Some interesting discussion about mobile UX at Over the Air, via Brian Fling’s resurrected Mobile Design blog.
Posts Tagged: handheld
10
Jan 07
Apple Finally Gets a Phone
Apple finally got their phone. I had two immediate reactions. It’s fantastic that a company has released a touch-screen phone that’s hitting the mass market. I hope this is a wake up call to other manufacturers: touch-screen devices are not just for the high end PDA market. Second, I’m very interested to experience text entry on the device. One of the most difficult things to do on a touch-screen is text entry (text entry while in motion can be exceptionally difficult, and is almost impossible one-handed). While the iPhone solution looks interesting, it’s not clear that the solution is completely baked.
Link: Apple – iPhone (apple.com)
Link: The Apple iPhone runs OS X – Engadget (engadget.com)
8
Dec 06
The phone of the future
Two interesting articles about mobile phones from the always-must-read Economist. The first, interestingly, predicts divergence rather than convergence and uses cars as the developmental analogue. I’m not convinced by the divergence argument here – unlike cars, mobile phones are general computing platforms than can adapt (or be adapted) to user habits in a way that cars just can’t.
“Last, and perhaps most important, the history of the car suggests that the technology industry’s current mania for “converged” devices is misguided. Nobody asks what the ideal shape for a car is, or predicts that eventually all cars will look identical. Instead there are different models for different uses: roomy people-carriers for school runs, sports cars for those suffering mid-life crises, small cars for urban dwellers.”
Link: Phones are the new cars (economist.com)
“And yet speculation about the future of phones persists, and no wonder. The telephone has changed beyond recognition since its invention in 1876, and is now both the most personal, most social and most rapidly evolving technological device. So to imagine the phone of the future is also to imagine the future of consumer technology, and its personal and social impact. What mobile phones will look like in a year or two is easy to guess: they will be slimmer and probably will let you watch television on the move. But what about ten or 15 years from now?”
Link: The phone of the future (economist.com)
11
Nov 06
Don’t shrink designs to small screens
“Shrinking” design paradigms to mobile devices often isn’t the best strategy.
“Designing user interfaces for small screens is a difficult problem, much more difficult than it may seem at first glance. We can not simply take established interface conventions and “shrink” them to baby face size, because just like children have a unique way of life, baby faces are different to desktop computers in ways that we are only beginning to comprehend. But this difference also presents great opportunities for interface designers to find new and valid interface paradigms, paradigms that will be relevant not just for baby faces, but for mass-market computing devices in general.”
Link: Will baby faces ever grow up? (viktoria.se, PDF, via)
6
Nov 06
Designing games for people’s pockets
Some guidelines for the design of handheld games.
“There are two major things you have to keep in mind concerning the interface and user-experience, first one is that most players will be picking up your game in short breaks. They need to be able to quickly start it, and quickly put it away without losing “everything”. The second thing is that you are dealing with alot of non-technical people, without any or little gaming experience. So keep things simple and intuitive.”
Link: Mobiles, design, and gameplay (orangepixel.net)
8
Oct 06
Text input methods, again
Little Springs Design has put together a nice summary of different text input methods for mobile devices, including different hardware and software solutions.
“We have categorized various text input mechanisms for mobile devices based on usage scenario. We count not just the number of hands needed to press keys on the device, but also the number of hands and surfaces needed to control the device. Hence, a full-sized QWERTY keyboard is a two-handed device that requires a surface. We’ve included voice (speech recognition) as a separate category here.”
Link: Text Input on Mobile Devices (littlespringsdesign.com)
16
Jun 06
Groundbreaking game controller designs
Summary of the 11 game controller that have taken gameplay to new levels. Along with the most annoying interstitial ads I’ve ever seen.
“The Zapper shipped with the original Nintendo Entertainment System, bundled with seminal light-gun game Duck Hunt as its early companion. But it was games such as Hogan’s Alley, Gumshoe, and Operation Wolf that helped to make it a success. Though the Zapper wasn’t the only light gun to hit console systems, it was without a doubt the most successful, both commercially and culturally. And besides, had Nintendo never released the Zapper, we may never have seen the greatest light gun game of all time—the classic arcade shooter Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”
(photograph from gamepro.com)
Link: The 11 Most Groundbreaking Controllers of All Time (gamepro.com)
9
Jun 06
Ambient sound awareness
Google’s developed a system for listening to your television and serving up relevant content. What if my mobile devices had the capability to listen in on what was happening around me?
“A team from Google Research has developed a prototype system that uses a home computers internal microphone to listen to the ambient audio in a room, determine what is being watched on TV and offer web-based supplemental information, services and shopping contextual to each program being watched. Its strange, but it sounds like it works and people might really like it. Theres no indication yet whether or when this could be available as a service.”
Link: Google Research prototypes ambient audio contextual content (techcrunch.com)
24
May 06
Nokia’s handheld computing experience
“If you are old fashioned enough to call these devices “phones,” Nokia people will politely correct you. They are multimedia computers, which offer features and picture quality to rival digital cameras or camcorders, and music quality to challenge an iPod. And because they can connect to the Internet you can check e-mail, download songs, or even update your blog while on the go. (Thought the world already had enough blogs? Think again.)”
Link: Nokia Puts Your Digital Life in Your Hand (businessweek.com)
19
May 06
Limited interaction possibilities
Nicolas Nova comments on a column by Erik Holmquist on mobile interactions.
“Those who still worry about the limited interaction possibilities of mobile devices should note that all the applications mentioned above could be used on a standard mobile phone today (with small modifications). Yet at the same time they drastically expand the interaction parameters of mobile devices by taking advantage of local interaction, observations of the users behavior, physical input, and so on.”
Link: Designing relevant mobile interactions (tecfa.unige.ch)
13
Apr 06
The future of the PDA
“The problem which PDAs will still face, even once they follow this trend and become cheaper and more simple, is that people are not going to want to carry multiple devices with them. Despite what the Z22 has to offer, many consumer will opt to use another product, despite it being a good deal more complex, so that they will not be weighed done with electronics. The last bastion of PDA users may become those people who do not own a high-end phone or carry a laptop with them for work.”
Link: The Future of the PDA (xyzcomputing.com)
