Au debut de cette année, j’ai eu l’opportunité de passer trois nuits au sein d’un temple bouddhiste situé dans la région montagneuse de PyeongChang (평창군), siège des derniers JO d’hiver de 2018. Le temple de Woljeongsa se trouve encaissé au milieu d’une vallée où passe également une rivière, gelée au moment de mon séjour.

Les bâtiments sont très beaux et bigarrés, avec beaucoup de détails en bois sculptés, le tout avec une architecture que je qualifierais de mélange de styles suisse et chinois.

Lorsqu’on croise un moine quelque part sur le domaine du temple, il faut, selon l’étiquette bouddhiste, s’adonner au “hapjang”: ralentir, mettre les mains en forme de prière, puis faire une courbette. On s’y habitue vite et les moines ne manquent jamais de réciproquer. C’est plutôt sympa.

La décoration des chambres est sobre mais celles-ci sont tout de même confortables.

Les moines ainsi que les employés du temple vivent, habitent et mangent tous sur le “campus”. Il y a trois repas par jour, à 6h du matin, à 11h, ainsi qu’à 17h. Les repas sont strictement vegan : ils ne contiennent aucune viande, laitage, œufs, ni onions ou ail. Ils sont servis dans une grande salle de cantine sous forme de buffet à volonté et consistent en un mélange de riz, de kimchi, d’algues de radis, de champignons et de tofu. C’est plutôt bon.

La nourriture ne change presque pas et, au fil des jours, les repas sont tous plus ou moins les mêmes. Il y a de temps à autre une variation subtile au menu, tel un nouveau type de radis, ce qui est toujours une source de grande joie et de grande délectation.

Tel que précisé sur la brochure, il est très important de manger à sa faim. Le bouddhisme ne lésine ainsi pas sur les plaisirs sensoriels.

Il y a plusieurs cérémonies religieuses par jour, qui sont précédées d’un concert de gros instruments pour les annoncer : un gros tambour, un gong frappé par un bloc de bois suspendu, ainsi qu’un gros poisson suspendu creux dans lequel les moines font de méchantes percussions.

Au cours des cérémonies dans le temple de Buddha (où les photos sont interdites), un moine répète des mantras à longeur de temps à l’aide d’un microphone tout en tapant sur un poisson en bois. Les poissons sont un symbole du Bouddhisme car ils ont toujours les yeux ouverts. Dans le procédé, les gens s’agenouillent et se prosternent, puis se relèvent, font un “hapjang”, et ceci une trentaine de fois d’affilée. C’est assez fatiguant mais on s’y habitue rapidement et tout se passe dans la bonne humeur.

Ce séjour fut une agréable expérience. Tout est fait pour préserver l’harmonie et générer une ambiance zen au sein du temple. Et ça marche !

Three months after its launch, the Apple Watch hasn’t left anyone unmoved and seems to crystalize the somewhat ludicrous feud between Cupertino haters and fanboys. One thing is certain though: commentators don’t seem to agree on whether the Watch is a success or not. Take as examples a few recent, confusing article titles from major tech publications:

• The Apple Watch could be the most successful flop in history (Mashable)
• Apple is slipping in a universe where success is relative (Wired)
• Apple has fundamentally changed our definition of a flop (Business Insider)

Even if the Apple Watch does turn out to be a successful flop, I believe that everyone involved in the mobile ecosystem should take the ridiculously small amount of real estate offered on the device as an opportunity to improve their products and services.

A few years into the rise of mobile, there is now a widespread acceptance that transposing traditional, online practices onto the smaller mobile screen, be it in the fields of UI, UX, marketing, advertising, or publishing, does simply not work. Take a device as small as the Watch, and using the old ways of desktop is clearly impossible.

In the famous Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z, Goku, the main character, trains for months in the so-called Gravity Machine, a contraption that multiplies Earth’s gravity level by 100x. Training under these extreme conditions helps him increase his strength level and, once back in normal gravity, he feels like a feather.

Similarly to Goku’s gravity machine, the Watch can be an opportunity for mobile stakeholders to develop best practices that will then also serve to improve the mobile experience on larger screens. In other words, he who can do with less, can do with more. Here’s how.

1. The Watch Will Force Developers to Improve their UX practices

For some time now, the traditional vision of mobile as merely being “Internet on the move” has been being seriously challenged. In a 2014 Ofcom survey held in the UK, 25% of respondents declared to use Internet on their phone either “only at home” or “mainly at home”. This result shows that the use cases of mobile usage are very diverse, and that mobile as a phenomenon goes beyond an extension of desktop Internet.

A more comprehensive and realistic definition of mobile is rather the capacity, through omnipresent Internet connectivity and consistent experiences, to enable a brand or a service to tend to a user’s specific intent or need in a given situation. As such, the mobile experience needs to be designed in a way that facilitates a clean and efficient capture of the user intent. In this context, the more clutter, the more distraction, the more chances there are to miss on the opportunity to convert on specific goals.

The Apple Watch exacerbates this phenomenon, with controls that are more limited (smaller screen), but slightly more complicated (digital crown), making users even less patient and less tolerant of a short-of-perfect UX with an Apple Watch app than they would for a phone app. For this reason, developers cannot afford to design their app in a way that does not convey immediate value, or it’s likely to be kicked to the curb even quicker than a phone-only app would.

2. The Watch Will Force Publishers to Improve Their Monetization Practices

If there is one area where chucking desktop practices onto mobile is particularly cringe-worthy for users, it is advertising. The small amount of real estate offered on the device makes banners and other disruptive formats particularly intruding and annihilates the user experience. In the last couple of years, the realization that traditional online formats do not work on mobile led the rise of native advertising. Native, on mobile, cannot be defined as a new format per se, but rather as a framework allowing apps and mobile websites to display advertising and monetize their traffic while preserving their user experience.

What is a more-than-welcome initiative on mobile screens is a downright obligation on the Watch and any form of advertising other than native is simply not conceivable on such as small screen.

Luckily, some initiatives have already come up. For instance, PubNative, a mobile supply-side platform focused on native advertising, recently announced support for native on the Apple Watch with a campaign from German bank ING-DiBa running native ads in a soccer app, TorAlarm.

As you can see, the strict amount of space available on the Watch, as well as the short attention span provided by users, forces publishers to come up with innovative solutions to monetize their traffic without alienating their audience.

Every industry should have its Gravity Machine, and, to a large extent, the Apple Watch is that of mobile, as it presses everyone to do better with less. Here’s maybe something that everyone can finally agree on: the Watch is a great opportunity for developers, advertisers, and publishers alike to finally embrace what mobile is all about.

This article was originally published on the AppLift Blog.