Give Your Project Client the Real Picture

By Brad Egeland

Are you a glass half empty or glass half full type of person? Do you consider yourself to be a good reader of character of those individuals you interact with? Are you good at reading situations and anticipating a likely outcome?

I always think I am good at all of those things, but I've learned some hard lessons by not taking in all the information possible or by reading my own thoughts and interpretations into the information I am sometimes given. My wife has pointed this out on several occasions and she has always been right. She, in fact, IS very good at correctly seeing a situation for what it is and pretty good at predicting a likely outcome. That's why I run professional situations by her from time to time when she seems to have some interest and time to deal with it.

I'm bringing this up because I've learned that it is usually not in my best interest - or my client's - for me to perform too much interpretation of information and situations before passing info on to my project client. It is usually best for me to give my client the full picture - the real picture and full disclosure of information - and discuss it with them. By doing so you are never at risk of causing them to misinterpret and respond inappropriately because you may have just given them what you 'thought' was right or 'thought' they needed to hear. Often we just need to let them see the full picture and make decisions accordingly. Being the PM or main consultant doesn't mean we need to take away their ability to absorb all information possible about a given situation. That may cause them to act in such away that would actually be unfavourable for their business or the project we are managing for them.

It's Ok to 'Help'

With all of this said, it's ok to 'help' your client with your interpretation of the information at hand...based on your experience. But explain it as such. We just had our own non-PM related incident in our personal lives where a realtor we had been working with on a property we were very interested in indicated that the buyers who jumped in ahead of us on a short sale purchase had lost interest and now that the bank had come back with a counter-offer, it was ours to act on. As we got excited and prepared our offer and made tentative moving plans, she called back the next day and apologised that she had made an incorrect assumption. The original buyers were only hesitant, not disinterested, and had now accepted the banks counter-offer and were moving forward. It left us frustrated and somewhat upset that we had wasted a couple of days of our lives planning for something that wasn’t ours to plan for. We were out any money, but it was still upsetting. Now, transpose that into a project scenario where you may have caused a project client to act on this type of information and some serious time and money may have been 'lost' in the process.

Summary

I think most of us can see where you could easily lose a project and a customer over simply presenting our own interpretation of the situation rather than the entire picture. It's ok to help, but make sure that the client understands that you are only giving them some of your own 'best guess' information based on what you know. Then let them decide how to act, react, and plan accordingly.

Source:

http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/give-your-project-client-the-real-picture.html

Here, there and everywhere: Google Keep reminds you at the right time

Notes are a good way to keep track of all you have to do, but most of us need a little nudge now and then. Google Keep can remind you of important tasks and errands at just the right time and place. For example, Keep works with Google Now to remind you of your grocery list when you walk into your favorite grocery store, and nudges you on Thursday night to take out the trash.

To get started, select the “Remind me” button from the bottom of any note and choose the type of reminder you want to add. You can add time-based reminders for a specific date and time, or a more general time of day, like tomorrow morning. Adding a location reminder is incredibly easy too—as soon as you start typing Google Keep suggests places nearby.

 

Of course, sometimes plans change. If you get a reminder you’re not ready to deal with, simply snooze it to a time or place that’s better for you.

 

It’s now even easier to get to all of your notes using the new navigation drawer, which includes a way to view all of your upcoming reminders in one place. And for people who want more separation between their home and work lives, the drawer also lets you easily switch between your accounts. 

And finally, we've made it easier to add your existing photos to a Google Keep note on Android. When you tap the camera icon you can choose between taking a new photo or adding one you already have from Gallery.


Posted by Erin Rosenthal, Product Manager

Samsung, The True Ruler of the Android Kingdom

Android has been a hot topic lately, with some arguing that it may become a unilateral smartphone superpower and others arguing that it has already peaked in the US market. A lot of thisconversation seems to assume that Android’s (and by extension, Google’s) gain is Apple’s loss and vice-versa. We believe that the situation is more complex than that.

Two facts about Android are now well established: 1) Android smartphones now dominate many markets in terms of device shipments, but 2) The market for Android devices is famously fragmented. What’s less well-established is how and when all of those Android devices are being used and the implications of that for participants in the Android ecosystem and beyond. Those are the topics that we tackle in this post with a particular focus on Samsung devices and how their owners compare to users of other Android devices.

Smartphones Dominate On Android

This posts builds on a previous one we did exploring how people use iOS smartphones and tablets. As we will show, there are many similarities in usage patterns across the two operating systems, but one big difference is the overall breakdown between smartphones and tablets. In this May sample of 45,340 Android devices (of the 576 million Flurry measures), 88% were phones and 12% were tablets. The share of devices represented by smartphones is significantly greater than in our iOS sample, in which 72% of devices were phones. The emphasis on phones over tablets was even greater among Samsung devices in our sample: 91% were smartphones and 9% were tablets.

