Leaders in the Flex community recently gathered at Adobe’s San Francisco headquarters this week. I’ve covered my thoughts to the conversations that went on during those two days. The goal was to discuss Flex and it’s future as an Apache project, but other topics included: HTML5, Adobe’s new corporate strategy, and the future for the Flex community.

Apache is the the future for enterprise class Flex. For those highly skeptical and critical of Adobe, my message to you is this: The move to Apache is a big one and categorically different from anything we’ve seen in the past.

Read the whole blog post here.

CIOs have a tough problem to solve.  It is typically their responsibility to maintain all of the applications within their network, safely and securely.  This means CIOs have to say ‘no’ a lot.  Lately, however, CIOs have been using a secret weapon that can help them reduce risks, bounce back from downtime and manage several times more computer resources at once.  In essence, they are able to say ‘yes’ much more frequently.  This is a dream state for both businesses and consumers and it is enabled by a technology known as virtualization.

Virtualization decouples the operating system from the underlying machine, allowing you to spin-up any operating system on demand.  This makes competing operating systems more accessible than ever.  This capability fueled the growth of infrastructure as a service which revolutionized IT resource management.  This really is the foundation of cloud computing, which marked the beginning of the end for some software compatibility issues since many productivity applications that used to be [enter favorite OS here]-based are now appearing free, online and delivered through the browser.  Further, the ability to spin-up Windows from Mac made it easier for a consumer to decide to purchase a Mac without giving up desktop software that needed to run on Windows.  Consumers were liberated from vendor lock-in and had more choices.  Virtualization was therefore a big win for consumers but has made it much more competitive for desktop operating systems that can no longer monopolize your overall experience.

With the relevance of the desktop OS eroding, many platform strategies started looking to the cloud and mobile to capture the shift in demand.  The two forces combine to create a full spectrum of offerings beyond the benefits of a single device, which include specialized marketplaces, cloud storage, music synch, home entertainment device interop, lifestyle accessories etc…  This is where virtualization becomes an intriguing wildcard.

Enter BlueStacks.  BlueStacks uses an embedded virtualization approach that lets you run native Android applications within Windows.  This capability merges two very large user groups and merges the benefits on both platforms.  You can use BlueStacks on your Windows 7 computer to spare your mobile phone’s battery, save on mobile network data charges, or generally free yourself from device dependency.  Maybe you want to configure your Android applications with a proper keyboard, like adding routes to a transit tracker or typing a shopping list into Springpad to synch to your mobile device.   Maybe you need the Google Authenticator app to login to Google Docs on your laptop and you don’t have your mobile device handy.  Or maybe your phone’s battery is dead.  As the platform arms race heats up, this dual approach is compelling.  Why lock into one platform when you can consolidate two?

Windows 7 desktop view. My selected Android applications loaded into BlueStacks

Windows 7 desktop view. BlueStacks running the Android Chicago Transit Tracker

Going forward, the next logical step would be enabling the mobile device itself to swap between platforms. The iDroid project has demonstrated it can run Android on a jailbroken iPhone – in dual boot mode.   Microsoft’s approach in their ambitious Windows 8 vision is more usable by switching between desktop and tablet mode, albeit both running proprietary instances of windows.  Imagine that you would no longer need a specific device to get access to a specific application.  You could port your own user experience with any device you have adapted to any interface you encounter.  You just switch between virtual machine instances (VMs) on your device as needed.  Imagine never having to configure an application again – the VM will have restricted OS access so you can pre-load all the settings required.  Even still, you may ask why someone would really need to dynamically switch platforms (switching two instances of Android or switching Android with iOS).  It’s not so much that you, the consumer, really needs it as much as you, the corporate citizen does.

Consider this – you work for a small company that is paranoid about security and won’t allow iPads because malware was once introduced to the internal network from being used by carefree kids at home.  With virtualization on mobile devices, you can now purchase almost any device you want, but while at work, you get a pre-loaded virtualized, secured instance that allows IT to manage the safety of the devices on their network.  Further, the VM can be preloaded with all of the productivity tools you are standardized on (e.g. Exchange email/contacts, Dropbox, Yammer, Salesforce etc…).  Your iPad can now be used safely at home by the kids as designed, but your work assets are encrypted and physically inaccessible.  This is exactly the type of abstraction that can help thwart network intrusions, whether introduced from downloads or usb-connected devices.

iDroid project’s dual boot screen on a jail broken iPhone 3G

Legal issues will likely prevent virtualization from becoming ubiquitous across mobile devices in these early days.  After all, Mac OS X is not legally permitted to run inside of a virtualized instance on non-Mac computers (although you can run Windows from a Mac if you have a Windows license).  As our mobile lifestyles evolve, the context of our problems will change.  Within a single household, consumers will want platform independence and a consolidated way to manage all of their devices much like the CIOs of an enterprise today.  So while some applications of virtualization may not be endorsed, virtualization is proven and is mostly limited by licensing with proprietary platforms.

