I've been attending some of NielsenNorman/group's "Usability Week" tutorials this year. In Feburary I sat in on Jen Cardello's "Integrating Social Features on Mainstream Websites" tutorial given in Atlanta, and this week I'm in New York sitting in on Raluca Budiu's "Designing Mobile Websites" (which also covers off on mobile usability methods) and "iPhone App Design,"along with a cognitive science primer from Hoa Loranger and Raluca, "The Human Mind and Usability: How Your Customers Think."
A good set of mobile design guidelines can be derived from the research and examples presented and discussed in "Designing Mobile Websites." An upgrade to this course would be to ask participants to do a homework assignment, analyzing a web site of their own for "mobilizing," comparing their analysis to tools that "mobilize" a site by simplifying its code, such as Mobify.me.
Key takeaways from the mobile course:
- Do you know the motivations your users would have to access your digital content from a mobile device?
- What are tasks/transactions/interactions your users want to do while mobile?
- Can a mobile site/app augment a physical offering/process your business/organization offers? (shopping aid for a retailer, data gathering/input device for enterprise software, "living aid" for basic human tasks--directions, location finder, review finder, merchandise finder, etc.)?
- What are the tradeoffs between branding and simplification? What's the impact of a Amishly plain and simple mobile site/app on a strongly visual digital brand? What elements of digital branding need to be applied to the mobile experience to provide overall digital strategy continuity?
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