Here’s the ‘in a nutshell’ version. . .

The studies are now in…audiences now participate in concurrent, multi-screen experiences – Prime-tme is multi-screen time — But, that doesn’t mean the content, stories and brand stories are migrating between screens to create seamless and deeper engagement.

How to naturally engage and extend television to digital-device-on-the-couch?

Extend the reason television remains the First Screen to 2nd Screen content applications:  Extend the story.

Whether extending a :30 second television spot, a children’s animated series or a Prime Time drama, creating interactive narrative experiences taps into and deepens the audiences’ emotional connection to the First Screen.

2nd Screen experiences should be seen as a remarkable opportunity for television advertising and content production ventures…not to get clicks and Likes…but, to involve the audience within a personalized, conversational interaction.  This is why we built the contentAI studios’ platform.

Chat with Gossip Girl to uncover hidden clues and story material?

Chat with Astral from Yu-Gi-Oh for advice?

Chat with Mr. Clean, the Skittle’s Rainbow or a myriad of other Brand Characters?

Next time you talk to a television character, they should also talk back to you.

Because the Audience is doing a lot more than just listening.

UPDATE:  In addition to the Forrester Reports (Links in Post below), here is additional supporting evidence of the growing dual-screen phenomena:  http://www.screenmediadaily.com/news-viacom-tablets-tapping-into-tabletomics-study-television-consumer-behavior-tablet-user-experiences-airplay-0014001843.shtml

We’ll send you one.   While there’s often someone from our team at a conference or off doing demos…we can’t be everywhere…so, we’ll mail you one.  Just ask.

We are big believer’s in NFC.  Once you’ve created one, tapped one and experienced the mindless/seamless gesture…something that seems natural…well, we hope you’ll agree that NFC will play a major role in connecting the world to the internet…making objects speak!

We’re extremely pleased with TAGSTAND and their NFC tags (as well as their App:  NFC  TASK LAUNCHER)…which is where we source our NFC tags; we’d be pleased to send you one, that connects to one of our Interactive Mobile Virtual Agents…Just CONTACT US and ask.

BTW:  If you’re on LINKEDIN, please join the NFC CREATIVE Group and join the conversation.

The de facto standard for “site agents” has been to include a rather simple 256 color animated character that lip syncs to the voice (text to speech).  The quality here again is less than stellar.

While surprised it’s taken so long, we are now seeing some of those companies starting to package up their product for “mobile.”

What’s really surprising is that they are porting their exact same product – Delivering links or complex/dense text data — And, including those simplistic animated characters and audio (just on HTML.5 instead of Flash).

Hmmmm?

At contentAI studios, where we’ve been thinking about “mobile user experiences with virtual agents” for over two years, we decided long ago that including animated visual faces and audio was counter-intuitive to the average mobile user experience.  Often, the user is not in a location where they can hear.  Also, they don’t want to have to keep their visual focus on the small screen – they are “scan/viewing” across products, the world around them, a television AND their mobile screen…not singularly focused on one screen.

In that respect, we decided to focus our delivery of interactive narrative accompanied by still images that could “establish” the personality of the engagement, without requiring more than a fraction of a second of User Attention.  And, to deliver short, conversational engagements that are MOTIVATED by our virtual agents, not mere Q&A sessions “driven” by the End User – based on mobile experiences needing to be both contextual andget-to-the-point quickly.

Essentially, our virtual agents have a purpose specific to a Mobile User Experience…with the anticipation of the ENTIRETY of the experience, which extends beyond the screen, to the overall context of the engagement

So, will we include “animated characters with voices” on mobile?

No.  There are other companies who we can recommend for that.

We don’t think most Mobile End Users are seeking a duplication of static web experiences on their mobile devices.  But, perhaps, in some cases, it’s appropriate.  But it’s not what we offer here.  We also don’t believe that the current state of visual animated characters adds value to the User Experience; the lack of technical and visual quality is simply too much of a negative in our opinion.  End Users will “buy into” their chat experiences based on an establishing “still frame,” and they fill in the blanks on their own, without 10 frame per second 256 color “visual bots.”  We know this from our own research and analytics.

