[conference] Smart Contents Conference 2013

Title	Smart Contents Conference 2013
Place	COEX Conference Room 401
Time	November 28, 2013 10AM~6PM
Speaker	Stephen Lake, et al.
Organizer	Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning; Korea Creative Contents Agency
Focus	smart contents, next technology
Website	http://smartcontent2013.org/

<Image courtesy of Smart Contents Conference Office>

I.       Disrupting Wearable Tech [Stephen Lake, Founder / Thalmic Labs]

1.       Message

1)      History: began business with mind to help disabled people

2)      Problem to solve: fluid interface between physical object and users

①  Reasons not choosing voice control

A       Voice recognition is not accurate yet

B       Speaking control words generate social awkwardness

3)      Goal: blurring barrier between human control and reality

II.      The New Virtual Reality for Gamers [Dillon Seo, Korean Business Manager / Oculus]

1.       Message

1)      Innovation relationship: Hardware brings content innovation (e.g. iPhone gyro sensor-> apps) and sometimes vice versa (e.g. Avartar-> 3D Industry)

2)      Game platform history: PC and console ATARI 2600-> Apple II 1980 (Ultima) -> NES (8BIT) 1985 (Super Mario Brothers) -> PC 2.5D- Doom 1993, PlayStation (32BIT)-> PC 3D!- Quake 1996, PC 3D GPU- Voodoo 1996-> Kinect-> VR

3)      Application

①  Games: EVE-V (on E3 Games)

②  Movie: Total Recall, The Lawnmower Man

③  Interior: model house

④  Museum: Jurassic Park

2.       Takeaway

1)      Oculus Rift can be used for Christian contents e.g. Bible, pilgrimage

III.     Creating Wearable Technology with Fashion and Music [Linda Lobato Franco, Co-Founder and CEO of Machina Wearable Technology LLC]

1.       Message

1)      How wearable technology can be used?

①  Fashionable, functional, adaptable

2)      Wearable fashion in practice- e.g. Innovalley makes technology implanted in sofa, clothing, etc.

2.       Takeaway

1)      The future is in mobility not necessarily mobile

IV.    Wearable Tech Q&A

1.       Message

1)      Opportunity

①  Developers self-distribute through global virtual stores

②  Start with ideas that you think you want to have

③  Prototype fast, stick to your main idea

2)      Profit model

①  Oculus: app store-like market, gear sales

2.       Takeaway

1)      Start with ideas that you think you want to have

V.      How Smart Car will Effect the Content (Software) [Jikhan Jung, CEO of PaKiTo, Inc]

1.       Message

1)      Status

①  Nissan Leaf- mobile phone displays status of your car; electric vehicle can power your house and lets you charge at your house

②  Tesla- has 7,000 batteries

2)      Why electric vehicle?: economic, safe, pollution-free

3)      Contents connection: remotely turn on air conditioning, locate your car, check car status

4)      In Korea?: Kia Ray EV, GM Spark, Renault SM3 ZE, BMW i3

2.       Takeaway

1)      Korea still needs work in building EV infra; not a great time to buy an EV yet.

VI.    Why Startup and Innovation Ecosystems are Fundamental to the Global Economy [Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, CEO of Compass]

1.       Message

1)      Successful startup examples: Codility, labminds, retention knewton, next big sound, goodapril, jobfig, argos

2)      Startup Ecosystem Ranking 2012: cities are ranked by index for startup output, funding, performance, talent, support, mindset, trendsetter, differentiation from SV

3)      Contact: Blog.startupcompass.co, bjoern@compass.co

VII.   The Future of 3D Bioprinted Meat [Sarah Sclarsic, Head of Business Development of Modern Meadow]

1.       Message

1)      New opportunity for bio fabrication, bioprinting

VIII.  Next-Gen Search [Greg Lindahl, CTO of Blekko]

1.       Message

1)      Vertical category search engine: Blekko for desktop and Izik for tablet

IX.    Big Data Q&A

1.       Message

1)      Monetize- use big data to analyze users’ behavior

2)      Bio fabrication- medical fabrication (e.g. new organs), leather fabrication

3)      Advice

①  start with what you want to see happening and with what you really care about

②  work with great people (get along well, backup, technical skills complementing yours)

X.      Monetizing Content with Bitcoin [Tony Lyu, CEO of Korbit]

1.       Message

1)      What is Bitcoin?

