Posts Tagged: interruption

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6
Jan 07

Designing mobile web browsers

An academic thesis presenting research on the design of web browsers for mobile devices.

“Technically, it has been possible to access the Internet on a mobile phone for several years already, but the mobile browsing experience has often been cumbersome for ordinary people. Understanding the user needs in different use contexts is the key to improving the user experience and thereby popularizing device independent access to Internet.

“In her dissertation research, Virpi Roto has interviewed users of mobile browsers in several countries, and identified characteristics that help improve the mobile browsing user experience if taken into consideration. In addition to user and use context, all the system components should be taken into account: device, browser, network infrastructure, and web site. A partial outcome of the research is a visualization method called Minimap, which has gathered publicity as the first practical way to view Web pages on a mobile phone. The method has been used in Nokia S60 phones since 2006.”

Link: Web Browsing on Mobile Phones – Characteristics of User Experience (research.nokia.com)

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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)

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13
Apr 06

Book: Mobile Interaction Design

From the first chapter of Mobile Interaction Design, by Matt Jones.

“Perhaps, though, the real issue is not whether mobile devices should focus mainly on communication or information processing. There is a broader concern – should one device try to do everything for a user or should there be specialized tools, each carefully crafted to support a particular type of activity? This is the debate over the value of an ‘appliance attitude’ in mobile design. Should we focus on simple, activity-centered devices – ones that might well combine task-specific communication and information facilities – or look to providing a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ that has every communication and information management feature a manufacturer can pack into it?”

Link: Mobile Interaction Design (Chapter 1 PDF 2.8MB, wiley.com)

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16
Mar 06

Location-aware reminders

“Our study revealed unexpected uses of location-aware reminders. We found that Place-It notes were often used for creating motivational reminders to perform activities that would vary in priority over time. This is similar to using post-it notes in highly visible areas for motivation. The locations for motivational reminders were often set at frequently visited places, such as ‘home’. We also found that a majority of the uses for Place-Its involved communicating with people through a variety of media (e.g. email, phone). Communication is typically not tied to specific locations, implying that location is being used as a cue for other kinds of situational context.”

Place-Its: A Study of Location-Based Reminders on Mobile Phones (700k PDF, intel-research.net)

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13
Feb 06

Mobile phones and social judgement

Nell Boyce writes about projects that are designing mobile phones to be more aware of people’s context, so as to be able to make thte devices interrupt people at more salient times. Designing technology to make deeply social judgements (like when you’re open to being interrupted by a phone call) is a very difficult task. Designing technology to assist people help make those social judgments is much more likely to succeed.

“The trouble is, there’s always an exception that even a smart phone might not understand. Maybe you hate to take calls at the gym, but then one day your daughter tries to call from the emergency room. That’s why Siewiorek plans to give his device one important feature. It’s a little something that he calls the “Don’t you ever do that to me again” button. He says that by pressing this button, a person can tell the phone when it’s made an error in judgment: “Just like maybe an assistant, you’re going to politely tell them, ‘Don’t do that to me again, you tried something, but that’s not what I want.’””

Link: Crafting a smarter, gentler cell phone (npr.org)