Over the past week the Flash and Flex community have been on a roller coaster ride with announcements by Adobe regarding the Flash platform.  As a technical director at Roundarch this is a topic I follow very closely since it directly affects the digital solutions we design and develop for our clients.  I’ve shared my thoughts on Flex and the future of developing rich internet applications in a post on my blog.

I am fortunate to be surrounded with technologists, user experience practitioners, visual designers, and strategists at Roundarch who combined represent expertise in almost all things relevant to modern software development. It’s a lucky spot to be in and I’m confident in our proficiency to adapt both reactively and proactively to trends like this in the industry.

I’ve been involved in the Flex community in some capacity now for over 4 years. Over the past week Adobe has made some major announcements concerning Flash and Flex. Some in the Flex community are clearly livid over what has happened in the past week. I’d like to offer a little perspective on how I came to love Flex and my thoughts on the future of developing rich user interfaces.

Read the whole blog post here.

I recently attended the SharePoint 2011 conference held in Anaheim, CA.  The event hosted about 7,500 attendees with broad ranging backgrounds.  The topics covered were targeted to business executives, business users, IT executives, SharePoint Admins, FAST Search Admins and SharePoint Developers.   A whole conference dedicated to one product?  This is a testament to the size and complexity of SharePoint, for sure.

Here are just a few metrics about the current state of SharePoint from the keynote:

• 125 million licenses;
• 65,000 customers (compared to Interwoven at roughly 20,000)
• 67% of customers report rolling out SharePoint to the entire organization
• 80% of Fortune 500 firms report having deployed SharePoint (somewhere internally)

Interesting tidbits from sessions:

• Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST is being fully integrated into SharePoint search (will require additional licensing) replacing most underlying systems with Microsoft technologies.  The configuration of FAST is supposed to be streamlined within SharePoint.  FAST is still available as a search indexer outside of SharePoint, however, you will need to install SharePoint on one server to manage the FAST configurations.
• When migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010, migrate search first
• Use a taxonomy add-on to allow content authors to set limited roles and permissions within SharePoint by using taxonomies
• SharePoint 2010 custom UIs are much better than 2007 but still very cumbersome
• Microsoft sees the opportunity in cloud very well but they also emphasized possibility of deploying hybrid solutions where SharePoint server is hosted by them and database is hosted on premises for those companies that have to keep data on premises.
• SharePoint Online will be available to Business Connectivity Services to allow communication between cloud and on-prem data source.
• Frustration with the vast complexity of SharePoint was a comic undertone… no one person is an expert in all things SharePoint, it requires a specialized team
• Business Intelligence tools are getting very rich in experience and features… dashboards like this are easily assembled with Business Intelligence Tools:

Decomposition Tree, PivotViewer Control

Interesting tidbits from attendees:

• Common Problems (assuming complex customization)
  • Underestimating the timeline
  • Underestimating the overall cost
  • Underestimating the requisite skills required
  • Hiring the wrong resources, not finding the right resources
  • Implementation/development costs are sky high, somewhat reversing cost advantages

Recognizing the difficulty businesses have in identifying the right skills for SharePoint, the keynote introduced a new certification track called “SharePoint Architect”.  Microsoft has routinely reiterated that a complex SharePoint implementation would ideally consist of the following core roles:

SharePoint Architect (Hands-on),

SharePoint Admin,

Sr. Software Developer,

Jr. Software / SharePoint Developer combo

Front-End Designer

• Sound advice
  • Most attendees acknowledged they cannot staff this internally, which makes the cloud offering a little more compelling for them – they can outsource the management details.
  • Large development lead time for Sr. Software developers is necessary to get the infrastructure in place and configured, otherwise large bottlenecks will occur when the development team joins
  • Cloud-based solutions require an IT admin and SharePoint admin to collaborate very closely with the Architect(s)
  • Disable all SharePoint features/services and only add them as needed, otherwise, you’ll find dependencies that will need to be broken

