UX Discussion at Off-Deck Mobile Content

GoMoNews published a transcript of the user experience panel at Off-Deck Mobile Content, featuring both Scott Weiss (now of Human Factors International) and myself.

Beyond just the topic of the panel, there are some minor implications of off-deck site and application design. How does UX design differ for off-deck versus on-deck? Obviously in the distribution method. For now, you can assume a higher degree of expertise for off-deck users, just because finding the application or website can be tough. But what else?

On-deck applications generally must follow operator guidelines. This means that to get on the deck, you must support all the devices accessing the deck. There are some third-party content stores for which this is not true, but it is currently true for all the operators I know of. However, expect savvy operators to start shifting this.

I think that more users are getting "smart" phones – our best definition is "voice+data communications device with an operating system whose name is used in the marketing of the device". It's not that the Java phones couldn't download applications, but that lots of people could not find the application once downloaded. They didn't see a way to download applications without going deep into a content store. So applications weren't downloaded. So people are getting the smart phones, some with an intent to do more web browsing and applications, despite the fact that they could have done it before.

As a result, more and more devices accessing the web are smart devices, whose users have increasing expectations. This in turn makes off-deck content and downloaded applications easier to get to.

As off-deck content becomes more mainstream, content providers will have to really start thinking about usability issues. No longer can we expect reasonably savvy users (not that we could before); now we must design for users who want "that www phone". (actual customer request of an AT&T sales representative, courtesy of Debi Jones)

Take Gmail, for an off-deck example. Their recent upgrade added two nice features: multiple account support and offline access. But the offline access comes at a high price: you have to remember to refresh your inbox before messages actually get deleted or archived. Otherwise you have to manage the messages you've already processed back on your computer. In general, despite wanting offline mode and access to two accounts, I'd rather go back to the previous version. Maybe I could convince two copies of the application to run on my device.

Oh, and the only way I've found to tell the program to refresh is by going to the inbox again. But this doesn't fully work.

Is Google losing customers based on its more complex design? Probably not, but then again it is counter to their brand aspirations; too much of this and they will erode their brand. And you? You probably don't have Google's technology brand devotion; you'll need to do a better job.