Locatrix was thrilled last week to take part in Telstra’s Sushi Plane campaign, a two-day long series of challenges pitting contest-winning subscribers against each other in downtown Tokyo via augmented reality.

Sushi Plane was of course promoting Telstra’s new HTC Desire handset, and to make the contests unique and memorable Locatrix was commissioned to create a location-based game using augmented reality to show off the Desire’s considerable feature set.

Divided into teams, the contestants used their handsets to find and collect a series of tokens as they moved through a course in the city. There were time limits to complete the course, and of course contestants were awarded points for each token they located.

The entire series of activities were filmed for a series of television commercials and also broadcast live on the Internet, as well as posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Sushi Plane was a combination of Inspired, our location-based content management engine, and the Layar augmented reality browser. Telstra’s marketing team were able to set the contestant’s course using a web interface, distribute the tokens, and then watch progress in real time. Contestants were of course able to follow the course and view the tokens through the Layar browser.

The campaign activities were a success and we were thrilled to work with Telstra and also DDB on this unique mobile marketing initiative. Integrating traditional location-based “treasure hunt” features within augmented reality was a surprisingly vivid and engaging experience, and we’ve already had interest from overseas operators who wish to create similar exercises.

Visit the offical YouTube channel for more videos, or if you’d like to learn more, please contact us.

We have just taken possession of and moved into our new Brisbane offices – and the Locatrix team is thrilled with the new abode. Our new address is in the Brisbane central business district, on in a fully-renovated space on Level 1, 129 Margaret Street – the historic Watson’s Building.

This three-storeyed brick warehouse was constructed in 1887 for the successful Brisbane plumbing firm of Watson Brothers. It was designed by prominent Brisbane architect Richard Gailey, who in the 1880s and 1890s made a substantial contribution to Brisbane’s central business district with his designs for commercial and industrial buildings such as shops, offices, hotels, warehouses and factories.

The precinct is now fast becoming an icon in a revitalised section of the city, partly due to the incredible Brother Espresso – a terrific café on the ground floor (directly below Locatrix) – and partly due to a coincidental gathering of mobile tenants. Mogeneration, who design publication tools for iPad, iPhones and Android devices are located next to us, making this building one of the epicentres of mobile development in Brisbane. We’re also directly opposite QUT’s IT Research Facility.

We’ve just completed a functional furniture fitout, installed our Internet and VoIP services, and moved in – so it now feels like home. Now we need to get the coffee machine. Come visit us sometime!

We’re really proud of what we do and we like to show off our work, but at conferences and presentations we only get to reach out to a small audience. Henceforth, we will be putting up videos of projects we have been working on whenever possible so everyone can see what we’ve been up to.

Hope you enjoy this video!

If you’ve arrived here after clicking on a link in a Twitter message, welcome!  Please read on.

Historically, providing developer-level access to any features of a mobile network has been tricky, to say the least. Even with the relevant service provisioning completed, you’re still stuck with a myriad of interfaces, standards, web protocols and security methods. And that’s just with one operator. As soon as you hit your second there’s usually a whole new set of enabler access methods to implement.

These difficulties have resulted in relatively few applications making use of mobile network APIs. Some operator groups – notably Telenor and Vodafone – have been piloting developer programs which generally formalize broader access to the various enablers (e.g. messaging, location, billing), but are still dependent on underlying platform technologies. (Orange, for example, exposes nearly 30 different APIs via their developer program!)

The GSMA’s OneAPI inititive is an attempt to revert this situation, and it is something we’re proudly supporting. Standing for Open Network Enablers, the OneAPI aims to bring network features to a much broader audience of Web and Web 2.0 developers. Practically speaking, it is a single API – REST and SOAP access methods are supported – through which developers can access services consistently across multiple operators. The project goal is to make it easy, safe, and beneficial for developers to utilise mobile capabilities in a far broader set of applications.

One of the OneAPI objectives is simplicity; it’s not trying to be a massive or overly-complex single platform that must be adopted by all. Instead it is a set of simple functions that will be accessible and friendly to any of the typical web development languages like Perl, PHP, Python and Java. A kind of mobile API for the masses, if you like.

Locatrix has recently deployed our reference implementation of the OneAPI at http://oneapi.locatrix.com and, being the intrepid former software engineer that I am, I set out today to create a mashup between the OneAPI, our favourite network operator, Chime – our social SMS solution, Google Latitude and the Locatrix XLF application service in a little PHP script. Proving that we do “eat our own dog food” (or “drink our own champagne” – with thanks to Kevin Smith), the code was built, tested and deployed in a couple of hours. By a distinctly former software developer!

