Small Surfaces » desktop

Mobile components

Gabriel White — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:30:37 +0000

I liked this nugget in Jakob Neilsen’s review of the ten best application UIs for the year.

“Although dedicated mobile apps are not yet good enough to win in their own right, it was striking how many of this year’s winners have a mobile component. Mobile is definitively the trend to watch for next year, and any application owner should think hard about whether and how to add mobile features in 2009.”

Link: Year’s 10 Best Application UIs (useit.com)

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Mobilising the web

Gabriel White — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 22:08:10 +0000

”...delivering great Internet experiences on mobile devices will be less about “mobilizing” web sites and web pages and more about dismantling the page-based organizing principle into a more flexible one. It will be about breaking apart boulder-like web-pages into pebbles of content that can be configured and combined in ways that make sense in mobile contexts. It will be about privileging XML over HTML and focusing on lightweight applications and presentation layers like widgets. Most importantly, it will have to be based on a deep understanding of how people want to use Internet content in mobile contexts.”

Link: The Mobile Internet and Mix Tapes (adaptivepath.com)

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Browsing is not for Mobile

Gabriel White — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:09:09 +0000

Paul Golding writes that the idea of the mobile ‘browser’ is an oxymoron. I agree wholeheartedly; the strong activity / goal orientation of mobile devices keeps bringing me back to the idea of the networked micro-application, something that lives in the cloud but is delivered through a UI that is entirely appropriate to its function and context of use.

“We insist on thinking in terms of ‘browsing,’ but is there such a thing in the mobile context? I don’t think so. A basic observation of the vast number of eye-scanning, skim-reading, link-hovering, link-clicking, page-jumping, coffee-sipping, chair-reclining, mouse-shuffling, Google-jumping activities that go on in an average desktop ‘web browsing’ session would demonstrate how nearly all of these activities are insufferably difficult on a mobile device in a mobile context – e.g. standing in the suffocatingly hot linkway between two carriages on the train leaving Paddington station…There are plenty of clever UI possibilities to achieve ‘flow’ and ‘point the way,’ should we decide that this is what the mobile is all about. The point is to forget browsing (aka ‘desktop web browsing’) and think of something else.”

Link: Mobile browsing is not the same as browsing on the mobile… (wirelesswanders.com)

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Transitioning between desktop and mobile

Gabriel White — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:56:28 +0000

The winner of Yahoo Hack Day London 2007 was an RFID-based system that helped make the transition between desktop and mobile computing much easier. A nice and simple concept piece from the NYT Labs. Video embedded below for those on the RSS.

Link: SHIFD.COM (nytlabs.com)

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Mobile design guidelines

Gabriel White — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 03:10:04 +0000

Gong & Tarasewich take design guidelines typically used for desktop applications and transform them for mobile applications. Short and clear.

“Design for multiple and dynamic contexts
Allow for single- or no-handed operation
Design for small devices
Design for limited and split attention
Design for speed and recovery
Design for ‘top-down’ interaction
Allow for personalization
Design for enjoyment”

Link: Guidelines for handheld mobile interface design (pdf)

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