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AIRPONG!!!

Can someone make this for me? I promise to play it all the time!

So it’s simple, see, the game uses the camera to see whats it in front of it as a playable surface area. Once it has skinned the landscape in front of it you, it’s time to set the pong into play. The screen on the other side shows what the camera sees and inserts a 3D puck/ball. The phone then becomes a paddle to hit the puck back at objects. Using the phones accelerometer, compass, etc it knows how the phone hit the 3D ball and its next trajectory…. blah, blah, blah… and add a dash of gravity.

Object is to not let the puck hit the ground and bounce it off everything around you (e.g. walls, park benches, persons head in front of you on the bus) = fun times.

*Update*  -Screw using your phone as a paddle, use what ever you want if the space where the virtual puck gets covered == hit.

 Check-ins: Beyond the Discount or My thoughts on why the Gift Card market is prime for a major disrupt (torn on which was the better title)

I had shared my thoughts in the past about gift cards and received a fairly discerning response on twitter about why the plastic card market is here to stay - 80% of all gift cards go unclaimed. Meaning it is essentially free money for the vendor, so why would the vendor want to change it. Now the government has stepped in recently to stop dishonest practices like expiry dates… surely the money used to purchase the cards didn’t expire, so why should the card? After a couple of conversations with some guys at GroupCard, I found more and more ways this old concept could be flipped on its head. Here are some of the high level problems/solutions that I was able to see:

1) I am a minimalist and refuse to carry anything more than the essentials: There is no need to carry around a $25 credit card for a restaurant everywhere I go, but you know the moment I take it out of my wallet, I will end up there without it.

2)  What is left on the card should never be a mystery:By either app basing the gift card, or even email - handling the card in electronic format can provide the ability to let you know how much is remaining: One option is that if an app barcode for Barnes & Nobles gets scanned for a purchase, the dollar amount next to the barcode changes to represent the remaining value. Email could also be sent to the users account for security and budget tracking as well. a la Square style.

 
3) Even if I have a card for a place, I may forget: When I check-in, allow the ability to notify the user that they have an outstanding balance on a gift card at that location. Linking this service to APIs offered by Facebook (Places),foursquare, SCVNGR, Gowalla, & Google Places would allow the service to jump in to allow the user to take advantage of their gift.

UPDATE: or, if tabbing/swiping with Square would already register the Gift Card as an option for payment.

Additionally, when I started to look at the use cases of the Gift Card, many similarities in the solution could be leveraged for coupons and much anything else, as well - The basic key: let me know when I can use these (Gift Cards/ Coupons/etc), where I can use them. This topic has been filling up page after page of my moleskin on all the potential beyond the deals… what else do we want to know about a place upon entering? is my flight on time? what ski lifts are open? etc… API’s can offer where I walked in, what about all the other angles that are out there rather than just relying on what relationships the specific check-in app has created. Groupon has a 30% off coupon here, foursquare offers 10% on checkin, etc.

4) Gift cards without borders:If a parent wants to give their child a gift card for a grocery store while they are away at college (to ensure the money doesn’t end up on a bar tab) they should be allowed to not be limited by stores that are in both the parent and the childs region. There are no Safeway or Publix in Milwaukee, but the child may have only them as options. This is a stone age hurdle, and we can fix this.

5) Land fills and the costs of a tangible card (press, delivers, ink, etc)= all unnecessary waste. Lets disrupt pixels instead of our carbon footprint.

Square Groups - An idea about how this could be done:

In my last post, I talked about an opportunity for Square to expand their current offering allowing us to switch our profiles and take money for charity, a high school fundraiser, etc. Above is only an option (mock-up above) on how I think they could do it:

It would be an option under “Accounts” that allows you to add a group/charity to take payments on behalf of. This would be by an “Add a Group” field which would prompt you to either search for a group, or to type in a a group/charity’s PIN ID. Type in the PIN and this would pair the device the that particular account/org.

Once the pairing is complete you have the option to switch between profiles to allow you to be able to switch over to your Group/Charity account to start taking donations at a Meetup, or anywhere.

Charity on @Square (photo via Flickr)

I’ve seen more and more posts and pics of people using Square to fundraise for charity, which is fantastic. My wife recently hosted a Twestival event that help donate to places like Charity:Water. She had to handle all the money coming in, and then use her personal credit to pay to Twestival. This solution works, but there is definite room for improvement.

Helping further advance that opportunity for people to raise money would be for Square to offer optional profiles, allowing people who already have Squares to flip from taking money for themselves, or their business, to helping take donations. I have a square device and would have loved to have had the ability to add a Twestival, or Charity:Water profile to my Square app, and then any card swiped donations that I took would automatically be credited to the charities account directly.

Friday Über went production release of the version with my UI designing, and I gotta say, “I love Über!”

Photo by Michael Siedel (via Flickr)

Thanks all for coming out to listen to me speak about User Experience Design on the Mobile Platform, and contributing, at the MKE UX event on Wednesday!

UPDATE - The meeting recap have now also been posted here.

Apple needs to bring the “Today Screen” to the iOS - Here’s How:

The one place that I think that Palm OS (The Original version) had hit the nail on the head was the Today screen. It was designed to be a quick glance notifier to pertinent information, like the time, to-do items, and upcoming calendar events all on the main screen. Windows Mobile added this functionality and HTC later took it even further adding more relevant information, like weather. Because of the undeniable usefulness I propose that the next iOS version bring that functionality to the iPhone.

One place Apple could add this screen is the Search Screen (swipe right): The Search Screen is easy, cause the page is relatively empty with a search field on top and keyboard on the bottom. Sliding the keyboard up from the bottom of the screen when tapping in the search window opens up 85% of the rest of the screen for data like the items listed above. Another option is the Lock Screen, quickly allowing the user to tap the physical button and glancing at the data without going into the phone. One additional alternative would be to dedicate the home screen to this, forcing the user to swipe left for search (or include it on the top of this page), but then swiping right to get to apps.

I like the idea of it being in the Lock Screen (shown above) because I feel that I would reference it like I do to check the time - Click the button glance and back into the pocket.