①  Paying network

A       VISA- bank account

B       Paypal- email account

C       Cyworld- DoTori,

D       World Warcraft- game coin

②  Currency: Bitcoin

③  Financial platform

2)      Why?

①  Paying network-

A       commission- almost no commission

B       Speed- fast exchange

②  Currency- limitation of 210 million

③  Financial platform- open

3)      Application

①  M-of-N transactions: for escrow, two parties need to agreed (e.g. among buyer, seller, and mediator, two parties need to agree, then payment can be sent)

②  Oracles- payers can set conditions for sending money e.g. make payment when Seoul weather goes lower than 3 degree Celsius

③  Colored coins- game item, stocks can be traded

④  Timestamping- contents can be timestamped and protected

4)      Contents market change

①  Phone owner- 6.9 billion globally

②  Bank account owner- 1/3 of phone owners

③  Microtransations

A       Blog tip- now users can send tips to any bloggers by using Bitcoin API

B       Freedom of speech- e.g. sending money to Edward Snowden will not be blocked

XI.    The Future of Online Education [Minjeong Kim, User Experience Designer / Coursera]

1.       Message

1)      Machine learning- Coursera knows which area people are having a hard time in learning

2)      Can add coursera certificate on LinkedIn

3)      538 partners (e.g. university, organizations)

4)      70% users are international

2.       Takeaways

1)      Learn at Coursera every week!

XII.   Protection Strategy from Cyber Attack on Mobile Content [Min Pyo Hong, CEO of SEWORKS]

1.       Message

1)      Cracking

①  Smithing- SMS + phishing (e.g. birthday, free coupon message)

②  Hacking tool- Dex2jar, apktool, weak_classdump

③  Game cheat- memory hacking

2)      Service- Binary obscurity, library protection, memory protection

①  Apk-> dex-> smiley

2.       Takeaways

1)      Protect your app by making it harder for crackers

XIII.  Bitcoin / Education / Security Q&A

1.       Message

1)      Security: needs security between devices (e.g. between cards, drones)

XIV. Futuristic Tech in Korea & Going Global

1.       Message

1)      Korea has fast adaption culture; the country can be considered as a good testing bed

2)      Advice for product design

①  Design needs to be improved when catering for global users e.g. color, font

②  Talk to global audience taste

③  Have hypothesis before getting a feedback from users to measure your design success or not

④  Feedback- get feedback at Dribble or Behance

3)      Advice for content creator

①  Get feedback and execute instead of keeping your ideas in secret

②  Fail quickly is more important than keeping secrecy

③  Get the best and fresh sources e.g. hacker news

4)      Advice for project managers or CEO

①  Don’t have too many business development people. Work on minimum number of deals

②  Have a measuring tool for progress to keep you away from unfocused development

③  Share dashboard everywhere

④  Have metrics to check how well you’re doing

A       Business metrics- e.g. CTR can be used for measure of quality

⑤  Share happy level from 0 to 10 among your team members <- this will indirectly show whether you’re on track or not

⑥  Aim high- set the quality very high, best ever possible

5)      Advice for everyone

①  Growth mindset instead of winning- students get more when focused on learning vs. succeeding

②  Need to be open to learn and tough lesson

③  Think to build, build to think; put something in the market and learn from your failure

2.       Takeaway

1)      Think to build, build to think; put something in the market and learn from your failure

[Personal UX/UI review] importance of designing in customers' view

Issue: blocking view of average Korean adult passengers

Recommendation: lower the black bar for better view

[Personal UX/UI review] User control

<Product: Google Map web page on Safari>

Positive: convenient quick access button to full fledged app or download

Issue: no close button on screen

Recommendation: provide an exit button for full screen view

Lesson: usability rule#3 let users control app

[Personal UX/UI review] signage designs and promotional message in subway

Positive: positive expression for restrictive message

Context: The yellow flyer states "We welcome credit cards for 5,000 KRW or above purchase" where the sales person could have said "We don't take credit cards below 5,000 KRW." I thought that this is a smart approach to turn a negative message to positive. 

