WDC 2012 goes mobile!

If you are interested in design, you must already be aware of the fact that Helsinki is the World Design Capital for 2012.

I’m happy to note that the Helsinki WDC project very much lives up to my expectations on how to handle the marketing side of the event over mobile phones. And the WDC2012 effort should therefore also serve as a great example for any other organisation staging major events like the WDC2012.

The WDC mobile services lineup is impressive. The project just released applications for Android, Symbian and the Nokia N) and will soon also support the iDevices.

The applications provide you with a full array of information on all the events, news and other useful information. I tested the Android version and the useability of the application seems very good! You can even share all the events in Twitter, Facebook or with email or SMS, nice viral touch!

The app is not perfect yet though. I think I found at least one bug. Clicking on an address in the event information should have taken me to a map of the event but  instead the app crashed 😦 Restarting the app eventually got me to the map.

A couple of things I’d humbly suggest as improvements. The map, while a nice touch, seems a bit hard to read. All events are shown at the same time and from the multicolored balls indicating the events I could not really deduce which one was the one of interest to me.

An other thing that I’m missing is a connection with the rest of the Helsinki. Yes, WDC is all over, but where can I find more? If I go to en event, where are the restaurants in the vicinity for the after-party? Is there a hotel that has a WDC2012 deal if I come from out-of-town? And much more..

Still, the app is an absolute must for anyone interested in the WDC 2012 event. And everyone should be, the WDC 2012 program is so varied that everyone is sure to find not just one but lots of interesting things.

The app can be downloaded for Android here. If you have a Symbian device, get your version here. If you are an iUser, you need to wait for a little longer, but together with owners of other devices, you can check out the mobile web site here.

ps: If you visit Finland from abroad, remember that you can get pre-paid unlimited data to stay connected on your mobile device at all times!

20 cool tools to help you build your web presence

Seems most artists today have caught on to the power and importance of maintaining a web presence. If you need some tools or inspiration to help you develop your website, there is a very nice list of tools on mobile phones over at androidfly.com.

Note though that a lot of the applications are available on more mobile platforms than listed. So for instance one of my own favorites, the WordPress application, is available on Windows Phone 7 and Symbian in addition to those listed. And there are many more examples like that. So if you find something you like,but there is no match for your device, check it out with your favorite search engine, there is a good chance that the application is available for you as well.

PS: Also note that all application stores do have their own search tools, so try those as well!

Click here for the list of 20 great tools for your mobile!

3IC tests: NokyArt application

Trying out something totally different for a change: testing an – art – application.

I got really excited by the NokyArt application and wanted to try it out in practice. Unfortunately I must admit that the application turned out to be a disappointment due to severe usability issues. But let’s not get ahead of us..

NokyArt on Android

First I tried out the NokyArt application on an Android Wildfire device. The application is easy to find by searching the Android Market and download and installation are smooth. So far, so good. The problems started when I opened the application.

The Wildfire is a very small Android phone and only features a 240 x 320 pixel display. The NokyaArt application clearly had no idea how to scale itself to such a small display and therefore showed a totally mangled view. With the mangled screen, it was rather demotivating to try to check out anything.

What seemed to work well on the Android application was overall application responsiveness. When you hit a button, something happened quite quickly. If I had used the application on an Android device with a bigger screen, then perhaps the application would have been good?

NokyaArt on Symbian

Perhaps better luck with a Nokia device that the application was first released for? I tested the application on the Nokia X6.

It was a while since I had downloaded anything from the Nokia OVI store so I was quite positively surprised over how smooth the process to find, download and install the application was. The OVI application even let’s you launch the application once it has been installed.

Unfortunately, once installed, the NokyArt application usability on the X6 was also poor. This time the application scaled nicely to the phone UI. However, all the UI elements were far to small. The menu buttons at the top of the screen were so small that it was hard to press them and the image previews in the user listing were so small that it was very hard to see them.

If you were able to activate the view for a single artist, the back/forward buttons along the bottom of the display gave no feedback that you had actually managed to press them etc.

Even though the X6 has possibly the most sensitive screen on any Nokia, -with the exception of the N8 – the overall user experience on the X6 ended up being very poor.

NokyArt application in general

 Some other notes common to both applications.

The application has a system for tagging artists. In theory you can mark artists as “known” or “preferred”. It is interesting though, that some artist appear as “preferred” even when you first launch the application? Also I never got to understand how an artist became “known” as for instance looking at the artist’s work, the artist did not change status.

When you open up the application, it goes into “preferred artist” mode. When you do this the very first time, the application opens up directly with a works of some (from your perspective) random artist. “Whoa, what’s going on here?” was at least my reaction. It would be better to start with the artist list view.

The application UI is based on symbols that at least to me were far from clear. Perhaps it would be a good idea to open up the application into the Help view the first time?

An other example of dubious UI design was the ability to comment on the works. If you want to give feedback, you need to first press a “Feedback” button. The feedback field the appears below the work. If the work fills the screen, the field actually does not show and there is no other clue that the field has appeared and that you need to scroll the artwork to reach the comment field.

I also missed the ability to open up the work in a full screen mode. Now you can never really view the work in what could have been the greatest splendor on any given device.

