YRB Brain Jam: Joel Brandt (Stanford) - Enabling A "Killer Ecology" in Mobile Computing May 11, 2007

(Free and open to the public - and followed at 4pm with a Social Jam that includes refreshments - and beer. It would be helpful if you mark attending/watching above).

Enabling A "Killer Ecology" in Mobile Computing
Joel Brandt (Stanford University)

ABSTRACT:
Already there are 2.5 billion mobile phones in active use today, in comparison with an estimated 1 billion PCs. Yet the bulk of these mobile phones are only used as communication devices, not as computing devices. Many individuals and corporations are investing a large amount of time and money to build the killer applications that will realize this latent potential. We suggest, however, that the true potential of mobile computing will be achieved not through a few killer applications, but through a killer ecology of many small, niche applications that are highly tailored to specific users' needs.

In this talk, I will discuss three topics central to enabling this killer ecology: what, who, and how. First, I will approach the topic of what the space of desired mobile applications looks like. I will present a classification of the design space of mobile computing applications, born out of a need-finding study conducted with 23 participants. From here, I will discuss who may be creating mobile applications in the future, and how this affects our design of tools to support this development. This discussion will be supported by a presentation of Lash-Ups, a lightweight toolkit we have developed to enable programming of location-aware mobile applications by amateur developers. Finally, I will discuss how these applications should be built from an interaction design perspective. Specifically, I will present five issues central to the successful design of interactions for mobile and attention-limited tasks, identified through our own work and through interviews with five professional designers.

BIO:
Joel Brandt is a second-year Ph.D. student working with Professor Scott Klemmer in the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group. His research focuses on design and development tools for mobile applications. More specifically, he is interested in understanding how to create tools that empower amateur programmers. Before coming to Stanford, he completed his B.S. and M.S. work at Washington University in St. Louis.

Official Website: http://www.yahooresearchberkeley.com