Positive: simple but intuitively understandable 

Lesson: symbolize things if they are common to users 

Issue: both signages have the same direction (redundancy) 

Context: The signage on the left and right both included opposite end destinations. If you are a first time visitor for this station following colors and station names, you will stop and wonder at least once at the signage to make sure you're heading down to the correct path. This is unnecessary because choosing either path will lead to the same second floor of this subway basement. Passengers don't need to stop here and spend time to choose directions but stop on the second floor of the basement because redundancy means inefficiency which leads to wasting people's precious time.

Recommendation: if two directions on signages are the same, delete both directions and leave them empty to avoid confusion and unnecessary time for passengers to stop to figure out which one goes where

[Personal UX/UI review] Fitt's Law on lip moisturizer

<Product: Neutrogena's lip moisturizer>

Positive: less hand movement on moisturizer by putting rotation component right below of a cap 

Lesson: even in real-life (or "offline") design, less movement works! (c.f. Fitt's Law application on for online products)

[Personal UX/UI review] Apple iOS's standby mode for Voice Memos

<Product: Apple iOS 7>

Issue: when wanting to stop recording after users' screen went black, we need to unlock the phones first 

Recommendation: provide a stop icon for Voice Memo even on standby mode (c.f. Podcasts' app's standby mode below)

[Personal UX/UI review] Google Sheet's plus button location

<web app: Google Sheets>

Issue: forcing users to make an unnecessary mouse movement to all the way to the left whenever making a new tab

Recommendation: move the plus button ("+") on the right side of the last worksheet tab of the far right

[Personal UX/UI review] Jihachul's history and iOS's scroll-down summary

<app: Jihachul>

Positive: history function readily available when searching for a subway station 

Lesson: always consider providing a 

menu of users' most frequently selected function 

<function: scroll-down summary on iOS>

Issue: displaying a useless space even when there is no schedule

Recommendation: shrink the Calendar space to fit schedule amount (e.g. if no schedule, shrink the space all the way!)

[Personal UX/UI review] TV screens inside of subway

Issue: no indication on next stop on screen

Recommendation: always include next stop conveniently on screen so that passengers don't need to look around to find one 

[Personal UX/UI review] success factor for a chicken franchise

Positive: 

1. convenient food- chickens with no bones providing a sense of relief in eating chicken

2. simple menu choice- mainly two (i.e. sweet, spicy) providing easy selections for a quick bite

3. transparency in food making- visible food process satisfying hygienic needs 

Recommendation: provide a pricing of  6,000 KRW for a half and half menu (i.e. half sweet and half spicy) to fill in the niche needs to have both 

(c.f. In Korean culture, people love sharing food; part of the reason for sharing is to fulfill curiosity for other options or perhaps to have it all with psychological reasons. For example, this curiosity concerning food in its "ultimate" form can be portrayed in mixed food menu (aka 짬짜면) as commonly found in Korean Chinese restaurants.)

