Q & A

About DreamSpring and the Life Management Concept

What is your vision for the company?

I see DreamSpring as providing unique life management solutions to both the mass market via products and services centred around connected mobile devices such as smartphones. DreamSpring is both the driver of this technology (with no other companies or organisations sharing our vision of technological focus) and the prime provider of this technology. I see us as occupying a unique role in this yet-to-develop industry, much as companies like Adobe (image management) or Quicken (personal finance) do in theirs.

What is a life management application?

A life management application transforms the conventional contacts and calendar/task applications from passive, user-driven databases into active, connection-making, user-aiding knowledge managers. Information in a traditional contacts application just sits there, either being passively displayed, or edited. In a Life Management application, it forms a network of relationships, contributing to the context of your activites, and providing contacts to allow dynamic, automated, secure sharing of your activities with the people who need to know. Events in a traditional calendar application are capable only of pre-timed alarms or reminders, but in a Life Management application they reschedule themselves based on your work-life balance, your current context, learned priorities, communication with other involved parties, and resource availability, and they prompt you in a context-sensitive way to fulfil your plans.

How would you see a life management application work on a smartphone?

Clearly Life Management requires access to several things to work: contact details, planned activities (ie. calendar events), communication channels with other people (eg. SMS, MMS, Email, Web, Chat), and context (ie. time, location, status, current activity, movement, etc.). Smartphones are, in fact, the only devices that come close to having all these. Life Management actually improves on the standard contacts/calendar by using things like context, relationships, communications, etc. to minimise the need for data entry. And considering that data entry is the weakest point of smartphones, this is a big advantage.

How did you come up with the life management idea?

I thought a lot about contacts and calendering, and the limitations I found the standard applications placed on me. Especially in the modern world, where schedules need to be fluid and context-sensitive, I found the dumb, data-entry approach of these applications frustrating and limited. So then I started trying to find ways to improve this. Eventually I realised that we could leverage the data already on the phones, combined with their powerful communications platform, to provide substantial amounts automated data management. And it grew from there.

Why do you think work-life balance is important?

Work-life balance has always been important. In the past, it wasn't an issue that was in your control -- your job decided it for you. Nowdays we have more freedom, but often we exercise that freedom in ways that end up enslaving us: we work so hard to earn lots of money that we have no time to enjoy the fruit of our labour. Most importantly, we sacrifice relationships, family, spiritual, and friendships. With work encroaching into our home life, via things like the smartphone, it is increasingly important that we have tools flexible enough to meet the challenges that face us.

What are the challenges you face in developing such an application?

Clearly smartphones need to be powerful to run such sophisticated applications. But even more than that, ubiquitous data communications need to be cheap and reliable, far more so than in almost any market as of yet. Location and other contextual information needs to be readily available in an accurate and affordable form. Synchronisation conduits with miscellaneous contact and calendering or task management software need to be available and reliable. And finally, the Life Management framework itself needs to be developed in ways that develop real usability, and not just theoretical results.