I need an order to go. Consumers could order right from their mobile phones, the order would pop up on the merchant’s screen and the merchant could select an estimated pickup time. For the merchant, this also reduces the risk of nonpayment for phone orders that aren’t picked up.

Merchant problems

  • Updating Web sites is hard. Most local business Web sites I go to are horribly out-of-date. Menu items and pricing can be more than a year old. Hours are often wrong. Maps are hard to find. Square could take the data from the Register system and generate Web pages with dynamic information, including today’s specials and hours. Some card issuers and payment processors have offered Web site creation, but these have mostly been low quality efforts.
  • I don’t have a mobile presence. Very few local businesses have dedicated mobile sites. At best, you get a hard-to-read version of the main site. At worst, you see sites created by incompetent flash designers who knew nothing about user experience. These render blank on an iPhone. Square-generated mobile Web pages would provide easy access to key info such as location, hours and menus. Google says about 40% of searches on mobile devices are local in nature — as a result, this is becoming increasingly critical.
  • I don’t have time to enter data multiple times. Square could also generate a PDF that could be printed for in-store menus. Data entered once gets used for POS, paper menus, Web site, mobile site and promotions. This not only saves on work, it eliminates inconsistencies which can cause customer service problems. Getting a bit crazier and thinking further out into the future, a Square app on an Apple TV could show promotions in store.
  • I want to get people to try new items. Square could use transaction history to entice regular customers to try things on the menu that they haven’t tried before. With promotions, you want to spend your promotion dollars on transactions that wouldn’t happen otherwise. Paper coupons are dumb in this regard. Say you’ve got a raspberry tart that you think is amazing. You could find all of the customers who haven’t ordered it and send them a promotion.
  • I want to know what my customers think of me. An email after the fact could prompt users for feedback and generating a net promoter score. It can also be a way of drumming up more business. For example: “Would you recommend us to a friend?” If the customer says, no, you can ask why. If yes, you can ask for friends right then and there. “Whom would like to recommend us to?” The referral can be coded so that the business can thank the original customer for the referral. A Square app could also provide more actionable data than the typical Yelp review — a restaurant would know when they ate, what they ordered, etc. This would make it easier to identify problem employees or dishes.
  • I want to know how I’m doing compared with other businesses in my area. I charge $3.50 for a slice of pizza. How does that compare with others? How does my revenue compare? Of course, this all needs to be done in a way that protects business anonymity. Data would only be available when there is enough participation so that a single businesses’ information can’t be identified. Participation should be opt in, with the carrot being access to data. The key here is that data needs to be in a meaningful context. I’ve seen many startups that just want to throw data at businesses. That’s not good enough. Square will also need to answer the “So what?” What decisions should I make based on that data?

See also:

March 27, 2011

Color me impressed — the big idea behind Color

Filed under: apple, color, google, mobile, mobile search — Rocky Agrawal @ 4:36 pm

There’s been a lot of head scratching in the past week about Color having raised $41 million for another photo sharing application. One questioner on Quora asked “How does the Color photography app compare to Picplz, Path and Instagram?”

Although on the surface, Color seems to be another mobile photo sharing app, it is really the first incarnation of a ubiquitous location-aware sensor network.

Today’s cell phones are in many ways more powerful than laptops and desktops because they are packed with sensors. A modern smartphone has GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, compass, gryoscope, light sensor, microphone and camera — at a minimum. All of these data can capture data to be analyzed.

Ever wonder how Google can show you traffic on side streets? It’s by crunching location data sent out by Android phones. Skyhook Wireless has used its WiFi location look up system to create visualizations that correlate location with time of day. (Scroll down on that page to watch a video of user flows in and out of Manhattan.)

Color is trying to take all of those inputs and layer social networks on to them.

