mobile user experience || why mobile ux, why now?
TRANSCRIPT
Why Mobile UX, Why Now? 5
INTRODUCTIONA few years ago, I lectured at a college about the future of the mobile web.1 At the
end of the lecture, one of the faculty members approached me with a question. “In the
battle between print and the web, who will win?” Taken aback, I answered with: “The war
has been over for a while, now we are just counting the bodies …” Now imagine what I
would have said had she asked me about the mobile.
In the case of the mobile, it was not a battle but a leveling impact with the force of
an atomic blast. Its effects were fast and far-reaching. The mobile went from being a
Why Mobile UX, Why Now?
1 Adrian Mendoza, “Design in the Age of Mobility,” MassArt, Boston, MA, October 28, 2010.
CHAPTER 2
6 Mobile User Experience | Patterns to Make Sense of it All
toy one day to a source of revenue the next. By early 201l, smartphones had outsold
desktops.2 By 2013, worldwide smartphone sales were in the billions (1.8 billion to be
exact).3 To put this in perspective, with the “personal desktop revolution” that started
in the mid-1980s, it has taken more than 20 years to get worldwide PC sales over 300
million (2005).4 With this trend, some users, especially in developing countries, will
access the web on a smartphone before they do on a desktop; this is already the case
in some countries. We have entered the mobile age and it is coming straight at us like a
storm, a perfect storm.
THE PERFECT STORM OF MOBILEWhy a perfect storm? Like the figure of speech for the weather, this storm “arose from
a rare combination of adverse meteorological factors.”5 It took three unique factors to
align and develop to create the mobile storm we are in now. We needed the technology,
the users, and user experience all ready at the same time. Had one or another not been
available, the ecosystem would not have evolved. Let me explain.
TECHNOLOGYThe first factor is the technology itself. By the time the first iPhone appeared, small
devices were already commonplace. Users already had a history with iPods, mp3
players, and PDAs; the general public were accustomed to small handheld devices.
Feature phones6 used some form of Internet access and these were common across
the globe. By this time everyone, including his or her brother, grandmother, or child
2 Dana Wollman, “Smartphones Outsell PCs for the First Time Ever,” Huffington Post, February 02, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/08/smartphones-outsell-pcs-f_n_820454.html.
3 Gartner.com, April 4, 2013, http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2408515.4 eTForecasts, “Worldwide PC Market.” http://www.etforecasts.com/products/
ES_pcww1203.htm.5 Oxford English Dictionary.6 Feature Phone—Term for mobile phone with basic Internet connection. It mainly opens WAP
enabled web pages.
Why Mobile UX, Why Now? 7
had a Motorola Razor phone in their pocket. It was the inclusion of touch technology
and readily available 2G bandwidth that accelerated the use of the smartphone. The
synthesis of a small handheld device with a phone, mp3 player, and camera was the
next logical step in the technology trend.
USERSThe second factor is the users themselves. Like the technology, they were already
familiar with keeping a small handheld device in their pockets. They were familiar with
of using and carrying an mp3 player, phone, and/or camera (sometimes carrying all
three). Combining these three devices was the logical next step. The groundwork
for the usage patterns already existed, and adding Internet usage was a natural
expansion. By the time the first smartphones were launched in 2007, users were
already familiar with using the desktop web. There was no need to teach them about
buying online, accessing their email, looking for a map location, and other web-
based patterns. The learning gap and usage patterns of getting users online had
already been bridged. Some users had been using the web since primary school
at this point, users were not only well versed, they had grown up with the Internet.
The only thing left was to teach them how to optimize these patterns for mobiles; a
smaller feat compared to teaching them how to use the web on a desktop computer
for the first time.
USER EXPERIENCEThe third factor of the perfect storm is user experience as a discipline. By 2007,
user experience design was already considered a formal discipline in the web design
industry. It had become a crucial piece of any web-based design or build. It has
evolved from the art form in its infancy (information design) to the science of user
centric experience design. Now a user experience designer sits between an art director
and the web developer; at times they even manage the project. The science of user
experience design is also the guiding principle of increasing web sales, increasing user
conversions, optimizing design, and retaining users. Web design has been refined from
8 Mobile User Experience | Patterns to Make Sense of it All
a loosely trained discipline (you usually picked it up on the job) to the formal education
of user experience designer (college degree and certificates). By the time Apple
released the human interface guidelines for their iPhone, it was not a surprise, but rather
an expectation and common practice.
THE PROBLEMLike learning how to use the web on the desktop for the first time, mobile brought
its own challenges. Compared to the desktop, we have introduced new variables to
creating a user experience on a mobile device. Gone are the consistent factors of
the desktop experience, the large size of bandwidth, and even the user’s focus and
attention to the task. With mobile, you have to take into account the carrier, the type of
device you are on, the operating system, and the screen size; these factors add up to
what I call the “Mobile Equation.”
Think of this as the recipe for designing mobile experiences. Mix the inconsistency
of the carrier and your signal strength depending on your location. Stir in the different
operating systems (Android, iOS, Windows, etc.) and the different versions of each OS.
Whisk in the different form factors and sizes of each mobile device you will be using.
Finally, add in the different screen sizes and types into the equation (LCD, Super AMOLD
displays) and the unpredictable oven temperature of the users’ usage patterns. This
entire equation gives you an insight into the unique challenges of creating a mobile
experience. Why would anyone want to inherit this mess? Why would anyone want
to work on mobiles compared to the desktop? These are questions that can only be
answered by the opportunity that the mobile provides us.
Your mobile
userexperience
Carrier Device Operatingsystem
Screen size
The Mobile Equation.
Why Mobile UX, Why Now? 9
THE OPPORTUNITYRegardless of its rapid growth, innovative technology, or even global reach, mobile
gives us an opportunity that we have never had with the design of desktop web
experiences. The grand vision of Web 2.07 was to connect one-on-one with a user; it was
to provide them with personalized content and a user experience just for them through
the use of dynamic web experiences. In reality, that dream never came to fruition; the
web experience became too busy and overcomplicated the longer we went on. The
mobile enables that dream to come true. It puts one Internet-enabled device in the hand
of a single user. It gives them the power to access the web at anytime and at any place
and the option to broadcast or connect directly one-on-one. It is this usage pattern that
presents us the opportunity to design a mobile user experience that can be consumed
on a one-on-one basis. Users will carry our mobile experiences with them anywhere
and open them anytime. It is this same mobile experience that they can engage with
and keep in their pocket; it is both their personal and public persona. The mobile gives
a single user a camera, an open web connection, a way of posting, tweeting, and
messaging to the outside world. It is their voice; you can help design a mobile user
experience to enhance it. This is the mobile opportunity.
7 Web 2.0—Term coined in early 2000s to describe dynamic websites with user generated or social media content.