I periodically check in with cutting edge leaders in mobile tech and app development to learn the latest ways apps are evolving technologically and creatively to meet consumer needs. Recently, I visited with Carsten Wierwille, ustwo Studios CEO, and his team at their New York office. ustwo Group is a pioneering creative firm that includes three divisions:
- ustwo Games: Mobile game developer and creator of the highly popular Monument Valley game, now in its 2nd version
- ustwo Studios: Digital product and service studio for a range of companies including Facebook, Google, American Express and Jaguar
- ustwo Adventure: Investor in game-changing startups.
The firm has offices in London, New York, Malmo, Sweden and Sydney, Australia. ustwo’s work demonstrates clever ways mobile apps are being developed to utilize smartphone capabilities that have until now, largely been underutilized. It also illustrates how good, genuinely helpful ideas, executed with intuitive, relatively simple and upbeat user interfaces, can achieve high user adoption, retention and advocacy, and how the scope of what apps can do, keeps expanding.
Carsten Wierwill shared his insights for CMO’s regarding how they can inspire their teams to develop meaningful apps that will be adopted as useful parts of their customers’ lives:
"One of our guiding principles is that technology for its own sake doesn’t work, and that principle extends to apps. If you can’t articulate a clear purpose for the app and measure success in terms of value created for the user, you’re on the wrong track. We believe designers and marketers have a shared mandate to deliver not just novelty, but meaningful experiences and long-term benefits."
Moodnotes, pictured above, is an app developed in conjunction with Thriveport, an LA-based company founded by two licensed psychologists to create helpful, intuitive, and scientifically based tools to improve people’s lives. Moodnotes is a journaling app developed to improve mental health by:
- Tracking moods and what influences them
- Encouraging a more optimistic outlook through new perspectives
- Helping users identify and avoid negative thought patterns
- Increasing self-awareness, reducing stress and improving sense of well-being.
Because the app dialog is conversational, the images are simple and friendly, the actions required aren’t very time consuming or hard to learn, and the feedback is positive and helpful, it’s easy for users to make it a routine part of daily lives. With an average rating of 4.7 on the Apple App store from over 5,900 users, the app seems to live up to consumer expectations.
Carsten shared that, “an exciting trend in mobile apps today is that they can take our attention away from the screen by enriching engagement with our health and the physical world we live in. We saw this with Moodnotes. Since the launch, the app has sustained double the retention rate of the average mobile health and wellness app because users found it genuinely useful and the interface was simple and cheerful.”
ustwo worked with the Royal Society for Blind Children (RSBC) and the nonprofit Wayfindr to develop the world’s first, internationally-approved standard for accessible audio navigation. Recognized by the United Nations, it helps people with vision impairment navigate London’s extensive metro/underground/subway system and other indoor locations through the app, receiving signals from beacons that have been placed throughout select London Underground stations. The beacons communicate with the mobile devices of blind people, providing audio navigation instructions at each turn, so people with vision impairment can get around with more confidence and feel more independent. This past May, a pilot program was completed at the Los Angeles Union Station to help visual impaired riders more easily find their way. LA would be the first U.S. city to use the system.
Ustwo applied its game development expertise to create the comprehensive Alder Play app at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, England to make hospital stays for children more pleasant and with better treatment outcomes. It was the first hospital-wide, patient experience app in the U.K.
Dr. Lain Hennessy, Clinical Director of Innovation at the hospital worked with ustwo, healthcare experts at England’s National Health Service, and children patients to develop Alder Play. It revolutionizes patient care, yielding humanitarian and business benefits. Using video games, chatbots, augmented reality and storytelling with fun characters the children select, young patients are guided throughout their entire journey, reducing stress and anxiety. Colorful stickers of each character are brought to 3D life through augmented reality. These buddies give them advice, a tour of the hospital, and explain what their stay will be like.
Take-Aways for CMO’s
1) Look to leverage the full range of capabilities of smartphones: sound, touch, augmented reality, gamification and beacon technology that connects mobile devices to the surrounding environment.
2) Partner with experts in diverse fields to improve the usefulness of the app, such as experts in psychology and consumer behavior, city governments, workers who deal with end users, and end consumers to co-create, so you are addressing real needs in an original way.
3) Make the app simple to use, friendly and graphically/audibly memorable and uncluttered.
