All sessions except for 20th November will be held at Woburn House Conference Centre, 20 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9HQ in the Main Hall, Ground Floor.
The next programme runs from 18th September - 22nd November 2012. It runs every Tuesday and Thursday evening, with 2 sessions, the first at 6.30–7.30pm and the second from 8-9pm.
The sessions cover Technology (T), Design (D) and Business (B) and a few General Sessions (G). Each session is 1 hour long, and they could be talks, workshops, clinics, or fireside chats. All sessions are delivered by industry professionals who have been there and done that — they are all shown on our Who’s Who page. We hope that you can make the best use of the programme and come along to as many sessions as you can.
Below is a downloadable draft timetable which will inevitably keep changing!
Code Title Description Tutor Date
G1 Welcome
The offical start — get the whole course overview — ask questions, make demands, meet tutors, meet other participants and work out how you are going to engage with the programme. Julia Shalet and Other Tutors 18/9, 6.30pm (Tues)
B1 The Mobile Landscape The future of mobile is the future of everything. All the technologies to connect the world already exist and will become more pervasive and engrained in everyday society in just a few short years. Understand the quandries such as Apps vs HTML5, native vs web and see whats going up and what’s going down. Jo Rabin 18/9, 8pm (Tues)
D1 Opportunities & Needs What is the problem that you are solving? What are users implicit & explicit needs? Really understand your target users by writing a “Day in the life of” persona storyboard and start using the tools, methods and templates you will need to tackle the first step of the design process. Use market-based analysis to uncover any competitors and discover learnings from similar ventures Priya Prakash 20/9, 6.30pm (Thurs)
T1 Overview of Tech Solutions Get an overview of the Technology stream, see the big tech picture and understand overall architecture. Non techies are particularly encouraged to attend. Matt Biddulph 20/9, 8pm (Thurs)
D2 Value Proposition What true benefits are you offering your users? What is your elevator pitch? Focus by using various tools such as writing your first Adcept, Press Release and tweet from a fan/critic. This is a good lead in to the Brand Creation workshop in October. Julia Shalet, Priya Prakash 25/9, 6.30pm (Tues)
B2 Business Model Canvas Designing a killer product is only half the puzzle of building a new business. The other half is creating a breakthrough business model. Start to use Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas to dissect, analyse, and invent new business models. Ian MacMillan 25/9, 8pm (Tues)
B3 Financial Validation So you think you have spotted an opportunity? In this session you will be given tools to start constructing your business case. Explore the various ways to monetise your offering; work out different revenue streams; make sure that you have included all your potential costs and have validated your business assumptions. Ian Merricks 27/9, 6.30pm (Thurs)
T2 Android & Eclipse This is an introduction to Android SDK tools using the Eclipse IDE for those interested in building Apps. You will get an overview of the basic software layers and application architecture; a walk through of coding a basic application, simple debugging and a quick look at available Libraries. Enough to get you started on your first Android App. Kevin McDonagh 27/9, 8pm (Thurs)
D3 User Mental Model & Framework This session is about getting the right design for your users. We will define the steps and building blocks needed for the user and system to complete the core tasks in the real world. Learn how to use Mind maps, Task breakdown flow, IA blocks, Priya Prakash, Manuela Zavattaro 2/10, 6.30pm (Tues)
D4 Core Customer Journey There are good and bad experiences. In this session you will learn how to create the happy path. What are the barriers and pain-points in the way? How are you going to keep them involved beyond their first experience? Learn also how to build a Product Roadmap and UX Strategy to avoid feature creep. You will get a chance to prototoype the journey in a low-fi way. Priya Prakash, Andrew Harder 2/10, 8pm (Tues)
D5 Epics & User Stories How to break user needs and the user journey in to deliverable product “requirements”, in consumer language. Introduction to Agile/Lean/Scrum methodologies and how to best work with technical teams. From here, the design stream will move from sketching to software used for mobile development. Priya Prakash, Andrew Harder 4/10, 6.30 (Thurs)
B4 Collecting Money How to get the money in! How do all the different customer payment mechanisms compare? How do I work with mobile operators? Subscriptions vs One Offs? Chris Newell, Russell Sheffield 4/10, 8pm (Thurs)
T3 HTML 5 & Mobile Web HTML5 and mobile. HTML5 isn’t just about mobile, but it has many features designed for developing applications that run anywhere the Web can run. Bruce Lawson 9/10, 6.30pm (Tues)
B5 Driving Traffic Why is it important to figure out your Launch Plan early on? How will it affect the first version of your offering? How can you drive traffic? Get the answers to these questions and learn how to DIY PR. Lisa Devaney 9/10, 8pm (Tues)
B6 Brand Creation Now you know what your value proposition is, this interactive workshop will take you through the process of developing your brand identity. Katrina Damianou, Julia Shalet 11/10, 6.30pm (Thurs)