If Color’s vision is fully realized (or my vision of Color’s vision), we can expect to see applications like these:

  • Breaking news. By detecting abnormal usage spikes, Color could quickly identify where news is happening. Because the app is automatically location aware, it’s possible to distinguish between people who are actually at the scene and those elsewhere who may be reacting to the event. See my post Adding Color to breaking news.
  • Security line timers. Get accurate times for various security checkpoints. Copenhagen International Airport is deploying technology that will use WiFi signals to track passenger traffic flows.
  • Race finders. Marathons and similar events today use chips to track runners. Imagine that Color is able to identify all of the spectators and runners with the app during Bay to Breakers. Based on your previous social interactions, Color would know who your favorite runners are. Not only would you be able to track their position on a map, you’d be able to zero in on the pictures that are being taken in the vicinity of those runners. It would also be able to provide you a map to reconnect after the race.
  • Person-to-person transactions. Going to a game at AT&T Park, but don’t have a ticket? Fire up Color and see people nearby who have tickets for sale. Tickets from people you know would be prioritized. Instead of sitting next to strangers, you might end up next to friends who have an extra seat.
  • Person recognizer. This could be a huge boon to people with a poor memory for faces. The person at the party looks vaguely familiar. You know you’ve seen them before, but you’re too embarrassed to ask for the name. Pull up previous interactions and find out their name and the contexts in which you’ve met.
  • Bar finder. When I go out, I often have a mood in mind. I may want to be really social or I may want to chill. With Color, I could pull up a bar and see what the feel is right now by looking through the photostream. If there are no pictures, I could potentially ping someone there and ask them to take to a picture. (It gives new meaning to “Would you mind taking a picture for me?”) Foursquare is providing a variant of this with Foursquare 3.0′s recommendations.
  • Search and rescue. Missions could be tracked automatically, making for more efficient operations. Pictures from a location could be used to identify victims, discover who may still be missing and to notify next of kin.
  • CalTrain tracker. Instead of the horribly inaccurate data provided by CalTrain, Color users would automatically crowdsource the data. You wouldn’t even have to check manually for updates. They would be automatically pushed to you.

That’s the grand vision. In order for Color to accomplish any of these things, it will have to reach large scale. This is a challenge because Color is a seaparte application and not built in to the OS. Google can use Android phones to detect traffic because it’s baked into the OS. Likewise, Google and Apple get location and WiFi network information based on other things that people do on their devices.

Color needs to create an application that provides enough value that people launch it and enable all of those sensors. The application that’s out right now falls short of that goal. It doesn’t deliver an instant wow experience and by most accounts is confusing. Color has tremendous potential, we just need to see that demonstrated better.

See also:

March 20, 2011

CNN testing QR codes on TV

Filed under: mobile, mobile search, ui, usability — Rocky Agrawal @ 12:49 pm

CNN began testing QR codes on air this weekend to direct people to a site where they can help Japanese earthquake and tsunami victims.

CNN QR code

The code was easy to scan, even without pausing the broadcast. It worked fine from across the room. Just launch a barcode scanner and it will decode the URL and give you the option to open it in the browser. If you have a scanner, you can scan it off the image above. If not, click to go to the Impact Your World mobile site.

This is a great implementation of the often over-hyped QR-code technology. Print ads have occasionally featured QR codes which take you to an advertiser’s URL.

Some other applications I’d like to see:

  • In movie trailers. Scan it and it gets added to your movies to see list, possibly with a calendar entry dropped on the release date. Or an option to add to your Netflix queue for movies that are less interesting.
  • In TV promos. Scan it and it gets added to your recordings list. (The better implementation would be that the DVR itself would recognize a tag and prompt you.)
  • In TV commercials and on billboards. Scan to go to the advertiser’s site.
  • On CNN. Scan to get more information on a story.

QR-codes have a number of advantages over other technologies. They are free to generate, don’t require any hardware beyond a camera, hold more data than a standard bar code, are easy to replicate, work across a distance and have a built-in call-to-action (scan me!). QR-codes can also hold structured data; scanning the QR code on Rakeshagrawal.com will load up my contact information.

But it’s not the ultimate technology for every application. As much as people in the technology industry like to claim that one technology will take everything, that rarely happens.

Artwork at MoMA scanned with Google Goggles

Artwork at MoMA scanned with Google Goggles. In this case, it was a scan of a picture of the painting on flickr.

Here are some other applications where other technologies work just as well or better.