All in all, it was interesting getting the market perspective of the attendees and seeing a very clear pattern between the ones we spoke with.    Unlike more technology focused conferences, this one was like seeing a cross section of the business world in a tech setting – all figuring out how to best leverage SharePoint.  One specific thing that attracted us to the conference was in leveraging the new FAST configuration through SharePoint – since we at Roundarch are very familiar with FAST as a pre-Microsoft search engine.  A little aggravating that we need to maintain a separate SharePoint instance to configure FAST in a non-SharePoint architecture, but the FAST integration with SharePoint Admin tools does make the overall configuration more efficient – something Microsoft is good at doing.

Roundarch is proud to have hosted a special event for the Interaction Design Association’s (IxDA) Chicago chapter this past Wednesday. IxDA is a global network dedicated to promoting user-centered design, most visibly through its annual Interaction conference, but also through active local chapters like ours. I’ve had the privilege of being a board member of our chapter for the past two years, helping to organize our monthly events to promote and share the great work of Chicago’s designers.

Kicking off the monthly IxDA Chicago Chapter meeting at the Roundarch offices

Garrett Hrncir, UX Lead of Roundarch, presented a taste of our work in creating digital experiences that span multiple networked devices. This concept known as Multi-Channel Design focuses on how everyday people now use many devices as a part of their daily lives–a PC at work, a tablet at home, and a smartphone within arms reach at all times. In a perfect world, these devices all work together to make our lives easier–helping us work, providing entertainment, and keeping us in touch. When executed correctly, the transition from desktop web app to iPad app is totally seamless to the user. Garrett shared how creating such an experience, while sure to be complicated, doesn’t need to seem daunting.

Garrett Hrncir presents the USAF conceptual iPad app

Our presentation began with an overview of the state of the mobile industry and Roundarch’s capabilities in this area, highlighting our work with clients like Avis, HBO, and Bloomberg Sports.  It is estimated that by 2012 tablets will outpace laptops sales in the US, and by 2015 more users will access the Internet in the US by mobile devices than PC (Forrester Research, Inc., Tablets Will Grow As Fast As MP3 Players, January 2011). With this changing landscape, it is more important than ever for organizations to understand how to use these devices to meaningfully reduce friction and not add to user frustration.

This event was special in that it gave us a rare opportunity to share learnings from our recent conceptual design work for the US Air Force on potential Multi-Channel strategies. The goal of our research and development effort is to discover how the iPad can best be deployed to provide our servicemen and women with access to mission-critical information. Based on features and functionality of the enterprise web applications we’ve built with the Air Force, a new prototype iPad app explores use of streamlined data analysis tools, interactive infographics and Augmented Reality (AR) . Garrett’s presentation and demo of the prototype highlighted the methodology employed by our co-located team, including on-site contextual research with users, translation of common design patterns to a new platform, and rapid iterations of design and development.

All in all, an audience of about 50 local designers and developers stayed throughout the hour-long presentation and peppered Garrett with questions for another 15-20 minutes. At Roundarch, we’re excited to work at the forefront of technology and tackle the challenges it presents. To be able to partner with and deliver a meaningful solution to the US Air Force is unique and rewarding in and of itself. But to have the ability to share and discuss it with the local design community is an opportunity we don’t often get, and we’re glad to have spent the evening with members of IxDA Chicago.

Last week I attended Web 2.0 Expo in New York to give a talk about dark patterns in user experience. This talk was somewhat the sequel of a talk I gave at SxSW earlier this year about “behavior design,” or the ability for technology to influence us so we live healthier, better lives. Just as we can use the web to improve our lives, though, the same persuasive techniques can be used against us.

This talk came about in part because of the concerns about my SxSW talk: there’s a fine line between persuasion and manipulation, and it’s important to figure out where that lies. I was inspired to frame the talk in the way that I did because of Harry Brignull’s site that collects and categorizes “dark patterns,” or techniques that are carefully crafted to work against a customer’s interests.

To the user, though, it might be hard to tell the difference between a UX designer’s mistake and a dark pattern. Many dark patterns exist to fulfill specific business goals that may make sense within the company, but through a lack of opt-out feature, or poor defaults, the execution is botched such that it results in negative perceptions of the company.