T4 iOS & X-Code For those interested in building Apps — This is an introduction to using XCode tools, the Objective-C programming language, and core frameworks. Review of Model-View-Controller architecture and a tour of Table Views and other standard UIs. Kieran Gutteridge 11/10, 8pm (Thurs)
T5 Cross Platform Tools Tizen, Bada, SmartTV, Kirin, Yeecco – and everything in between: an intro to platform-specific and platform-crossing development Manfred Bortenschlager 16/10, 6.30pm (Tues)
B8 The Importance of Mobile to Brands Alex will take you through a range of best practice case studies from some of the world’s leading brands with a strong focus on delivering Return on Investment and customer engagement. He will also evaluate the wide range of mobile technologies available to a marketer. Alex Meisl 16/10, 8pm (Tues)
D6 Prototyping In this session we will be making sure that we understand the utility of the design — is the concept right? This is part of a process that will ensure that you are going to focus on the holistic flow, creating the experience rather than the details of your feature list. You will be introduced to a wide range of tools for lo-fi prototyping of rapid mobile development. Tim Brooke, Priya Prakash
18/10. 6.30pm (Thurs)
T6 Working Prototype Demo This session is about taking your concept Customer Journey forward and bringing your offering more to life. Does it work as intended? The emphasis will be on the usability of the design and testing with users. The emphasis is now more on functionality and less on the concept as you are now crafting your product/service. This session is a great lead in to “Visual craft & brand expression of your experience” Priya Prakesh 18/10, 8pm (Thurs)
T7 Back End Systems Often an oversight — what considerations are there when choosing back end systems — what fits with what? What should be avoided? TBC 23/10, 6.30pm (Tues)
B9 How to design a desirable product How can we craft products that user’s want to use? How can we design behaviours that make products habitual? Brand is not just a visual expression, it’s a feeling as well; it’s what makes the product desirable. And when it is a visual expression, in this world of multiple touch points, how can we create products that are responsive, which adapt to our environments and contexts, and look great on every single device?
Johan Brand, Jamie Brooker 23/10, 8pm (Tues)
T8 Security, Standards, Authentication & Legals How to make sure you are protecting yourself and your users. Protocol and best practice is there for a reason… come and find out from the experts in the field of security, standards, authentication and the big hairy law. Charles Brookson 25/10, 6.30pm (Thurs)
D8 Design Review As a group, we now get to measure and critique the experiences we have created with each other, with experts, with users and with usability analytics. You will get the chance to go through your Design Principles and heursitics to score the Design using the UX Checklist. Priya Prakash, Andrew Harder 25/10, 8pm (Thurs)
HALF TERM Time to test with some end users, catch up with yourself and vote on how you want the final sessions of the course to be filled. 26/10 — 5/11
B10 Raising Money What are the different ways to get hold of investment? Who do you target? How do you target them? What do you say to them? When do you approach them? What are the common mistakes people make? Mark Curtis 6/11, 6.30pm (Tues)
D9 Continuous Improvement, Testing & QA How to get a good all round view of your product performance and keep your quality assured. How to measure your performance both statistically and through your users, see problem areas, test out options and track the impact of corrective actions — in Web and in Apps. Nandi Gurprasad 6/11, 8pm (Tues)
B11 Building a Business How do you build a great team, find the right people and retain them? Learn from someone who has built their own business, achieved high employee satisfaction, has low attrition has high output. TBC 8/11, 6.30pm (Thurs)
B12 Marketing your mobile presence You may have built an outstanding site or app, but your success depends on reaching and activating your mobile customers. This session has two parts. First, we tackle how you create interactions via non-mobile touchpoints and integrate mobile discovery with other media channels. Second, we look at how to reach audiences through ads and content on their mobile devices to enter the purchase funnel. Rob Thurner 8/11, 8pm (Thurs)
T9 Tech Drop In Surgery Part 1 A free for all with expertise from our technical pros across all platforms A good selection of Technical Professionals 13/11, 6.30pm (Tues)
T10 Tech Drop In Surgery Part 2 A free for all with expertise from our technical pros across all platforms A good selection of Technical Professionals 13/11, 8pm (Tues)
FREE SESSION TO BE VOTED ON TBC 15/11, 6.30pm (Thurs)
FREE SESSION TO BE VOTED ON TBC 15/11, 8pm (Thurs)
G2 Demo Night Part 1 Get the opportunity to share your work with the rest of The Mobile Academy, get feedback and you never know who may pop in to have a nosy around! A good selection of Tutors and Mentors 20/11, 6.30pm (Tues)
G3 Demo Night Part 2 Get the opportunity to share your work with the rest of The Mobile Academy, get feedback and you never know who may pop in to have a nosy around! A good selection of Tutors and Mentors 20/11, 8pm (Tues)
FREE SESSION TO BE VOTED ON TBC 22/11, 6.30pm (Thurs)
FREE SESSION TO BE VOTED ON TBC 22/11, 8pm (Thurs)