Yahoo Finance What does it take to be a chief mobile officer?
Revolut’s chief mobile officer, Edward Cooper, explains why considering the user experience is crucial to his role and how studying music has helped his tech career.
What do you do and what does an average day look like?
Revolut is a global money app. I head up its mobile team, so anything related to our iPhone and Android apps is my domain.
I get up at about 5.15am, meditate for about 20 minutes, then spend the next hour trying to learn about something new. I will either read an article or listen to a podcast on a topic such as programming, mathematics, trading or philosophy – basically anything that I find interesting.
Every day is different, but my work involves a lot of coding and helping to conceptualise new features. I work with our development teams, design teams, chief executive and chief technology officer to come up with new functionality for the product and to work out how we can either save our users money, or make their financial lives easier.
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What professional and personal skills do you need for this role?
It's definitely a blend of hard and soft skills – and a mix of left and right brain activities. Core programming skills on the Android and iOS platforms are important, as is a keen interest in UX (user experience).
The app marketplace is extremely competitive, so you also need good knowledge of how to achieve virality and stickiness [encouraging users to spend more time] with the features of your product. A creative spark is essential, because you will need to drive innovation and introduce new features that might not have been considered before. Public speaking and networking also plays a large part.
What has been the most important moment in your career so far and why?
Studying music has had a big impact on my tech career.
Being a musician forces you to learn lots of varied skills: discipline, confidence, networking and dealing with people from different walks of life – all in an extremely competitive environment. These have proved to be very translatable skills.
What trend, behaviour or technology will most affect your role?
Ten years ago my role didn't exist and, until recently, most companies' mobile offering was an afterthought. Now we're seeing a move to mobile-first strategies, which changes the way products are designed and how businesses are structured.
Traditionally the approach was to add as much as you could into the company website and then try to cram these features and widgets into the mobile offering, without too much thought about form and design. This led to a bad mobile experience for most users.
A mobile-first approach means having a dedicated mobile designer and that mobile design taking place before the design of the website. The focus needs to be on providing the most useful feature to the user at the appropriate time, with a lot of attention to both form and function.
What’s the biggest misconception about your role?
Some people believe it’s a purely technical role – others that it’s purely product-focused. The reality is that it’s both.
Which person, place or thing has influenced your role?
The chapter of Conrad Hilton's autobiography, Be My Guest, entitled “There is an art to living” – and Lucius Seneca’s letter, On The Shortness of Life. Both gave me a useful framework for weighing up different options when making big decisions in life.
I would sum them up to say that we're here for a limited time and, so long as you've mitigated the downside risks, go with the adventure over the safe path. It's often more uncomfortable, but when you look back, you realise it was the right decision.
How would you describe being a chief mobile officer in three words?
Delight your users.
Edward Cooper is chief mobile officer at Revolut
