Can a mobile App Offer A Service and Entertain?

From a product management perspective, applications (mobile or web) really need to serve two functions at the highest level: to serve or to entertain. When you think about it, that’s more than a New Media question, one could relate that purpose to the “real world” as well. Let’s play a quick game: name any brand and you should be able to categorize it as a service or entertainment (maybe even both but remember we said at its highest level). Let’s dive in further…

When starting a new media product development session, one of the first questions we always ask is : will this app serve or entertain? Case in point: TMZ’s mobile app entertains where as Bank Of America’s mobile app serves a purpose. Yet another example: angry birds entertains, but goto meeting offers a service. Make sense?

Starting off a product planning session with this simple question in mind can help drive both the user experience and the product roadmap successfully. The benefit to developing and managing mobile applications is offering that very personal experience, but the downside is the loss of verbal tone. When a user interacts with the mobile app, ideally they should have been condition first, in the “pre-sale” phase, as to the benefit this application will lend. Setting that tone early one, is really driven from the product development deliverables which treat marketing as the first customer.

Although there are many questions and requirements to complete when developing a mobile app, we find that the service vs entertainment is a great starting point from the onset.