Compounding things further, some companies may actively use dark patterns, because they’ve successfully made a case that they will increase profit. And that may be true: profits, after all, are easy to directly measure, far more than customer goodwill. Companies may also implement dark patterns passively, through incoherent business strategies, strategic issues, or internecine fighting between stakeholders. In my talk I listed a handful of ways that we can determine goodwill, like repeat transactions from the same customer, which might work towards solving this problem. I also listed some ways to avoid dark patterns from happening in your product.

If you’re interested in learning more, I’ve posted the talk’s slides to my website.

“Be the change you want to see in the world” a quote by Mahatma Gandhi stands as a focal point on one of the walls at the iMentor.org office in new york city, a non-profit organization that matches students from underprivileged communities with successful adults to guide and support them through the difficulties and challenges of high school life, both on a personal level as well as academically.

Two years ago I applied to iMentor and was matched with Jordan, a freshmen at the High School for Careers in Sports in the Bronx. I decided to join the program for four years in order to help him throughout his high school career. It wasn’t a choice I made to be altruistic, I simply heard about the program through a friend and thought it would be a great opportunity and learning experience. I have to admit at first I was hesitant, considering my demanding career as a creative consultant at Roundarch and my own personal life, it seemed impossible to help someone else when I was struggling to help myself and my own family.

Growing up in an “underprivileged” community in NYC in the early 90′s where drugs and crime was the everyday normalcy and going to school felt like walking into prison, it was expected to assume that the “good life” was simply for the privileged and those with more fortunate socioeconomic conditions. My mom was always there for me and supported me in every way, but being a single parent struggling to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads, there was only so much she could offer. I had very few people I looked up to growing up, but fortunately there was one, my old music teacher Mr. Larios. He kept us out of trouble by teaching us the art of Latin Jazz everyday after school and performing on the weekends for the community, but most importantly he was a great mentor. He gave me one of the best recommendations for college, gave me my first summer job helping design the district’s annual calendar and was never shy to scream at me when I did something wrong, all with good intentions of course . He helped me realize that life is simply a byproduct of the choices we make (the good and the bad) and that we must learn from those experiences in order to grow as individuals and within our communities.

An old boss told me “the secret to happiness is making others happy” and I truly believe that there is nothing more rewarding than inspiring others to find their own voice, even if it simply means showing up once a month or writing one e-mail a week. No matter how small the effort, a single pebble dropped in water can ripple a thousand-fold, spreading as it flows out to sea.

We’re in desperate times, we’re all feeling the effects of the economy and the environment and we must make every effort possible to set the foundation for future generations too look after our planet, all life and its beauty and continue the legacy of the human condition. Being a mentor has helped me realize that life isn’t just about material wealth, but helping a fellow human being less fortunate than myself realize they are beacons of light in a world clouded by darkness.

Today we are happy to announce the release of Music Mine, a free iPad media discovery application designed by the team at Roundarch for KCRW, arguably one of the most forward-thinking and well-respected radio stations (if not music brands) in the country.

For those that aren’t familiar, KCRW is a Los Angeles-based radio station and product of Santa Monica College. The station is generally known as Southern California’s leading National Public Radio affiliate, featuring an eclectic mix of music, news, information and cultural programming. The station boasts one of the nation’s largest arrays of locally-produced, nationally-distributed talk program content, with internationally recognized programming and DJs that have become household names in the music and recording industry.

I had the opportunity to oversee the project for Roundarch while we worked in collaboration with PRX (Public Radio Exchange) and The Echo Nest to assist KCRW in the strategy, design and development of a next-generation music / media discovery application. The concept, albeit technically complex, is quite simple: create a playful, engaging way for people to discover new music, learn more about artists, and get closer to the original content that KCRW produces every day.

Music mine features top songs played on KCRW each week, as well as direct links in to each of the KCRW shows, offering a completely different way to explore music and KCRW programming: by artist, track or show on which the song has aired.  Once a user dives into the experience, they are presented with a mosaic of KCRW shows, artists and popular songs, and exclusive videos of live performances recorded inside the KCRW studios. The user interface consists of tiles that can be explored by the user, and the tiles are laid out on the screen with the most recent songs appearing towards the center, and the less recent content spread out towards the edges of the mosaic.

