Do you wonder how often you pull your smartphone out of your pocket (or purse)? Do you feel “separation anxiety” (and I use that term loosely here) if the smartphone is not within arm’s length, especially if you’re not wearing your smartwatch?
If you answered yes to those questions, I don’t believe you are alone. An Internet Trends report famously suggests that an average user pulls out their smartphone 150 times a day, and each mobile micro-moment lasts between 60 and 90 seconds. Other research estimates the heaviest users touch—tap, type, swipe, click—their smartphones 2,617 times a day, on average.
This paradigm shift requires us to design apps for what we call “mobile moments.” In essence, developers must understand what a user is trying to accomplish during a mobile moment based on considerations—device form factor, information context, aggregated intelligence from multiple business systems and, increasingly, machine learning—to provide the most delightful user experience possible.
VMware Workspace ONE is a digital transformation platform, and we’d like to show you how our suite of mobile productivity apps use the mobile moments design paradigm to deliver consumer-simple, enterprise-secure experiences.
5 Common Mobile Moments in the Enterprise
Rather than focusing on my experiences like in previous blog posts, I asked Adam Chow for his top mobile moments during his summer internship here at VMware. He graciously summarized these moments and recorded videos to showcase them.
1. Joining conference calls.
In our everyday life, we often dial into conference calls on the go. VMware Boxer is a secure email, calendar and contacts app that allows users to dial in with literally two taps. Yes, you heard me right. No more fiddling with finding the right number and the associated passcode. I know it sounds too good to be true, so don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself.
2. Scheduling meetings.
Oftentimes, we wait to get back to our desk to respond to one-line emails like, “Do you have time for a quick chat?” See how easily you can send your availability and quickly create meetings with co-workers and external business partners using the Boxer app. It is simply amazing.
3. Triaging emails.
A lot of industry research has been done on categorizing email users as pilers, filers and purgers. Pilers are users (like myself) who keep all their emails in the inbox so unread emails are actionable. Filers are users who meticulously aim for a zero inbox and file important emails into folders. Purgers are users who delete emails that are no longer actionable and expect others to send another email if there is a follow-up.
In an enterprise setting, a lot of mobile moments are spent triaging emails. The Boxer app provides features like:
- Custom swipe gestures so users can personalize how they triage their emails and take quick actions,
- Bulk triage emails by deleting or moving all at once,
- Propose new meeting times and
- Customize quick reply templates and send quick replies to one or more emails.
4. Accessing intranet sites.
A lot of customers roll out Boxer, VMware Browser and VMware Content Locker apps in a mobile app management (MAM) mode. The encryption, data loss prevention, integrated authentication, shared passcode and compliance are built into the app itself without requiring a mobile device management (MDM) profile on the device.
In these environments, users do not have an operating system level per-app VPN tunnel, so the Workspace ONE platform provides a secure tunnel to resources behind the firewall, like intranet sites. This means that when users click an intranet link within an email, they do not get the “404: Page Not Found” error. Instead the site opens seamlessly, and the user can complete their workflow within the mobile moment.
5. Collaborating on enterprise files.
The Content Locker mobile app can aggregate files and folders from over 30 enterprise content repositories. IT can set data loss prevention (DLP) controls in one place and users can securely access, sync and share all their content.
Content Locker supports on-premises repositories, such as Microsoft SharePoint and file shares, as well as cloud repositories, such as Microsoft OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Dropbox and Box. Watch how a team of people interviewing a candidate were able to quickly collaborate during this mobile moment.
These videos offer a quick teaser of how VMware’s suite of mobile productivity apps cater to mobile moments. Stay tuned for exciting innovations that will take this much further. If you are attending VMworld in Vegas, be sure to attend the Monday breakout session, “Learn How to Deliver an Enterprise-Grade Mobile Email Experience with Boxer.”
VMworld 2017 Breakout Session
“Learn How to Deliver an Enterprise-Grade Mobile Email Experience with Boxer”
[button link=”https://my.vmworld.com/scripts/catalog/uscatalog.jsp?search=UEM2222BU” type=”icon” icon=”search” newwindow=”yes”] Add #UEM2222BU via VMworld U.S. schedule builder.[/button]
