Here’s the presentation I gave in Sydney at Web Directions a week or so ago (great conference!).
Link: Context, Sensing and Mobiles (slideshare.net)
“I must say that it’s been surprisingly difficult, in various conversations with folks not immersed in the IxD space, to get across the essential distinction between context-aware applications and location-based services (LBS)...Mac Funamizu has actually nailed two separate things here. The first demonstrates precisely what I, at least, mean when I use the words “context [...]
“Similar things happen all too often on mobiles. While typing a text message, a full-screen alert interrupts you to say a new message has arrived, maybe destroying the current composition. It’s almost impossible to type web addresses on most phones, because the useful symbols are hidden away. It takes six keypresses to find out what [...]
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 [...]
Peter Odum has written about design principles for converged devices. Here’s a summary of the principles he outlines:
Our devices are an ecosystem.
Design for reasonable consistency.
For users, content drives convergence.
Intelligent discovery encourages adoption.
Don’t burden users with content formats, formatting and packaging of content.
Context, not just content, is king.
Redundancy is useful.
Link: Convergent Experiences, Diverse Devices [...]
“Our study found that users’ sense of control decreases when autonomy of the service increases, as suggested by previous research. We believed that personalization would be preferred and would be more accepted than both passive and active context-awareness, however, the results of our study do not support this. Instead we find that people prefer context-aware [...]
“The single most important concept to master when designing mobile device interfaces is “context”. The context in which an application is used and the context of how information is input are both key issues; each must be understood before a well crafted design may be implemented. When these two notions of context are explored, it [...]
Christian Lindholm has published his speech from MEX, which takes the familiar contextual, adaptive system trope and presents it as a brave new world.
“We are at a stage where a new mobile operating system should be created. One that enables the creation of a cheap monoblock enabling best of breed convergence of mobility and computing. [...]
Dean Bubley riffs on the iPhone motion sensors and thinks about how motion and context can be tied together.
“So, what could be motion-sensor based services? I reckon it comes back to a theme I’m developing about “context” being more important than “content”. If operators get access to the sensor APIs, they could determine a lot [...]
Richard F Cecil writes about challenges facing the next step of mobile sevices.
“Achieving simplicity and speed of access is the key to expanding people’s perceptions of the mobile Web to include information, entertainment, and commerce services. If people are to use these services while they are on the go, we must avoid cramming as many [...]
“User experience needs to take better account of context and the environment of the customer. MEX articles recently seem to overlook this backdrop – the contextual user environment (CUE) – and how mobile usage can be optimised for best effect. In this article I’ll look at some CUE situations for the car, shopping mall, street [...]
“Let�s say user typed 25. It can be the beginning of the phone number. It may be 25 minutes timer. Or perhaps it�s 25 dollars he wishes to convert in some european currency. Or some code he doesn�t want to forget.”
Link: Adaptive Task-based Interface (mobiface.com)
An interesting summary of some of the cross-cultural considerations for design.
“The researchers differentiated between three different cultures by rating them across four cultural dimensions: “uncertainty avoidance” (the amount of effort someone expends to maintain predictability and minimize risk), “individualism vs. collectivism” (the degree to which someone focuses on the welfare of the group at the [...]
Published by Gabriel White.