Speak or Scan - Tesco Groceries for Android launches

Please welcome the newest member of our mobile app family, Tesco Groceries for Android.

Yes, I know, you've wanted this app to launch for a long time. But the management team, designers and developers were patient, considered, and did things right so that we could launch an app to be proud of.
So take my hand and let's journey together through the delights of this android application. Would you like to be downloading while we walk? Sure, follow this link.

We start with the opening screen. with the various options for searching for products listed - including barcode scanning using the phone's camera:

However our team always likes to get better with each version of the app, so here we introduce voice searching for the first time:

Many customers of our other grocery apps love the concept of capturing their sudden thoughts of grocery products they need, even if they have no mobile signal, so here is the android recreation of the shopping list. Once you have a signal, tap what you have typed and a text search for that product will take place:

For all our customers who love to shop by department / aisle / shelf, of course this app caters for you too:

Here are your favourites - all product search results look like this, allowing you to see all products matching your search request, and a filtered view of just those on special offer. Once a product is in your basket, that same product has a green background if it appears in any search results:

Here is your basket:

...and you can choose a delivery slot at any time from a formatted view that can see up to three weeks ahead:

Congratulations are due to loads of people from the design prowess of Ribot, our fantastic new in-house mobile development team led by Hilda and Owen, and of course our amazing product owners for mobile, Annabel and Becky.

You'll find the Tesco Groceries app in the Android Marketplace, so download and enjoy!

Mobile World Congress Barcelona: The Mobile World Playground

Our intrepid reporter (and Tesco.com Mobile Product Manager) Rebecca Pate concludes her visit to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with this despatch, ending with a message for Android users:

The second day spent at MWC started with the developer event with HP introducing webOS, there's some really cool UI stuff going on here, like 'Just type' and coupling of browser screens. After a stop-off at the Blackberry stand to experiment with the Playbook and the HTC stand to check out the new HTC Flyer; the Android 'park' was next on the list. It couldn't have got more exciting with Doughnut, Gingerbread and Honeycomb smoothies coupled with a giant Android slide, yes you heard me and there is photographic evidence to prove it.


The number of tablet devices here at MWC is striking, almost every stand has got one on (it's hard to differentiate between all of them too!). What's interesting is that HTML5 is the common factor to all of them, indicating that this is the future platform for apps, both web and mobile. It opens an interesting debate here at Tesco for what we deliver to our customers and their expectations over the coming months.

The third and last morning was spent roaming around the conference hunting for variations of the collectable Android pins of which there are 86 in total, they were located (or sometimes hidden) at the stands of companies that are using Android in some form. It was serious business mind, with the more "duller" kind being traded and swamped for those more unique in the collection; I managed a grand total of 20 which wasn't too bad for a couple of hours work...

I arrived at the airport still seeing mini Androids (see photo above) so I think their clever marketing paid off.


As for our Android customers reading, we have something just around the corner for you!

Tesco Groceries app for Android not far away now

I've recently spotted this article on Infinite Path:
Are big businesses missing out by putting the iPhone above Google Android?

Excerpt:

Take Tesco for example. It’s hard to avoid their TV ads promoting their iPhone app which allows people to scan barcordes to generate a shopping list and then order items. A great idea, which makes it even more shocking they are yet to launch an Android version.
It seems they’re working on it. Nick Lansley, who blogs on the supermarket’s technological endeavours, has said as much, but that was back in September and four months down the line there’s no indication of when it will be launched.

So I found out the latest news from our mobile dev team then posted this tweet:

@techfortesco Tesco Groceries app for Android not far away now. Patience, android fans, for just a few more weeks. We want it perfect.

I think that says it all - and I'll keep using my Google Nexus One as my main 'phone until at least the app has launched (colleagues keep testing me during meetings to confitm that it is still my primary phone!).

Android! Android! Android! Message Received!

AND...

those of you not filling my email and blog comments with barcode scanner questions, it's Android.

Curse my transparency - hold onto your hat as you read this message from B0lty:

Why haven't you included a barcode scanner? More like why haven't you included a Tesco Android app?

I find it flabbergasting that so many leading UK businesses seem to ignore or lag behind in developing for the Android OS. It's like they're oblivious to Android. You'd be a very short-sighted company indeed to ignore the phenomenal growth in the Android userbase.

It's well recognised that Android will eclipse iPhone next year for number of users. App usage will go through the roof as affordable smartphones hit the market. With Ocado sitting pretty with their app, Tesco really should be feeling a little nervous right now.

Anyway, it's back to my Ocado app right now. Ta ta Tesco.

We have heard you; we are on the case! The production mobile team we have put together is getting stuck in. On the other hand we're not going to rush something out. Whatever we do for Android will be gorgeous on Android and we won't release it until it is.

It starts with me - I am ONLY using a Google Nexus One with Android 2.2 installed from now on. My beautiful beloved iPhone is now the possession of my very happy husband and I have vowed not to touch it beyond using it for testing updates to our iPhone apps (and placing grocery orders) until something from Tesco appears for Android.

I'll stay true to my word - those of you coming to see me on business can ask me to show you my phone and prove to you when I last used it by showing the 'call log' screen (the phone is often glued to my ear).

You want Tesco apps on Android!
Message received!

Mobile Monday and Living in a Multi-platform World

Yesterday evening I joined a panel of 'thinkers' at a session of Mobile Monday London, hosted at Microsoft's Victoria offices in London.

Chaired by Marek Pawlowski of MEX (the strategy forum for user experience), the session was entitled "Living in a Multi-platform World" and explored the challenges of developing for the much more fragmented world of mobile operating systems and hardware.