As in our previous post, we started our analysis by considering how the smartphone versus tablet distribution varies by psychographic segment. These are Personas, developed by Flurry, in which device users are assigned to segments based on their app usage. An individual person may be in more than one Persona because they over-index on a variety of types of apps. Those who own more than one device may not be assigned to the same Personas on all of their devices because their app usage patterns may not be the same across devices.

The Personas shown above the “Everyone” bar in the graph below skew more toward phones than the general population of Android device owners, while the Personas shown below the “Everyone” bar skew more toward tablets. (Android device ownership patterns for Personas not shown are not statistically different from those shown for “Everyone.”) In general, these follow a similar pattern to the one we saw for iOS. On-the-move type Personas, including Avid Runners, skew toward phones and more home-bound personas, such as Pet Owners, skew more toward tablets.

Within that broader pattern, there were differences based on the particular Android smartphone or tablet that a person owns. Samsung is the dominant manufacturer of Android devices. Its phones represented 59% of the phones in our overall sample of Android phones, and its tablets represented 42% of the tablets in our sample. Both its products and its promotion suggest that Samsung attempts to differentiate itself from other devices that share the Android operating system, and those differences were reflected in persona memberships. 

Samsung Is Building A Unique and Attractive Audience

Owners of Samsung devices were disproportionately likely to be in many personas, including some of those most sought-after by advertisers (e.g., Business Travelers and Moms). Since Persona memberships are based on over-indexing for time spent in particular types of apps, this suggests that Samsung device owners are generally more enthusiastic app users than owners of other brands of Android smartphones and tablets.

Overall, owners of Android tablets spent 64% more time using apps than owners of Android smartphones. This ratio varied by category, as shown in the chart below. For example, owners of Android smartphones spent more than five times as much time, on average, in Business apps as owners of Android tablets. Sports and Photography were other categories that heavily favored phones. As with iOS, Education and Games skewed more toward tablets. (Average time spent using app categories not shown does not differ in a statistically significant way between Android smartphones and tablets.)

Once again there was variation by manufacturer. Overall, owners of Samsung phones spent 14% more time using apps than owners of other Android phones and owners of Samsung tablets spent 10% more time using apps than owners of other Android tablets. The particular categories of apps where time spent was greater for Samsung phones were News Magazines, Tools, Health and Fitness, Photography, and Education. Owners of Samsung tablets spent more time than owners of other Android tablets in Communication (e.g., voice over IP and texting) apps.

Android app use peaks between 8 and 11 pm. Comparing the two types of Android devices, a greater share of tablet use takes place from 3pm until 11 pm and a greater share of phone use takes place from 11 am to 3 pm and overnight. While the overall amount of time spent on Samsung devices is greater than for other Android smartphones and tablets, the overall time distribution throughout the day is similar.

Can Samsung Compete At Both Ends Of The Market?

As this and our previous post have shown, while smartphones capture more time in specific app categories, such as Navigation and Photography, those tend to be categories of apps used in short bursts. Tablets are favored for longer-duration app categories, such as Games and Education, and so, on average, tablet users spend more total time using apps than smartphone users. That makes tablets particularly interesting to content creators and to advertisers.

Samsung is the dominant manufacturer of Android devices. As shown in this post, it is attracting a unique audience relative to other Android devices. Owners of Samsung devices spend more time in apps than owners of other Android devices, and they are also disproportionately likely to be members of psychographic segments (Personas) that are attractive to advertisers. In those respects, they are more similar to owners of iOS devices than owners of other Android devices are.

But compared to iOS, a smaller share of Android devices are tablets, and that percentage is even smaller for Samsung devices than for Android as a whole. So the question is: will Samsung make as big of an impact in the tablet market as it has in the smartphone market?

In some ways, this comes down to a question of how it will balance its resources between two different types of markets: relatively more affluent countries that were early adopters of connected devices so new growth is now coming mainly from tablet adoption versus less affluent countries where smartphone penetration is still relatively low, but growing quickly.

A focus on tablets could enable Samsung to better develop more of a true ecosystem of its own (especially considering that they can include connected TVs as part of that) and the higher profits that go with that. Riding the wave of global smartphone growth is more of a high volume / low margin strategy. Of course, they could try to compete at both ends of the market, but each individually may require a lot of resources because of Apple’s (and to a lesser extent, Amazon’s) strength in the tablet market and the number of hungry competitors anxious to grow along with the Android smartphone market. If they can do both, they will rule the Android Kingdom, and Samsung, rather than Google, will pose the greater threat to Apple.

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The Who, What, and When of iPhone and iPad Usage

All advertisers seek to deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. If content is king, then context is queen – particularly when it comes to mobile devices that are typically close at hand if not in our hands.