Because we never were in the mindset of “static web” virtual characters and have focused exclusively on “small screen” engagement, we aren’t porting over old assets to our mobile platform.  Everything is designed specifically for mobile.  To clarify, we also build for “desktop apps,” which are very similar experiences to mobile apps (small windows on the desktop; typically for extremely portable ultrabooks); but, most of our engagement is on mobile and tablets, based on our analytics.

What’s good for Brands is that they will have choices when it comes to how they approach adding a virtual agent to their mobile user experiences.

Based on price, quality and our exclusive focus on Mobile User Experience, we welcome an opportunity to present our platform in comparison to our competitors.

* Side note:  Yes, we include HTML.5 audio and video on our platform too – But, we use that precious (user) time and real-estate for Brand elements, not for animated characters.

Today’s New York Times story HERE  reminded us to bring up the topic in this post.

We could readily integrate our platform with server-side voice recognition or within native-apps – But, we don’t feel that the majority of mobile applications we produce really require it.  In fact, we believe that text-based engagement (private, personal) is preferable in most “mobile” situations.

That said, as we review the presentation slides from IgnitionWEST and other places, we are struck by how 50% or more time with mobile and tablets is concurrent with television viewing.  In general, internet connectivity also runs concurrent with the evening hours of television viewing.

One place we see a real opportunity to incorporate voice-recognition with our applications is specific to the emerging space of “television to mobile” content and ad extenstions.  When someone is in the privacy of their own home (on the couch), the ability to speak may be better than or equal to text (we’ll always offer the option for both).  From a technical standpoint, this also means the user will be in an environment with less ambient noise (traffic, etc.)…

So, it’s something we’re starting to tinker with.  It’s pretty straight forward — We just want to apply it to the “right” application, not do it for the sake of adding something that doesn’t really add value to the End User.

Look for updates on this in Q2 2012 (soon!).

The statistics are rolling in:  Mobile use increases concurrent with “Prime Time” television — Where between “mobile” and “tablets” the percentages of overall “time on device” ranges from 50-80% of a consumer’s time, while concurrently watching television.

If “geo location” mobile is worth $x.  Then “couch location” mobile is worth $x, or more!

Further, one of the main activities on “mobile” while watching television is “texting.”

So, what could be more intuitive than extending the television experience, to the end user’s mobile, via conversational engagement?

Chat with a character on Gossip Girl?

Chat with a character in a TV spot to extend the advertising experience?

Children’s content?

While “social” and “smart menus” and other “extenders” are entering the market — We are pleased to be focusing on extending the core television experience and emotional attraction itself – the stories and characters.

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We’re still pleased to offer solutions for intelligent and entertainment packaging and print.  But, the opportunity to extend experiences from the television screen to the mobile/tablet screen is something here at contentAI that’s in our DNA.  We come from film and television…after more than a Decade of hearing the word “convergence,” it looks like it’s finally upon us!

UPDATE(S):  Over the past week, more studies have emerged and the connection between “television and mobile” (meaning mobile, tablets or even laptops) is increasing.  Fully 30% of “tablet time” is concurrent television time:

http://blogs.forrester.com/sarah_rotman_epps/12-04-11-the_tablet_tv_connection

http://www.forrester.com/The+TabletTV+Connection/fulltext/-/E-RES61576?docid=61576&intcmp=blog:forrlink

We’re in the process of updating meta-data and launching additional apps — And wanted to make sure anyone looking here, knew where to find us there. . .https://play.google.com/store/apps/

Jared Spool Presents: Mobile & UX – Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm – Portland, OR

Last night at the UoO building in Old Town.

We’ll post Links to his Deck when it’s available (Now available Here).

He’s been giving this talk for the past year, and a video is here:  http://vimeo.com/25547105

While there were 4x elements in Spool’s presentation that create this “perfect storm,” the over-riding metaphor for much of the presentation was a SIX FLAGS v. DISNEYLAND:  ”activity” v. “experience” paradigm.

Basically, SIX FLAGS offers a pretty straight forward activity-based flow, while DISNEY’s design encourages a more “experiential” flow for the End User.  The parallel was basically how online web sites are data/feature driven, while mobile (when successful) is more experience driven.

