The Next Big Thing is Small

The New York Times called it “a science fiction dream.” The Times was talking about the app Doug Cook ’94, Ryan Hovenweep ’98 and thirteen23, their digital design studio, created for the 2012 Obama campaign. 

Cook says it’s just the beginning of the big ways in which “apps” — tiny but powerful specialized programs (applications) for computers and mobile devices — are rapidly expanding what’s possible. And unlike earlier applications of artificial intelligence, which were normally reserved for mainframe computers, these cheap, tiny apps can put a lot of power in the hands of anyone with a smartphone. 

“One of the ways that we approach mobile is by asking, ‘How do you empower action?’ ” says Hovenweep, thirteen23’s creative director. 

By that standard, the free, “Obama for America” iPhone app was astonishingly ambitious. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded it. Instead of simply learning Obama’s views, they were encouraged to do something. Within the app, users could offer to volunteer or donate money with the click of the button. If they wanted to knock on doors, they could access specific scripts with local details and statistics, as well as maps with exact addresses of people the campaign hoped to contact. From the app, people could register to vote, and help others do so, too. Volunteers could share all they learned from their visits with campaign headquarters, and the campaign could quickly disseminate important information through the app to its volunteers.

If Obama’s 2008 campaign opened the door to tech-savvy approaches, 2012 kicked the door down. The New York Times wasn’t the only champion of the app; Yahoo! News dubbed it “immaculate,” and Time magazine said the app was “the future of politics.”

Such validation was a sign that mobile apps, which once did little more than provide weather updates and calculate restaurant tips, are transforming vast swaths of our nation and the world. And they’re teaching us to interact with the world in entirely new ways. “We’re just starting to have more natural experiences with technology,” says Cook, thirteen23’s executive director. “The distinction between digital and physical is blurring.”

Have Tools, Will Travel

A smartphone is the digital world’s Swiss Army knife — an array of useful tools bound in a single, small package. The magic begins when developers combine these tools in inter-esting and unexpected ways to create useful, powerful apps.

Photography is a prime example, according to Lorelei Kelly ’08, a user experience designer for Peak Systems and lead designer for the Diptic mobile app. “Mobile photography represents a combination of a lot of things that make mobile computing exciting,” she says. “With a smartphone, you can take, manipulate, and send images to people right away.” 

Diptic, the first “photo-collaging” mobile app, allows users to create collages with hundreds of layouts, borders, and sizes and share them with the world. And not just through sites such as Facebook and Flickr: You can also turn your photos into physical postcards and ship them anywhere in the world for just a couple of bucks, all from your phone in a matter of moments. “People want to get something done, and go on with their lives,” Kelly says. That convenience made Diptic an immediate success when it launched in 2010. Three years later, it remains one of the top 15 photography apps for iPhone.

By cleverly merging smartphone’s many capabilities, mobile apps make everything from your reading list to your travel plans easier. Tripit, for example, can manage all of your flights, hotel reservations, and car rentals for a trip in a single app — and provide a map to any destination right when you need it. Flipboard creates a customized, constantly updated “magazine” with all the stuff you want to read, from your friends’ Facebook updates to top stories from national publications. In an age of information and speed, apps help guide us through the chaos, and maybe add a little fun along the way. 

A Better You, a Better World

Because mobile apps are on our always-with-us smartphones, they can help us use what’s called “persuasive technology” to change what we think and do, nudging us to become better people and stewards of a better world, says Janet Davis, associate computer science professor at Grinnell. “A lot of current work in persuasive technology is about behavior change support systems,” she says. “If you’ve already made a decision that you want to change your behavior in some way, the technology will help you implement that change.”

For example, to keep that New Year’s resolution to work out daily, you can download the Lift app. Simply identify the habit you want to develop (“jog 30 minutes daily”), and track the days you’ve succeeded by tapping a checkbox. The app compiles a personal report for each habit you track so you can see how well you’re doing, and connects you with other people who share your goal. These same people give you props — virtual high fives — whenever you complete a task on a given day. Skip a workout for a few days? The app will nudge you to get back on track before inertia sets in.

According to Davis, apps like this tap into three key strategies used by persuasive technology to promote behavior change. “Tracking your behavior, getting feedback, and connecting with peers are all activities that make you more likely to make behavior changes,” she says. Whether you want to be more grateful (1THING app) or curb your impulse spending (Urge app), there’s probably an app for that.

Davis says there’s also an opportunity for mobile apps to help us think big. “In many cases, such as environmental sustainability or energy use, for example, it’s not enough for one person to change their behavior,” she says. “There’s an opportunity for entire communities to change their behavior.”

Such work is just beginning with mobile apps. Waze, for example, gathers traffic data automatically while its users are driving and uses it to provide community-generated real-time traffic updates to help everyone get to their destinations faster. Oil Reporter, developed after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, allowed users to post blog updates and geo-tagged photos snapped of the disaster. The data that was collected was used by media outlets, including NPR and CNN, as well as by volunteers working to clean up the area.

Unlocking Potential

On their own, mobile apps can be incredibly powerful. But some of the most forward-thinking developers see them as keys — tools that can provide access to something far larger, such as be cloud databases, social networks, even physical objects.

The Uber app, Kelly says, is a great example. With the app, users in dozens of cities can request car service any time. Need to get to the airport, a downtown meeting, or home from a bar after one drink too many? Uber app will locate the driver nearest your current location, provide an estimated wait time, and allow you to pay the fee — all within the app. “It’s so much smoother and more efficient than the traditional method of hailing a cab,” she says. 

Nest Learning Thermostat can track not only when you’re in and out of the house, but what the temperature is outside and how it might need to adjust. Forget to turn down the heat while you’re on vacation? You can use a smartphone app to turn down your thermostat from the beach. “Our physical things are getting a lot smarter, but not only that, we’re finding more natural ways to communicate with our devices,” Cook says. “It’s very sophisticated, but it doesn’t feel ‘technical.’ It feels human.”

In some ways, it’s this idea — that simple, human interfaces can work seamlessly with sophisticated technology both within the app and outside of it — that gives mobile apps their power. 

And it may also be what eventually leads us away from them. In the same way that we might want a Swiss Army knife while we’re camping and a real knife when we’re in the kitchen, we may ultimately decide that the technology we want in any given situation doesn’t have to be small and portable. It just has to be the best in that context. 

“What’s important is that the technology is responding to my preferences and needs, whether that’s through an app or something else,” Hovenweep says. Instead of fumbling with a mobile phone app to pull up the latest dinner recipe from a celebrity chef, we may have Internet-connected screens on our kitchen cabinet faces that can provide us any recipe at any time.

Certainly, we’re years — if not decades — away from having technology embedded in all of our everyday objects. But mobile technology has opened up a window to a world where technology is much less intimidating than it has been. We can begin to envision ways that it can be intelligently integrated into all of our activities, whether we’re getting out the vote, or just getting out the dinner. As we’ve become increasingly dependent on technology to help us guide our everyday lives, mobile apps give us the freedom to leave our desktop computers and both experience and augment reality. “Mobile apps released us from the computers that sat on tables,” Hovenweep says. “When we can put computing in our pockets, it gets us closer to the action.”