Smartphones and tablets are often lumped together as “smart”, “mobile”, or “connected” devices, but their use varies by person and by context. In this post, we explore context as it relates to iOS devices. We discuss who uses each device, which devices are used to enact what aspects of users’ lives and personalities, and when usage tends to take place.

Because Android and iOS devices have different audiences, we focus only on iPhone and iPad in this post. Flurry currently measures activity on 397 million active iOS devices, and this analysis is based on usage during May of a random sample of 44,295 of those (iPhone and iPad only; iPod Touch was not included). A future post will discuss usage patterns on Android tablets and smartphones.

iPhone Goes Out; iPad Stays In

Flurry has developed a set of Personas in which device users are assigned to psychographic segments based on their app usage. An individual person may be in more than one Persona because they over-index on a variety of types of apps. Those who own more than one device may not be assigned to the same Personas on all of their devices because their app usage patterns may not be the same across devices.

We started this analysis by considering what share of iOS devices used by members of each persona were iPhone and iPad. As shown in the “everyone” benchmark in the chart below, overall iPhone had a 72% share and iPad had 28%. The Personas shown above the “Everyone” bar skew more toward iPhone than the general population of iOS device owners, while the Personas shown below the “Everyone” bar skew more toward iPad.

Beginning at the top, the numbers illustrate that Personas “on the move” skew most heavily toward iPhone: Value Shoppers use iPhone to scan barcodes and find bargains, and Singles and Hip Urban Lifestylers use them to socialize. iPhone represents more than 90% of iOS devices (excluding iPod) owned by members of those Personas.

Somewhat surprisingly, that is also true of New Moms. In that case they may still be on the move, but in pursuit of the goods, services, and support they need for their new babies. New Moms may also have less free time to participate in leisure activities like reading and gaming which, as we will show soon, are more heavily associated with iPad.

It appears that moms’ device usage changes as their children get older. Moms (as opposed to New Moms) are one of the Personas that skew most toward iPad. Evidence from other sources and anecdotal observation suggests this is likely to be at least partially attributable to Moms using their tablets to entertain and educate older children. The fact that the Parenting and Education Persona skews toward iPad also supports this.

Moving to the bottom of the chart, the Personas that heavily favor iPad are associated with home-oriented activities. Those include Pet Owners and Home Design Enthusiasts, but also Small Business Owners, who may work from home. Gamers also skew more heavily toward iPad.

iPad Is For Learning and Playing -- Not Navigating

The time iPhone and iPad owners spend in different categories of apps also support the overall pattern of iPhone going out and iPad staying in. Overall, iPad owners in our sample spent 42% more time in apps on their devices than iPhone owners during May, but that time varied significantly by category. As shown in the chart below, compared to iPad owners, iPhone owners spent more than 13 times us much time using Navigation apps. They spent more than five times as much time using Health and Fitness apps to do things such as tracking walks, runs, and bike rides.

The app categories for which average time spent on iPad exceeds that for iPhone are Education, Newsstand, Games, and Reference. Again, more home-oriented activities. 

iPad Is For Evening; iPhone Is For Late Night

The chart below shows how time spent using iPhone and iPad apps is distributed throughout the day. As might be expected based on the previous discussion and conventional wisdom about iPad, its heaviest period of use comes between 6 pm and 11 pm – times when most people have downtime for activities such as games and reading. iPhone app usage also peaks during that time, but the absolute amount of time on iPad and the percentage of app use that occurs during those hours is greater. Both of those differences are statistically significant. 

The situation reverses as the night wears on, and between 2 am and 4 am usage is greater in iPhone apps than in iPad apps. This may be insomniacs reaching for phones at their bedside or those Singles and Hip Urban Lifestylers finding their way home from a late night.

What is perhaps most surprising about the distribution of time on each device throughout the day is how consistent the patterns are – especially between about 6 am and 4 pm. Given what we’ve described so far about iPhone being more of an out-and-about device and iPad being more of a stay-at-at home device, we believe that this is a function of varied lifestyles, with owners of different devices being at home and out-and-about at different times.

Multiple Devices, Multiple Personalities?

Our discussion up until now has focused on differences between iPad and iPhone owners, but obviously an increasing number of people own both devices. While our data does not enable us to link the same user across his or her different devices, we believe that individuals may express different parts of their personalities and lifestyles through their use of different devices. For example, by night a person in the Single and Hip Urban Lifestyle Personas may use her iPhone to organize her social life. By day that same person may use her iPad to run her interior design business, putting her in our Small Business and Home Design Enthusiast Personas.

That combination of person, usage situation and device is important for app developers and advertisers. For example, in this situation, our single small business owner may be more receptive to work-oriented apps and ads on her iPad and play-oriented apps and ads on her iPhone. Savvy app developers and advertisers will increasingly factor contextual differences such as those into their development and targeting plans. 

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