Drilling into an artist / song provides a bunch of additional content related to the user’s selection, with a quick and easy way to view photo galleries, biographies, and links to YouTube videos and blogs related to each artist.  One of the things we especially wanted to accomplish with the application was an ability to not only explore, but also to share new music with others through Facebook, Twitter and email integration.  Of course, if users really love the newly-discovered music, the songs can be purchased directly from the iTunes store by clicking a link from within the Music Mine application.

The process of designing this application was done collaboratively by working with PRX and the team at KCRW led by Anil Dewan, KCRW’s director of New Media. In addition, our team worked with music fans for input during the design process and to ensure that the experience that came through in the software was representative of our design strategy.   When we began the project, we came up with the concept that the application should provide a good way to visualize the week’s popular tracks, but also provide the feeling of digging through a great collection of curated music to find the gems you’d want to share with your friends.

I can speak for the entire Roundarch team when I express how proud we are to have been able to play such an influential role in the strategy and design of this experience for KCRW. Our focus on user experience really worked well in this collaboration.  As a company with many serious music fans, we were able to design something that we wanted to use each and every day to get our fix for both the latest and greatest unreleased music as well as classics that we’ve heard time and again.

You can download the free KCRW application for the iPad in the Apple iTunes Store.

Learn more about the app here.

Enjoy and Happy Toonage!

Whether Adobe represents an aging dinosaur in an online world that is quickly passing them by or a force still to be reckoned with in a battle of giants for control of the world of rich Internet application solutions was the central theme of a panel discussion in which I recently participated at the Pacific Crest 13th Annual Global Technology Leadership Forum, in beautiful Vail, Colorado.  The questions asked of the panelists, all of whom represented digital agencies working in the RIA space, were about what you’d expect:  What kinds of projects do you work on?  Is Adobe more or less relevant to your business than they were a year ago?  When not using Adobe’s tools, what else do you use?  Is HTML 5 going to take over the world?  Since the conference attendees were all institutional investors looking to make portfolio decisions across a wide range of technology stocks, what they really wanted to know, of course, was, “Should I buy?  Should I sell?  Just tell me — what should I do?”

The panelists were, probably not surprisingly, mixed in their assessments of ADBE, but the opinions generally fell in line with the type of work that made up the bread and butter of each of the agencies.  Those who specialized in more consumer-facing applications felt that Adobe, although still obviously leading the pack for designers with their Creative Suite, had become far less relevant than they were a year ago in terms of the importance of the Flash platform.  One agency even reported that whereas Flash development represented 25% of their new business in 2010, NONE of their new business in 2011 was being built with Flash; their customers simply preferred to make the trade off of reduced interactivity in exchange for a technology stack (HTML and JavaScript) that can easily be consumed on the iPad and iPhone.

On the other hand, the agencies like Roundarch that focus more on enterprise deployments where a richly interactive experience is key had a different perspective.  Sure, customers are growing in their level of sophistication and better understand that there is a multiplicity of devices to be supported, but these needs are additive to the work on Adobe platforms, not in lieu of it.  More importantly, however, was the recognition of the compelling story that Adobe is now telling with its Customer Experience Management strategy.  For enterprise customers, the ability to tie together a workflow that starts with conceptual and production design and development with the Creative Suite with solid integration into deployment and ongoing content management using CQ5 and ends (or starts again) with usage statistics and analysis with Omniture is terribly attractive.

Let’s face it — if you’re looking at Adobe’s growth opportunity as being centered around their Creative Suite (a mature market with little growth opportunity if there ever was one) or their revenues related to Flash (meager at best), then they just aren’t that interesting from an investment perspective.  But if you look at them with a slightly wider lens — one that is focused on their having finally put together a strong value proposition for the enterprise market backed by an extremely solid product suite — then the outlook for ADBE is a bit more exciting.

Spurred by the success of the Front Office suite of fantasy baseball tools for the 2011 season, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports have teamed up to release three new mobile apps, just in time for the fantasy baseball trading deadline.

During our first year working with Bloomberg Sports, we designed and developed an online suite of tools and a complementary mobile offering to help advanced fantasy baseball users manage their teams effectively. Beginning with the 2010 NFL season, we broadened the aperture of our fantasy advice to guide a wider range of user types, from novice through advanced players. These efforts resulted in the overwhelming success of the NFL Decision Maker applications, a multi-channel offering supported on NFL.com, and on the iPad and iPhone.

