RCS DevChallenge 2011

Eligibility

Entries for the RCS DevChallenge are welcome from as wide an audience of companies and individuals as possible. Typical companies and organisations who might consider entry would include, but are not limited to:

Sponsoring organisations and companies are free to submit entries but will not be able score their own entries in the live judging. The Chairman of the judging panel will take this into account for overall scoring purposes.

Judging – all award categories

After the initial screening of entry submissions, live judging will take place at the two day RCS DevChallenge ‘Meet’ in December, 2010. The location of the ‘Meet’ will be Europe. Companies and entrants should be prepared to attend this event at their own expense. The judges will announce their choice of three shortlisted entries for each category after the judging is finished on Day 2. The winner for each category will be announced at the Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, Spain in February 2011.

RCS DevChallenge Award Categories

Best RCS Mobile Client award

The ‘Best RCS Mobile Client’ award recognises the most useable and compelling RCS mobile client as decided by the RCS DevChallenge panel of judges. The judging panel will be looking for a novel client application that will clearly be seen to enrich the social or business use of mobile communications and offer a new and attractive opportunity for mobile (and fixed line) users to share their real-time experiences with a mixture of voice, text, and still or video images. Additionally, it has to demonstrate a genuine value-added dimension with the potential for commercial deployment.

Clients can be developed for one or more platforms such as Symbian, J2ME, WAC, Windows Mobile, Android, Apple or others. Platform choices must be indicated on your Entry & Registration form. Entrants are encouraged to diversify their entries with clients presented on more than one platform.

Guide judging criteria

The judges will expect to assess the client’s performance on a device(s) as chosen by the developer – computer simulations of mobile device clients will not be acceptable. Entrants should supply their client loaded in a suitable mobile device which has already been configured to work with the RCS Reference System (see the FAQ section for more details). There is no restriction as to the type or nature of mobile device chosen to demonstrate the client application. PC based clients may be demonstrated on any suitable PC.

Although entries will not be specifically tested for interoperability, it is expected that they will employ a significant amount of the RCS specifications. Judges will take the degree of compliance with the specifications into consideration when making their assessments.

The following is meant for guidance only. It is not an exhaustive list of criteria.

Usability

• How easy is it for a consumer to use the Client?
• To what degree is its use intuitive?
• How obvious is it to navigate around and between the features?
• How does it make good use of mobility?
• How will the usability enhance the perceived value to the end user?

Design

• How appealing is the client – visually and functionally?
• How clear is the layout of information when the client is in use?
• How well does it provide an enriched communication experience for the user
• What features are incorporated that demonstrate innovative use of design?
• Does it offer a 'Cool factor' or will appeal to a particular target audience?
• What is innovative about the design?

Breadth of conformance to RCS specifications

• How much of the RCS feature set (as specified in <RCS Release 1>, <RCS Release 2>or <RCS Release 3>) is included in the client’s functionality?

Best RCS PC Client award

The ‘Best RCS PC Client’ award recognises the most useable and compelling RCS PC client as decided by the RCS DevChallenge panel of judges. The judging panel will be looking for a novel client application that will clearly be seen to enrich the social or business use of mobile and internet communications and offer a new and attractive opportunity for mobile and fixed line users to share their real-time experiences with a mixture of voice, text, and still or video images. Additionally, it has to demonstrate a genuine value-added dimension with the potential for commercial deployment.

Guide judging criteria

The judges will expect to assess the client’s performance in real time on any suitable PC.

Although entries will not be specifically tested for interoperability, it is expected that they will employ a significant amount of the RCS specifications. Judges will take the degree of compliance with the specifications into consideration when making their assessments.

The following is meant for guidance only. It is not an exhaustive list of criteria.

Usability

• How easy is it for a consumer to use the Client?
• To what degree is its use intuitive?
• How obvious is it to navigate around and between the features?
• How does it make good use of PC access?
• How will the usability enhance the perceived value to the end user?

Design

• How appealing is the client – visually and functionally?
• How clear is the layout of information when the client is in use?
• How well does it provide an enriched communication experience for the user
• What features are incorporated that demonstrate innovative use of design?
• Does it offer a 'Cool factor' or will appeal to a particular target audience?
• What is innovative about the design?

Breadth of conformance to RCS specifications

• How much of the RCS feature set (as specified in <RCS Release 1>, <RCS Release 2>or <RCS Release 3>) is included in the client’s functionality?

Best RCS Innovation

The ‘Best RCS Innovation’ award recognises the most innovative, compelling and creative idea for an innovative extension to RCS that will drive interest in and use of RCS services by global consumers. The idea could be demonstrated by a ‘mash-up’ of RCS and one or more additional services as determined by the entrant. The winner will be decided by the RCS DevChallenge panel of judges having reviewed the entry and taken into account the supplementary information supplied to support the entry.

The assessment of the judges will focus on the following main criteria of Innovation & Creativity as well as the compulsion of the use case from a customer perspective. The judging panel will be looking for a novel RCS extension that will clearly demonstrate a potential evolution path for continued RCS innovation. Additionally, it has to demonstrate a genuine value-added dimension with the potential for commercial deployment.

In this category, it is expected that the entry will more of a demonstration than the finished solution, and may be a “proof of concept” that only partially implements the entrant’s idea. Entries for the Best RCS Innovation can be submitted as “mash-ups” including RCS & other services or can be demonstrated (live or as a simulation) of a highly innovative use of APIs or an innovative extension to RCS. However, the judges will be more impressed by entries that are closest to reality!

Guide judging criteria

The following is meant for guidance only. It is not an exhaustive list of criteria.

Innovation & Creativity

• How innovative is this extension to RCS?
• How creative have the developers been in their choice of user application area as an extension to RCS services? How does this map to mass-market, user interests?
• How obvious would it be for consumers to use this extension?
• How does it improve or enhance personal communications?
• Does this innovation link RCS to other communities? If so, how does this benefit the consumer?

Compulsion of the use case from a customer perspective

• How appealing is the service – visually and functionally?
• How well does it provide an enriched communication experience for the user
• Does it offer a 'Cool factor' or will appeal to a particular target audience?
• Will the service be perceived as a service having a high commercial value by the end user?
• Why should this extension be seen as relevant by the target audience?