The OneAPI initiative has the potential to change the way application developers think about mobile networks, and also to create genuine revenue opportunities for monetizing applications. If you’re interested in learning more about the OneAPI there’s some more material here, and I would welcome you to contact us if you’re a web developer interested in trying it out. Those in the Twitterverse can also follow the OneAPI account here, and you could also subscribe to our newsletter Position Update, which provides a wealth of location, mobile and social networking industry information each month.

Thanks for reading, and we now welcome you back to regular Twittering!

Designing for mobile is a constantly evolving art, and we’re thrilled to have on the Locatrix team one of the best Interaction Designers in the business: Sherwin Huang. I recently sat down with Sherwin for a Q&A on what makes for great mobile design.

Sherwin Huang, Interaction Designer

Sherwin, briefly describe your role as an Interaction Designer.

In brief, I find creative solutions around technological boundaries, guiding and participating in production by balancing aesthetics with functionality to create a visual package that fosters user delight.

What do you think are the key issues in designing for Mobile Devices?

Uandme user experience

Applications – including the ones we create here at Locatrix – are increasingly feature packed and complex.  There is always the temptation to create user interfaces that display information equivalently to what one would find on an application designed for the desktop.  All this is done with the best of intentions thinking that it will allow users to have all the information at their fingertips.  But doing this on the mobile is sometimes akin to trying to squeeze an elephant through a door!

The mobile differs from the desktop in that often visits are purposeful. Users to go a site on their mobile because they know what they want (and there is a context to their requirements), whereas on the desktop users follow trails and search results to a site. So in designing for mobile you aim to fulfil this contextual need as quickly and easily as possible.

We often see different mobile applications that aspire to do similar things. How do you evaluate a “good” experience compared to a “great” one?

On the desktop, we can quantify this kind utility by looking at factors like learnability (how long it takes users to reach a given level of experience), clarity of structure (time taken to find a piece of information) and satisfaction from the overall experience. On the mobile this is even more important, because users are on the move. They are distracted, they need information quickly.  The equipment is often uncomfortable (small) and quite unforgiving (a slip of the thumb will take them out of the browser).

The most important questions to ask when designing for the mobile are: How will this be used? What will the users want in order to achieve their goal? How can we take the user to what they want in the shortest possible number of steps?

Answering these questions lets us produce an application with a goal in mind. The goal is to produce an application that a user can get into and use right away. Minimal learning curve. Minimal questions. Maximum results. That’s how we know we’ve got a great mobile experience!

How are you applying these mobile design principles here at Locatrix?

One of the most important aspects of our design work at Locatrix is that we have to deliver applications that work and look terrific on literally hundreds of devices – there’s many different handset vendors, and a variety of mobile browsers. This calls for a sense of simplicity in design and presentation, but simplicity itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

Chime provides a simple mobile user experience

Presenting information on the mobile is like drinking a double espresso coffee in the morning – it has to be smooth, potent and fast acting. We can create all sorts of fancy accompaniments like big headers and fancy graphics, but if they aren’t relevant to the core intention they just become “noise” that distracts the user and wastes precious screen real estate.

The other advantage of simplicity is that it serves as a great base to build up on. Once you have a standard for information architecture in place, it becomes possible to add flourishes for the different handsets that can handle it. The iPhone is a great example of this. It displays simple designs well, but because of its browser’s webkit based heritage, nice things like shadows and rounded corners can be easily added to enhance the aesthetics.

We use a tool called Salamander to great effect at Locatrix. Salamander is a web service that lets me know what style sheets, fonts, and graphics to use on a given handset, the screen dimensions, and whether the device supports assisted-GPS or just CellId location methods. We can then perfectly render maps, images, and specific CSS elements for an optimum user experience.

What advice would you give to mobile product managers who want to maximize the stickiness of their application services?

Wireframing helps visualize the user experience

I’d suggest they remember that sometimes “less is more”. Working with such a creative engineering team like we have at Locatrix is a real buzz; we can literally do anything on a handset. But designing successful mobile applications usually comes from creating a utility that does one or two contextual things really well, and doesn’t try to become a sort of mega-solution. I’d often recommend that product managers look towards launching more “simpler” initiatives that can be measured and refined to maximize subscriber returns, rather than one single product with dozens of options.

An excellent technique we use during this refinement process is wireframing – or sketching out the entire application experience, screen by screen. Wireframes clearly define the structure of information, as well as user flow on a site, and they are an information visualisation tool that allows all involved to contribute to the process of design. In the right hands if can help ensure that the site is on the right track, creating a reference for use during production that can help prevent feature creep which in turn reduces noise and increases product effectiveness. It is also a benchmark that can be used to simplify the experience.  Remember, less is more.

Do you have any final comments for our readers?

Mobile interaction design is really a crucial element in the success – or otherwise – of a great service. It is a crucial process to understand, and to execute well.  And make sure you use a great designer. Like me!