In our second season working together, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports focused on providing prescriptive answers to key fantasy baseball questions, such as: “Who should I draft?”, “Which free agent should I add to my team?” and “Is this a fair trade?” This focused perspective translates especially well to mobile offerings, which should aim to help users to complete a single task easily and efficiently. For example, the 2011 MLB Draft Kit, released during Spring Training, assists fantasy baseball players with ranking their players before the draft, and quickly identifying their next targets during the draft.

After fantasy baseball players draft their teams in March, they transition their focus from pre-season to in-season tools, such as the Trade Analyzer, Free Agent Finder and Lineup Manager offerings within Front Office 2011. Roundarch leveraged user research to discover the key tasks that users would be interested in completing on mobile devices, and examined the competitive landscape to identify gaps in fantasy provider offerings (i.e., Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball for iPhone) that Bloomberg Sports could address with innovative products. The result of our research, design and development are three new mobile apps: iPad Trade Analyzer, iPhone Trade Analyzer and iPhone Fantasy Scout.

iPad Trade Analyzer

In transitioning the Trade Analyzer from the online toolkit to the iPad, we reintroduced a baseball card metaphor that was an original aspect of the 2010 Front Office product. The user experience and visual design teams worked closely to create a realistic wood surface that serves as the canvas for building trades. While the online toolkit uses text fields and drop-down menus to facilitate player selection, the iPad experience is much more tactile, allowing users to drag-and-drop baseball cards on the table. Recognizing that drag-and-drop can lead to visibility issues on a touchscreen device, we complemented this interaction model with an icon on each card that the user can tap to add or remove the corresponding player to or from the trade.

An arrow at the top of the interface swings in either direction to provide immediate feedback on balanced trades, while a limited control structure offers a clear workflow for analyzing trades (i.e., select a trading partner, select the players on both sides and view the resulting analysis). Given the time-sensitive nature of the fantasy season, the design team identified opportunities to use out-of-the-box controls, while the development team highlighted built-in components that could increase the playfulness of the application (e.g., shaking the iPad to clear the trade, evoking memories of an Etch A Sketch).

iPhone Trade Analyzer

While the iPad and iPhone Trade Analyzers were designs and developed concurrently, the limited screen real estate on the iPhone required streamlining the user workflows even further. Early design concepts supported both landscape and portrait versions; however, we quickly realized that the position of the user’s thumbs while switching between their team and their trading partner was more naturally facilitated in the landscape orientation. The iPhone app maintains the table metaphor from the iPad version, but does not support dragging-and-dropping baseball cards, an interaction model that proved cumbersome during our prototyping stage.

Although screen size dictated that not all iPhone Trade Analyzer components could be displayed simultaneously (e.g., the three elements of the final analysis), we identified interface elements that could be supported on the iPhone and iPad versions with only minor changes, if any. For example, the processes by which users log into the applications and load their fantasy teams are virtually identical across both platforms. By devoting time to supporting a multi-channel strategy during the conceptual design phase, we were able to reduce development time and improve learnability for users that purchased the applications on the iPad and iPhone.

iPhone Fantasy Scout

Complementing the trading apps, the iPhone Fantasy Scout app provides users the ability to identify top free agents across all of the scoring categories in the user’s fantasy league. Starting with the interaction model from the iPhone Draft Kit, we replaced pre-season information such as player outlooks, with breaking news and analysis on every MLB player. Statistical leaderboards, based on year-to-date performance, proved more relevant than pre-season player rankings, although we did elect to include the groundbreaking Fantasy Factors, which spotlight key player attributes, such as injury history and schedule strength, that continue to provide value in-season.

Conclusions

One of our key design tenets was to ensure that the navigation remained consistent both within and across each of the mobile applications. Early feedback has shown that new users have found the interfaces to be intuitive, and easy-to-use, while returning Bloomberg Sports customers are pleased with the applications’ focus on simple, prescriptive guidance. We have designed a user interface model that is flexible enough to apply to future sports (e.g., NBA, NHL) with only minor adjustments, while the development framework can scale to support additional platforms (e.g., Android). As the fantasy baseball trading deadline approaches and users begin to divert their attention to the football season, Roundarch and Bloomberg Sports plan to continue supporting fantasy players looking for the competitive edge, whether at home or on the go.

Each of the in-season mobile applications is available for purchase through the iTunes Store:

• iPad Trade Analyzer
• iPhone Trade Analyzer
• iPhone Fantasy Scout