The natural extension of this, while not discussed, seems to us to be how a DISNEY-experience is “personal,” while a SIX FLAGS-activity laden day is more generic (everyone has nearly the same experience).

One slide in the presentation Deck were pictures of the origami towels that magically appear in someone’s “resort room” at the end of the day — sometimes surrounded by the visitor’s children’s toys (Toy Story with Origami towels).

The illusion is that this is a deeply personalized, memorable touch (even if 20,000 other rooms are nearly the same), in part, by adding the visitor’s toys to the tableau does make it “personal.”

Let’s extend this to “mobile thinking and UX.”

Mobile is a far more “personal” engagement format than “online.”

It’s in someone’s pocket, purse or bag.  It’s in someone’s hand.  It’s a one-to-one EXTREME CLOSE UP engagement.

It’s not just “experiential.”

It’s personal.

And, the UX, along with the programming, needs to fulfill “personal” engagement — Whether that is through deeply complex algorithms or smoke-and-mirrors fancy tricks (User’s will suspend disbelief and go along for the ride if you do it well), “personalization” of mobile experiences is what delivers:

Delight.

Which was another theme of the evening.

The contentAI studios conversational mobile platform is predicated on personalizing each and every engagement. Sometimes deeply, sometimes lightly.  But, it’s been a Prime Directive in the development of the platform since our focus went to Mobile, nearly 2 years ago.

We’ve been thinking about personalized mobile experiences for a long time.  Which is why the idea of putting someone’s children’s toys around a bunch of origami creature shaped towels, resonated so deeply.

INTEL’S appUP (Windows 32 & 64)**
http://www.appup.com/applications/applications-My+Santa+Talk

http://gigaom.com/2011/12/07/interactive-ebooks-take-on-fiction-novels/

While our interactive narrative is a unique branch of “interactive fiction,” seeing this as an emerging topic is terrific.

We are releasing the 2001 MySantaTalk mobile web (and some native app versions) tomorrow!

The URL:  http://m.MySantaTalk.com will redirect to the new app as soon as it’s “live.”

Our new UI is featured — While the UI is still undergoing upgrades and responsive design enhancements, this is a true Ver. 1.0 release as we move out of Beta.

We’re looking forward to the “App of the Week” status from our friends at INTEL’s AppUP…We’ll post links there next week too.

Have a wonderful and safe Holiday Season.

And, have a chat with Santa while you’re out and about, from your mobile!

Oh, right, yes, all of our web properties are undergoing a makeover the next few days…so, that’s our final year-end clean up…

See you at CES?

SIRI is a smart technology. After all, it’s $150 million of taxpayer funded DARPA research.  Even if it’s a bit dated.

Apple was very smart to integrate SIRI within the REALLY IMPORTANT embedded communication apps on the iPhone 4S — The previous “app version” of SIRI could barely handle integration with six APIs and could draw upon very limited data pools to get you a Taxi or a Restaurant reservation (from within it’s limited list).  The illusion of intelligence continues with it’s access to Wikipedia headlines (an old chatbot trick), but it feels intuitive, which is important.

The real issue comes with “cross talk,” where an AI engine cannot parse between similar phrases or words that have different meanings.  i.e. “I need to find Sam Adams.”  Are we talking about the beer, the mayor of Portland, an historical reference or a friend with that name?

What’s the solution?

AI-based virtual agents that are tailored for a specific set of data; brand information and narrow-focused engagement; i.e. one agent per application.  The dream of having a single agent who can access data from dozens of apps simply isn’t in the cards, not in the near future.

So, create a personal agent for each application. For each mobile brand engagement.  It’s quick.  It’s affordable.  It’s what we do.

Of course, we do really enjoy seeing the enthusiasm for virtual agents that SIRI has brought to the forefront.  For that alone, SIRI is a wonderful thing.

ASIDE:  Let’s not forget, the voice recognition feature is from NUANCE, not SIRI.  We can integrate with cloud based voice recognition platforms very easily.  But, we’re wary of the issues these systems still confound us with, where a 10% failure rate can create incomprehensible user input.  People type on their phones all day long.  It’s the #1 form of written communication in the World.  It’s private.  It’s quiet.  We still like typed conversations.