  • Identifying artwork. Many paintings in the MoMA’s collection can be identified just by taking a picture of it with Google Goggles. Let’s face it, QR codes are ugly. They’re designed to be easily readable by machines, not to be pretty. I should point out that the wacky kids in Dubai are trying to turn them into architecture with a QR-code hotel. Still, it’s not my taste in architecture.
  • Payments. Because they are easy to reproduce, QR codes (and bar codes in general) aren’t well suited for payment applications. They only work when you don’t really care about security.
  • Scanning books or products. One discussion that came up recently was using QR codes in stores like Barnes & Noble to identify whether a book is available in nook format. That’s overkill — you can do this perfectly well with the bar code already printed on the book. Heck, you can take a picture of the cover and that’ll work.
  • Print ads. URLs can be detected with simple OCR software. No need to clutter your creative with an ugly QR code. The key here is to use a simple font against a high contrast background and leave space around it. That’s a good practice anyway to ensure that human eyes can read it.
  • Checking in to a business. WiFi and GPS positioning do a reasonably good job of this without requiring businesses to do any extra work. This could be improved, but it works OK.
Plain text URLs work just fine in Google Goggles.

Plain text URLs work just fine in Google Goggles.

February 3, 2011

AT&T’s 180,000% markup

Filed under: mobile, travel, wireless — Rocky Agrawal @ 2:45 pm

One of the challenges of international travel is getting access to communications. I’ve gotten used to being able to check email, look up restaurants, find maps and communicate with friends from anywhere in the U.S.

Take your iPhone overseas and all of this can get really expensive, really fast.

At AT&T’s pay-per-use rates, you’re charged $19.97 per MB. It’s cheaper to buy and send a physical post card to friends than it is to send a digital picture.

The only way around that is to buy a local SIM and use it on an unlocked iPhone. This process varies from country to country and can be quite a challenge if you don’t speak the local language. It also means that you don’t have coverage the moment you step off the plane.

I got lucky on my recent trip to Italy. The first store I walked into had a clerk who spoke English and understood what I needed. For 2 Euros ($2.76) a week*, I got up to 250 MB of data usage. At AT&T’s a la carte rates, that same usage would run $4,992. If you plan ahead, you can get 200MB for the low, low price of $199.

Even ripoff hotel minibars only charge 3x-4x street costs for convenience.

AT&T’s data markups are even way out of line with its international voice roaming rates. With voice,  AT&T actually provides some value in that phone calls to your number get routed by AT&T to your phone overseas. With data, the only convenience over a local SIM is that you don’t have to seek out a local provider.

The pricing is so absurd that the only people who would do this are business travelers who must be connected at all times, the fabulously wealthy or everyday customers who don’t understand the charges and will further resent AT&T when they get the bill.

AT&T’s the company that pioneered Digital OneRate, which eliminated nationwide roaming charges. I’d like to see them do something rational for international roaming.

* For comparison, this is also much less than AT&T charges for domestic data usage. With a contract, AT&T charges $15 for 200 MB of data. This works out to about $11 for 5 times as much data.

February 2, 2011

How to pay at Starbucks using your Android phone

Filed under: android, apple, lbs, mobile, mobile search, payments — Rocky Agrawal @ 1:57 pm
Android-enabled Starbucks mobile payment device.

Android-enabled Starbucks mobile payment device.

Starbucks made a lot of noise recently with the launch of mobile payments in the United States for iPhone and Blackberry users. As an Android user, I felt left out (as is often the case.) But there’s a way to use your Android phone to pay for your coffee. Here are the steps:

  1. Borrow a friend’s iPhone or iPod Touch.
  2. Set up your account and enter your Starbucks card information.
  3. Go to the “Cards” screen and click “Touch to Pay”.
  4. Take a screenshot of the bar code that appears. (Hold the power and home buttons.)
  5. Email the screenshot to yourself.
  6. Print the screenshot. (I printed it at 35% zoom to get the right size.)
  7. Cut-and-paste (physically) the bar code to the back of your Android phone.

Viola! Mobile payment device.

It’s even better than the iPhone app: it’s quicker (no need to find and launch the app and click a button) and it works even when the battery is dead.

It lacks a lot of features. You can’t find the nearest Starbucks, reload your card or see your transaction history. But for the most common task of paying for coffee, it is the optimal experience. It would be nice if Starbucks stored your preference on whether to print receipts, but that’s an issue with either method.

This illustrates one of the key challenges facing mobile payment systems that are emerging: in their desire to get our money, banks and retailers have already made paying for things incredibly simple. Swiping a credit card is just.not.that.hard.

Any digital wallet will have to be just as simple. Launching various applications, digging through menus and entering security codes are all steps that add friction to the purchase process.

Apple, Google and others entering the NFC/mobile payments game would do well to have standardized interfaces to flip among payment, library, transit and access cards versus having every app developer design interfaces as he sees fit. These could be tied to location — if you’re at Starbucks, the Starbucks card automatically shows up first.

