I saw this wonderful mockup of an iPhone application…
Phil Lu over at Genoco put together this fantastic mockup of a mobile Starbucks “Quickorder” application for the iPhone. While I believe it was intended as a fanciful way to demonstrate Mr. Lu’s considerable design talents, it is really an excellent example of the direction mobile computing is going to take. It will become more personal and more focused. Mobile computing will be less about browsing and more about lifestyle efficiency.
I could easily see this type of application combined with GPS to place an order for my favorite drink at the nearest Starbucks from where I am. It could work equally well for scheduling transportation or lodging, ordering takeout, or other ‘on-the-fly’ type transactions. It would be most effective in cases where I could leverage favorites or preferences to effectively “bookmark” transactions that I could execute in a couple of swipes or touches (or a couple of key presses for the ‘old-school’ among us).
I embedded the flash application Mr. Lu developed here to give you a quick look. That said, I would strongly encourage you to see the entire design over at the Genoco site. It gives a more complete picture of what this type of lifestyle application could actually provide:
There is a lot of pent-up creativity out there surrounding mobile applications, some of which is appearing on ‘jailbroken’ iPhones. I can’t wait to see what types of applications appear once the official iPhone SDK is available and more mainstream interest appears.
If rumors are to be believed, it should be here in a couple of weeks…