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Google’s Mobile User Experience Strategy
For folks designing on mobile devices, Kottke links to Google’s mobile user experience strategy. The way Google categorizes users is interesting:
- Repetitive now - Folks who can’t stop checking their phone every minute in case the world explodes and they might miss it in their Inbox.
- Bored now - Folks who are killing time on a train or a plane.
- Urgent now - Folks who need to find the nearest rest stop, immediately.
More interesting, even, is the observation that there is no standardized way to develop for mobile devices.
Rechis said, bluntly, that the mobile Web is balkanized, “The Pangaea of the Web is gone.” And don’t expect this to change anytime soon, either. Thanks to carrier portals and off portal applications, there is no one mobile standard to develop for.
In the mobile world developers have to be prepared to optimize for different devices, browsers, languages, carriers, countries and cultures.
Most software companies seem to understand that mobile computing is the future, but how many have a sound strategy for dealing with its fragmentation? Gone are the days when we could simply design interfaces for a few resolutions on a couple of different browsers, and now we have to think about entirely different applications used in many different devices and contexts. Daunting, but plenty of good work to be had for designers and engineers.
(Via Kottke)
