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Brian Fling’s “Designing for Mobile”
I just looked at Brian Fling's Designing for Mobile presentation, which is intended to help folks get started in the mobile space. It's a good read, it organizes many things nicely.
This spoke to me quite a bit, as I am now wrapping up work on my book, Designing the Mobile User Experience, to be published in January. This book is intended to help marketing and product development professionals, particularly user experience folks, enter the mobile space.
With that in mind, I believe there to be some inaccuracies within Brian's presentation. Some are minor and not relevant, such as the assertion that 2G devices were voice + SMS only and ignoring 1xRTT as part of 2.5G. Relevant inaccuracies include:- Cingular's terms of service, as of March of this year, specifically prohibit visiting sites outside their content. I fail to understand how this is not a "walled garden"
- Sprint's search engine searches all mobile-optimized sites, and allows direct URL entry for any site. I fail to understand how this is a walled garden.
- Similarly, Verizon has blocked URL opening from SMS messages. Walled? Seems so.
- I have seen no semantic difference between carrier and operator. As best I can see, "operator" is a more European term, and "carrier" is a more American term.
- Brian advocates writing for "feature phones" not "smart phones". A good place to start, but we should remember that smart phone users use more data services, so they are potentially higher users of a given application.
- As more and more people use the mobile Internet and other mobile applications, a larger percentage will be using the mobile as their primary use. Thus functionality that is available on the desktop should, if possible, be available on the mobile -- but not at the cost of the primary user experience! Infrequently used information should be in harder-to-access places.
- While XHTML-MP may be "often referred to as WAP 2.0", that is flat out wrong. WAP is equivalent to HTTP, not XHTML. The WAP 2.0 collection of standards includes push messaging, XHTML, XHTML with WML extensions, location services, transfer protocols and more.
- Flash is available on Verizon, KDDI, and NTT DoCoMo devices, which is a bit beyond "available to developers only". And SVG should be mentioned somewhere.
- J2ME (which ought to be called Java ME) content can run on BREW devices via a BREW-authored KVM. Thus J2ME can go to Verizon devices.
Regardless, it's a good start, particularly for a relatively short presentation. If you're new to mobile design, go read it. And order my book.
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I’d like to weigh in on a couple of these, since I’ve seen the presentation and know Brian pretty well.
Re: Cingular. Cingular isn’t a walled garden. It may be if you don’t pay for data, but if you have any sort of data plan you are free to browser where you like. Sprint as well is not a walled garden.
I would agree that Verizon probably is a walled garden, although the term “walled garden” is getting less and less clear. Verizon not only won’t let you use a URL from a browser, but they restrict content to the devices through “Get-It-Now”, as well as a limiting WAP push. Although Verizon is opening up quite a bit. They are launching WAP Push through most of the messaging aggregators.
Network Operator v.s. Wireless Carrier - While network operator is used in Europe and in the US we use the term carrier, there is a difference. The term carrier is used for any “mobile/cellular service provider” regardless of whether they actually operate a network or not. Sprint is a network operator; Boost isn’t. But I digress.
Writing (writing what? Web sites, Apps? Brian?) for feature phones vs smartphones really depends on what your product is. If you are writing enterprise software, it’s an easy call. If you are going broad at consumers with pop-culture content, surely focusing on the smartphones because they are easier to develop for, is going to come back to haunt you. Like everything else in mobile, context matters.
Couldn’t agree more with you about WAP 2.0 . I am starting to run into this a lot. People refer to WAP 1.0 as WAP and that’s it. WAP 2.0 surely requires xHTML-MP as the markup language, but also requires support for WML. Also, a BIG piece is the WAE and the rest of it as you mention. These are the things that new designers and developers to mobile need to be made aware of. This is the “mobile” piece. Wanna mke a phone call from a hyperlink in a web page? That’s where WAP comes in.
Regarding Flash as being available to developers only. That is the case in the US. There are currently no phones that are sold with Flash support in the US. Not so much in Asia.
Comment by David Adams — September 6, 2006 @ 11:30 am
Barbara - great comments. You are SUCH AN EXPERT on this space! I’m so glad your book is coming out - I hope I can snag a signed copy.
I’m working on a new book, focusing on the mobile space combining design+research. More on this later. I want to be sure that you, Brian and I connect and/or stay connected on this topic - I think we can each carve a solid niche and support eachother with knowledge and corrections along the way. I’m staying out of the device-level coding nuances, and focusing on research, trends and strategy. However I realize this is a hole in my own mobile toolkit so I hope we can collaborate at some point and add some synergy to our consultancies along the way! - Kelly
Comment by Kelly Goto — September 18, 2006 @ 11:48 am
Barbara, thank you for clarifying some of the details of my presentation. Sorry I’m coming a little late in the game.
I did mention a few of your points during the course of the workshop, but my one-sentance-per-slide style does leave a lot to the imagination. A couple of points I figured I should add…
On the carrier vs. operator, I discussed the differences in how US Operators (which I refer to as Carriers for various reasons) act differently to developers and content producers from other Operators elsewhere in the world. I mentioned this is changing very quickly, but I thought it worth noting for the audience.
On feature phones versus smart phones, the context of the slide was for the Mobile Web. While yes, Smart Phones users do consume more data, my point was that web developers should design and develop for smaller 100-120px screens, not the 320px Treos.
On the WAP 2.0, yes you and David are absolutely correct. I know a lot of folks use this term incorrectly, but unfortunately it is out there but in my experience a lot of people in the business use it. My goal for the workshop was to get people that are not familiar with mobile an introduction. Explaining and demystifying industry jargon as best I could was a huge goal of mine, but it helps if I get it right
I totally agree with Kelly, I would love for all of us to compare notes and see how we can collaborate more in the future. Thanks Barbara!
-Brian
Comment by Brian Fling — September 18, 2006 @ 5:47 pm
question about this famous Java VM for Brew….Even if it seems tehorically possible to do it, it seems that no single app has been deployed with it. My assumption is that it’s a memory issue. A KVM is already in the 1 to 2 mega byte range, so it will be quite hard to deploy an app with this, no?
Comment by Thomas Landspurg — October 10, 2006 @ 2:43 am