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Design for Mobile: First sessions
The workshops are over, and the evening get together was lots of fun, with a chance to meet a bunch of people I only know from by reputation and blogging.
The first half day of the conference itself feels harried to me, running around plugging in cables and taping things down, but the presentations are all good, and everyone seems really engaged. We're taking breaks late as no one wants to stop asking questions.
So far we've heard from:
Marcus Grupp, formerly of Orange and Telus, but now with Rogers in Canada. He covered the typical method of designing device interface, and selection of devices. Mostly how it's bad, and UX people need to be there, and consider the entire experience, and not just try to enforce static requirements strictly across all devices. He also shared a very good example of a poorly designed download screen that directly cost a carrier $560,000, entirely aside from the loss of goodwill and churn.
Mike Lundy continued the exact same topic, first talking about how Sprint normally executes in this exact manner, but then how his work as the UX designer for the Instinct broke the mold. Well, except for device selection. At the end he neatly summarized The Big Lessons as:
- Enforce consistency with code
- Determine how you make your money, then subjugate all other considerations to design
- Use visual designers up front (as well as technical folks)
- Have a clear goal (here: habituating the user to an unlimited phone)
- Limit complexity (justify every feature in the phone)
Taking a break from device design, Joe Grigsby from VML talked about how his interactive ad agency has become increasingly focused on mobile. We've all seen the numbers about use of mobile, which is why advertisers are interested, but he also talked about how mobile is good for consumers and advertisers; how mobile is part of life, so the real-world can integrate with information services, how location (and PANs) can add context to the experience, and more interesting reporting.
He shared some examples of how clients are meeting direct customer needs – sometimes after being pushed that way by VML – by exploiting the value of mobile to provide services.
And right before lunch, we had a panel from Motorola talk about their design group, and how they executed on a few example products and how their lab works to rapidly build and test.
They also shared in full detail their processes for design, and where they are moving towards and how they are changing. Of note to me was that their ethnographic studies, and other research is drawn from and shared with designers; all of whom seemed happy with the results. Another point of integration was between the hardware and interactive designers; they even ambushed one of the non-speaker Motorola attendees – who works on hardware design – for an answer.
And of course, they were asked about the various integration-with-carrier issues addressed by Marcus and Mike earlier.
Then they gave away a couple of unlocked Razr 2 phones. One off a drawing, one by Anthony Hand knowing the Razr and StarTAC are the two top selling devices of all time.
Jana has been taking graphical notes of each session, and shortly we'll get those photographed and posted up for another view of what everyone said.
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