September 30, 2010

Mobile and the improving user interface

Filed under: mobile, ui, wireless — Rocky Agrawal @ 8:41 pm
The zero-click experience in the Happy Hours app.

The zero-click experience in the Happy Hours app.

Some of the best user interfaces being created today are on mobile devices. I often find myself reaching for my cell phone instead of my laptop when I need a hit of information. Common tasks such as looking up a business, buying movie tickets or checking email are often faster on mobile devices.

The best example of this is the Happy Hours app. Launch the app and after a few seconds it will show you the nearest happy hour specials sorted by distance that are going on right now. No input required.

Why are mobile interfaces better?

  • Access to sensors such as GPS. The Happy Hours app on my phone knows where I’m at. On the Web, at best it can guess what city I’m in.
  • Limited screen real estate. People often feel the need to fill whitespace. Nothing else to put there? How about some more remnant ads? With mobile, there is less whitespace to fill.
  • No SEO. The app itself doesn’t have to be filled with links for search engine crawlers. At least half of the GoTime.com home page (the company behind the Happy Hours app) is links for crawlers.

August 20, 2010

Facebook Places is at the beginning of a long road

Filed under: facebook, foursquare, geotagging, lbs, mobile, twitter, wireless — Tags: — Rocky Agrawal @ 8:39 am
Facebook Places on the iPhone

Facebook Places on the iPhone

Facebook’s much awaited Places product finally launched this week. It’s the first step toward bringing friend finding to the masses.

People have been using Facebook to do this for years; posting their location in freeform status updates that their friends can read and comment on. (e.g. “heading to Cambridge for dinner.”) By turning that freeform text into structured location data, Facebook can make that data more useful.

From an iPhone or HTML5-capable mobile device, you can check in to a place, such as a restaurant, bar, movie theater, airport. You can also leave a message with the check in. The check in is posted to your wall and may appears in friends’ news feeds. On the mobile side, you can see a list of your friends and where they’ve checked in. Clicking on a place will show you details of the place, including a map and who has checked in.

The initial release is fairly simple. In fact, it’s not that much more useful than the freeform status updates.

Facebook is entering a very crowded space with competitors such as foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Google Latitude, Whrrl and Twitter. Many of those products are much more robust. Facebook’s key advantage is the size of its social graph: within the past 24 hours, 18 of my friends have checked in.

There are many opportunities for improvement to Facebook Places:

  • Basic UI. Check ins are sorted by time, not distance. A friend checking in 2,000 miles away 2 minutes ago is less relevant than someone checking in 2 miles away 5 minutes ago. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the city isn’t shown. Considering that many people use Facebook to keep track of friends all around the world, this is a significant issue. Foursquare has a separate bucket of “Friends in other cities.” Update: Facebook now has a separate grouping of nearby friends.
  • Map view. Often, visualizing your friends on a map is much easier than scanning a list. Foursquare already offers this.
  • Visiting friends. Out of town friends who are in town aren’t indicated. One of the big potential values of social friend finding is discovering when friends are in town. If a friend from far away is visiting, I’m more inclined to want to get together than someone who lives in town.
  • Pictures. There is no way to associate a picture with a check in. Given the difficulty in typing on mobile devices, often a picture gives a lot more information. These pictures could also be used to build a much more robust Place page.
  • Pushing location. Sending people your location via SMS is tedious. You have to address the message, type out where you are. If they don’t know where it is, they have to pull up a map or text you back for directions. With Places, it would be easy to push a notification to friends with where you are, complete with map. This could be sent as a push notification on iPhones or as an SMS with a URL for other phones.

As with most Facebook product launches, questions of privacy come up. In general, I think Facebook has done a good job with the default privacy settings on Places. You must explicitly check in; there is no background tracking.

Only your friends can see where you’ve checked in. Unfortunately, my social graph on Facebook wasn’t designed with location in mind. When I decided whether or not to accept friend requests on foursquare, I used a tighter filter than on Facebook. Now, I’ll have to go back through Facebook friends and create a list of who should have access to location. (See Post technology columnist Rob Pegoraro’s piece on how he classifies his friends.) Yes, old high school friends have been known to burgle homes based on Facebook updates. If that worries you, watch Rob’s video on how to adjust your privacy settings for Places.

The one big complaint I have with the privacy defaults is that your friends can check you into a location without your permission.

See also:

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