The umbrella principle and why Office like suites are in trouble

With a mobile device app, what is important is the context where the user is and the added value you bring to him. I call it the umbrella principle. Let me explain.

Umbrellas and apps have much in common

If you go to a museum nowadays, you'll see people walking around with iPads, looking at a painting or a sculpture, googling it out on their iPad to get details or explanations. Some do that their with smartphones as well. And museums out there are designing apps to help people walk around and promote museum stuff such as in NYC Natural History Museum.

As it may have occurred to you, none of this ever happened with laptops because they aren't designed for this kind of mobility. And the same thing applies to applications and office type suites. It means that, as Google has understood it, office type suites are to become a commodity and Microsoft Office is in trouble.
I am not saying that Office like suites will disappear on tablets but what I believe is that their usage will decrease and so will the prices the users are likely to spend on them. Why? Because these applications were designed for computers (desktops and laptops), they give the user an incredible freedom but they are not "situational".

Mobile apps are giving Office like suites a hard time

Business apps designed for tablets or smartphones are "situational", they are designed to answer one situation and add value to it. Just like an umbrella which is useful when it rains. That's the umbrella principle.

iTakeNotes have been designed with this principle in mind.

Situation: you go to a meeting and you have to do a meeting report.
Added value: You can prepare it beforehand or jumpstart and set the elements afterwards. You can record what is said and take pics or draw and use them to finalize your reports. You can generate a structured report right after the meeting with all elements set up. And finally you can generate an email and send the pdf or txt to the participants. The added value is 30-50% time saving.

It's a push button process and word processors don't do that. And I know what I am talking about. I've been writing tons of meeting and interview reports, forgetting things, rewriting and I hated it.

And now gentlemen, who will write the meeting report?

Other features will be of course be available to accommodate upcoming needs. But for a first dry version it has to concentrate on key added value.

Lesson learned: Concentrate your app on its key features and make sure the added value is there in the situation it is designed for. Forget the rest.