New computing and communication platforms create the possibility for new business models and new applications to support and enhance our lives. But new platforms also challenge us to reinvent design methods and principles. As new technology becomes mainstream, designs and business models that work for the target user population and business are a critical success factor. Mobile devices are opening up new business opportunities, new conveniences for users, and new design challenges.
Designing for limited mobile platforms such as cell phones presents unique demands over designing for larger devices. Sophisticated applications on such devices are quite new; users do not have a history of experience with similar applications to draw on in learning a new one. These applications are often downloaded over the air: no manual, no "getting started" card, not even much room for help functions. The physical capabilities of the different devices are varied: screens of different sizes and aspect ratios; one, two, or three soft buttons; four-way directional buttons, or two-way, or none; a menu button or none; several font sizes or one; and so on. But the greatest challenge is the absolute lack of screen space—whatever is displayed had better matter to the user.
Designing for the mobile platform is not just a challenge of application design. Mobile applications come along with a complicated business model still being worked out in the marketplace. The carrier owns the connection and relationship to the customer, thereby providing access to a potentially effective distribution model. The carriers provide a one-stop billing model for downloaded applications and subscription services. Content applications must consider the design of the application itself, the source of the desired content, the cost of the content, and branding partners that serve to drive customers to the application. All the players in the market put constraints on what can be built and designed. And the revenue model—still being explored—is challenged to produce business success for all the various players.
Several years ago, my group at InContext Enterprises identified the mobile platform as the most likely area to inspire innovative design and influence business growth. This emerging business—and significant revenue potential—represents tremendous opportunity for application and device developers. Beyond obsessively checking email and answering the phone, we are seeing consumers and enterprise users taking advantage of devices and applications that provide desired information, services, and communication function wherever they are. Delivering quality, usability, and business viability are essential hallmarks of success in the current connectivity landscape.
Many questions arose during our design efforts for mSports1 applications: What methods will work to collect data from fans at home and moving around? How can we prototype something that is very small? What interaction design will work and easily transfer from one phone to the other? How close does our design have to be to the interaction paradigm of the other applications on the phone? Being a content application, delivered on a carrier, with a branding partner—what do we do about the need for multiple brands? And how do you create revenue when so many participants wanted a cut? Finally, the carriers, hardware vendors, and software platforms were not the most stable environments for development. Anyone desiring to enter this market will be faced with resolving these questions and addressing new challenges in this rapidly evolving realm.
The articles in this section present experiences with real-world aspects of mobile application design from the perspective of key participants in this growth area. The authors address essential questions and also seek to raise more questions as part of the dialogue on design for the mobile platform. This section addresses three fundamental areas anyone designing for the mobile platform must consider: method, business, and brand.
Delivering quality, usability, and business viability are essential hallmarks of success in the current connectivity landscape.
Field Data
In my experience, using field data to drive design is an essential element for success. In the first two articles, authors from Nokia and Microsoft share their experiences and lessons learned from methods of field data gathering that have proven successful and that did not work as anticipated.
The User Experience Group at the Nokia Research Center is tasked with looking ahead three to eight years, providing qualitative data to influence and motivate future product development. They have used many techniques in locations all over the world and in situational contexts that make data gathering challenging at best. Here, Nokia researchers Jan Blom, Jan Chipchase, and Jaakko Lehikoinen share their very practical lessons learned that designers can benefit from immediately.
Colleen Page, from Microsoft’s Customer Design Center, shares the evolution of qualitative research techniques for mobile platforms from 1997 to 2003. She discusses what worked and didn’t work and also describes key learnings about mobile users’ lives and needs. Her article shows how qualitative data derived from from her team’s exploration of different cultures and the impact of social networks yielded insights that affected product direction.
Business Reality
Before going into the business of application design it is best to develop a comprehensive understanding of what you are getting into. Authors from Sprint and Digia share their experience and the unique demands of being both the carrier and a small third-party development company.
Members of the User Experience Group from Sprint describe a day in the life of Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Services, which was launched in August 2004, from the perspective of the design team within the carrier. The business and design constraints, use of volumes of quantitative user data and past experience to drive design decisions and accommodate all players in the business are eye-opening.
Digia, on the other hand, was a small third-party mobile application development firm before the acquisition forming SysOpen Digia. When their User Experience team decided to develop their own two applications, Genimap Navigator and ImagePlus, they were faced with resource and time constraints typical of a small company. But their user experience team still managed to infuse user data into the process. Digia’s Eeva Kangas and Timo Kinnuen share the evolution of their processes and reveal the challenges of prototyping for the small form factor.
Branding
The issues involved in designing for small form-factor devices were the topic of a workshop I conducted at last year’s ACM Computer-Human Interaction conference.2 The subject of branding was raised as an issue for discussion, but the participants had few ideas regarding how to frame or address the question. David Rondeau frames the issues and widens the discussion by drawing on literature about branding and his experiences with InContext Enterprises’ development of mSports. He provides a framework for considering the issues faced in designing applications for use on small mobile platforms. He also raises the issues and generates the questions that any application developer, carrier, content provider, or device developer must address.
The goal of this section is to provide samples of the reality of designing for small mobile devices. As the industry realizes the value of this platform for providing needed functions and capabilities to users we will all be pushed toward generating new business models, new methods, and new products that will enliven and enhance people’s lives.
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