[Personal UX/UI review] signs in Seolleung Stn. perhaps

Issue: the ceiling sign has misled me not to go under the sign but look for an exit sign located on the far left on this photo

Recommendation: include exit numbers in the ceiling sign for passengers' intuitive understanding of direction 

[Personal UX/UI review] Samsung Electronics newspaper and light box ads

Issue: still hardware specs ads

(c.f. Samsung's video ad: http://www.samsung.com/africa_pt/?brightcove=2748971527001#latest-home)

Recommendation: advertise how the optical zoom and smartphone combination enhance people's lives 

Issue: information architecture of this light box display is not intuitive enough to understand which text explains which picture

Recommendation: visual categorization of information needs to be implemented 

For example, 

Apple story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGtP6ZQ6Lt8&feature=share

Nexus 7 ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx7HF0RaE10

[Personal UX/UI review] 2nd floor store design, logo positioning,pricing

Positive: clean window and bright lighting for 2nd floor restaurant

Lesson: to attract customers on the 2nd floor, deal with issues that customers care the most (e.g. hygiene, doubts about shaggy business) 

Issue: no logo

Recommendation: put logo in front of company name to increase brand recognition and awareness

Issue: same product with different pricing

Recommendation: standardize pricing (i.e. make the price the same)

[Personal UX/UI review] Google Drive's lack of system detection

Issue: though users already downloaded the application, this Google Drive, a cloud-base web application doesn't detect that (c.f. Google+ doesn't detect installed app on users' smartphone, either) 

Solution: if installed, simply remove the icon from users' Drive webpage

Lesson: website needs to be able to "customize" or "respond" to users' current system 

[Personal UX/UI review] McDelivery site and alarm app from McDonald's

Usually on weekends, I find myself visiting Korean McDelivery site to order burgers and stuff. The other day I happened to notice time-limitation sales technique widely used by TV home shopping channels has been implemented in McDonald's home-delivery website. 

Positive: display remaining time for selected order to psychologically influence users to convert from website visitors to purchasers

Positive: "kind" reminder message to nudge users for purchase

Positive: as a "punishment" failed to click order button, users need to start all over again. What a great incentive system! 

Positive: even a utility app which comes with free coffee promotion displays timer-limitation; this system truly works because the system incentivized me to visit the restaurant this morning! 

[Fireside Chat] Lessons Learned from Y Combinator & 500 Startups

Title	Fireside Chat- Lessons Learned from Y Combinator & 500 Startups
Place	D Camp
Time	October 16, 2013 7PM~9PM
Speaker	Niket Desai (@niket), Josh Wilson (@makaniaki), Yaron Binur (@ybinur)
Organizer	AppCenter (http://onoffmix.com/event/19682)
Focus	What to do in startups

I.       Key Takeaway: 

1.       Move fast, stay hungry and focused

2.     Stay with customers from day zero      

II.      Lesson from Y Combinator

1.       What you’re building should be meaningful to users

2.     Your product or service needs to make users would be willing to pay for it, download it, or come back periodically

3.     Talk to your customers and speed up (bringing your prototype and getting feedback are so much faster than coding)

4.     No need to waste time and money on managerial stuff e.g. payroll, tax, etc. (use accelerator program such as Y Combinator)

5.     Know why you need an accelerator before asking one  

III.     Other lessons

1.       Get more feedbacks early

2.     Utilize usability, user testing, surveys from day zero

3.     Always sell yourself (i.e. elevator speech to other people)  

IV.    Ways to be acquired

1.       Visibility: Get yourself known (e.g. Top 50 Tech Crunch)

2.     Be focused (e.g. home related thing for Redbeacon)

3.     Make hard decision in valuing and selling your business

V.      How do you see failure?

1.       Fail fast and early and often (c.f. Paul Graham)

1)     Fail consistently every time (B/c with failure you learn something)    

VI.    Go to Silicon Valley to build or stay in Korea?

1.       go global and support multiple languages (e.g. Skype started as global service from day one)

2.       know what you’re doing (e.g. non-consumer facing products such as security, technology, infra doesn’t need to be physically in the States)

VII.   Where to locate HW and SW offices?

1.       be where your customers are

2.     learn from Waze- R&D center in Israel but operation offices in the US

[Personal UX/UI review] front yard design trend?

Some similarities found for front yard design among shops. A trend?

Observation: wooden look front yard design 

Issue: hard to see what's this restaurant is selling; the front yard design seems to be closed

Solution: get rid of plants and make it open like the cases above perhaps?