I was joined by fellow panellists Oded Ran from Microsoft's Windows Mobile 7 team, Tom Hume who is MD of Future Platforms, Jerry Ennis who is the CEO at the social networking site Flirtomatic, and Ilio Uvarov, leader of user experience practice at RG/A London.

The sixty-strong audience of Mobile Monday were mostly 3rd-party mobile developers, or small companies running on venture seed capital aiming to implement their good ideas in the mobile market.

Excellent and detailed notes from the session are available at this entry in Adam Cohen-Roses's "Expanding Horizons" blog.

What intrigued me was the challenge that many developers were experiencing as they had to build their skills for such a fragmented mobile landscape. For example, if you develop a successful iPhone app and wish to port it to, say, Android, you have to learn a whole new programming language and work with a different development environment. Consider Blackberry and you have a third language and development toolset. Microsoft and Nokia, fourth, fifth and so on.

Several member of the audience were looking for 'something' that would make the transition easier; that allowed them to stop feeling that they were starting from scratch each time they made the decision to target a different handset.

I had unwelcome news for them.

My experience of mobile development is that the most successful mobile applications:

1) Fulfil a strong need,

2) Are reliable and can be trusted to do their job,

3) Use design to create an engaging, even immersive experience.

So the bad news I gave the assembled audience is that, if they try and short cut the process of creating a reliable, engaging app that fulfils the customer's need on their phone, then they end up with a mediocre offering and little success.

I've seen 'mediocre' over they years so many times with Java applications - remember their 'write once use everywhere' philosophy? The result was uninspiring and unremarkable applications that could use only the lowest-common-denominator facilities across the 'everywhere' world. Java has found its greatest strength when the applications built using it are hidden as server services or utility applets. Glamorous they ain't.

The mobile phone world is the exact opposite: It demands a great experience for each make and model of handset. That's despite the variation of capabilities, CPU power, screen resolution, colours, aspect ratio, touch/non-touch ability, buttons and more.

If there is one element you may be able to port, its your set of excellent user-interface designs - and even then you will have to have variants to fit the various screen sizes and shapes, and whether the 'phone uses buttons or touch.

The unfortunate lesson is that, unless you can target a group of handsets - and deliver the best experience tailored experience for each one of these handsets - then don't bother at all.

Let's make that positive: If you make the time to deliver a best-of-breed experience for every particular handset you target, your application will be savoured by its users because you have made them feel special through a great experience. You may even have validated their choice of handset because your app works so well and looks so good on it.

Competitor apps may do more but yours can also be successful if it does less, better (comma important).

Believe me, customers who experience fantastic design and a great implementation on their mobile will reward you with commitment and loyalty. That's a prize worth the pain of starting from scratch each time.

Frankly, Tesco, we're getting bored with your iPhone-only apps

It's OK: message received loud and clear.
Both customers and colleagues have been emailing / commenting that there are now three Tesco apps for the iPhone but absolutely none for anything else and that frankly they are getting a bit bored waiting.
It's even reached Twitter:

• ScaredyCat: @techfortesco: getting a bit bored with tesco iphone only stance. There are other phones.

Well there's only one person to blame for all this and that's me. I started all this nonsense(!) about mobile apps as part of R&D research. I did it on an iPhone because I have an iPhone so it seemed like a good place to start. It helped that Apple had created the most consistent and coherent environment for development and application launch, so issues such as coping with a phone's lack of CPU power and all those different screen sizes and aspect ratios were absent from iPhone.


Oh yes, since I promise honesty on this blog of course a sense of vanity and cool permeated the decision. Tesco being cool, huh?


The success of our apps certainly showed that mobile applications from Tesco sit well with customers and in R&D we had proved that all the technical bases worked, which is what we're here for after all.
However our work now is ensuring we have a coherent API that will support all kinds of phones, so we have concentrated on developing this interface. This work has taken up nearly 100% of R&D time to research requirements and get it right. Once completed, we can do anything we want in the mobile world, on most phones and other devices too, but we have to complete these foundations before the visible applications are built.


While this API work has continued, our leaders have created a comprehensive and very sensible mobile strategy. By 'sensible', they have realised that we shouldn't have a whole load of Tesco apps and that each app does one little task, but a combined application that is best for customers. Take grocery - wouldn't it be great if we took the forthcoming online grocery application (already nearly completed and in user-acceptance testing) and combined it with Tesco Finder so you can order your 'Favourites' list of products online and also sat-nav your way through finding them in any Tesco branch? Now that's much better than two separate apps, and it's something they are looking into for phase two.


To those of you who say that you are upset at the lack of coverage for other phones, here is something to show that we are getting beyond the iPhone:

Is that the Tesco Clubcard app nearly ready for launch on a Nokia N97  through their OVI store in the next few weeks? Yes I think it is! I also have somewhere the Clubcard app running on a Blackberry which I'll show you when I get my hands on it.


Oh and what's this in the Nokia simulator? It looks rather like a grocery ordering app that's coming along just fine:

I also know that members of our newly extended R&D team are getting their teeth stuck into Android development so we can build our in-house expertise on that rapidly growing platform.


So, dear customers and colleagues, a lot of talented people are designing and building the applications you are seeking. The delay is only to ensure that they get them working just right through an extensive programme of design, development, and user-acceptance testing which is running now.


Soon these apps will be yours.

Nexus One arrives...

I just wanted to give you proof that we're not just doing iPhone mobile stuff.

The Google Nexus One has arrived on my desk and it is about to get a programming it'll never forget! SDK being downloaded right now: Tesco Finder for Android, here we come...