An other minor complaint was the lack up a “Back” button/functionality. On the Android, the lack of a “Back” functionality was especially painful as you were actually sent out of the application if you (accidentally) hit the back button of the device.

My last observation/complaint actually goes more to the artists than the application. The app has a button to get to the artist’s own website. However it seems that very few (if any) artists have a mobile optimised site. As a result you end up scrolling thru sites that rarely behave very nicely on a mobile phone. 

Conclusion

I still think that the NokyArt concept is exciting. It is a pity that the nice concept has been (at least partially) destroyed by bad mobile application UI design. I hope that the developers of the application quickly upgrade the applications to significantly improve the application user experience!

Interview with Kaisa Savolainen – one of Finland's leading theme artists

Kaisa Savolainen/Sauromatum Design

Today the 3IC has the pleasure to introduce Kaisa Savolainen, one of the most successful mobile phone theme artists in Finland. Kaisa and her work can be found over at Sauromatum Design.

The 3IC: Kaisa, welcome. In the intro to this interview we’ll call you a theme artist, but it seems that most people doing themes do not call themselves artists. What do you call yourself? And any idea why people making themes do not talk of themselves as artists?

Kaisa Savolainen (KS): I usually call myself a theme designer. I think that it has something to do with the fact that this whole field is quite young. Usually every new art form has to fight to get recognized, so maybe that’s why even I don’t give myself the credit. I also have a background in ” traditional arts” so it’s hard to realize that making themes is art, even if the computer is helping you to draw the lines.

3IC: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

KS: I’ve always been interested in arts and also liked to play with computers and other gadgets. But my educational background actually comes from horticulture and at the moment I study biology at the University of Helsinki. Theme designing is mainly a hobby, but last summer I also started my own company Sauromatum Design. Hopefully I can someday combine my interests in art, biology and technical stuff all together and make something great of it!

3IC: So how did you get into making mobile themes?

KS: About one and a half year ago I bought a new touch screen phone and realized how much a theme can change the look of the phone. But at that time there were not many themes for my phone model, so I decided to try to make my own themes. And I just got hooked right away!

3IC: You are one of the most successful theme artists in Finland, do you want to share some numbers on this?

KS: With free themes it’s really hard to tell any exact numbers, because the themes are spreading all over the net. It’s nice to see how people are uploading my themes to many different sites and most of them I’m not even aware of. But I’ve visited some popular distribution channels where I’ve found my themes and based on those downloads, the number is somewhere around a million (Wow! ed. note). With premium themes the numbers are much lower, but my business is also young and still developing.

3IC: What kind of distribution channels do you use to reach your audience?

KS: My main channel is of course my own website, but besides that I share my free themes also on some sites and forums like Symbian themes, Daily Mobile Forum, finnish Matkapuhelinfoorumi and eSeth. My premium themes are sold through app stores like PocketGear, Handango and MobiHand.

3IC: You also run a mobilized web-site. Can you share with us some details on how much your audience approaches you via your mobile site?

KS: Looking at the stats, a little bit over 15 % of the traffic comes from the mobile site.

3IC: Thinking of an artist that would like to connect with his or her audience via mobile devices, any helpful hints you’d like to share?

KS: Don’t be afraid to approach people. Share your art on forums and other sites, there are numerous great communities on the web where new talents are always welcomed. When I started I never thought that I could hit a million downloads or have my own business, but great things can happen! 🙂

3IC: Thank you Kaisa, we wish you good luck with your themes business!

Mobile themes – the most active mobile art scene

There exists one very active art scene that specifically targets mobile devices – so called themes.

If you are not familiar with themes, themes are a concept whereby a mobile device user can customize the look and feel of his/her mobile device. On mobile devices, the concept was first pioneered by Nokia, but now themes are available on pretty much all mobile devices except the iPhone.

Depending on the devices, what a theme can do varies. Typically a theme can change the background image of the device and also change menu, text and border color schemes. On most devices, also the menu icons can be changed.

There is some outright fantastic art work out there in mobile theme land. Some of the best places to pick up themes are Symbian themes (specializing in themes for Nokia and other Symbian devices), Tekhseven (very high class both artistically and technically) and Mobile 9 (probably the biggest theme distributor on the ‘net).

There are a few interesting things with themes that are useful also for artist to know about. The first thing is the level of interest in themes.Mobile 9 counters shows that they have distributed 9 Billion (yes, a 9 and 9 zeros!) content items, and even a smaller player such as Symbian themes has passed 10 Million theme downloads. Now, would that be something to get in on a bandwagon like that!

The other interesting aspect of themes is the co-operative nature of theme development today. While at the end of the value chain, there is a theme designer (I would like to call them theme artists), often a theme designer user art work also from other artists for theme. The theme shown in this post is a good example. The theme has been designed by Sauromatum design, but I have contributed the image and Travis has done the icons.

The last interesting aspect of themes is the little respect theme makers seem to command in the artistic community. Theme designers (as most seem to call themselves) are not only visual artists, they have a good command of tech stuff too (and that we like here at the 3IC). Still, the whole theme phenomenon seems to be pretty much ignored by any and all art communities.

But not here at the 3IC. We salut all theme makers for brightening up our otherwise dull devices with some great visual glitz! Thanks!