David John Mead

Another good NEOUPA talk…

This months speaker was Chris Braunsdorf and his topic was Meet your users: Learning from the iPad, iPhone, and Facebook & thinking about the future of user interfaces. Starting with the story of people searching for ”Facebook login’ in Google and being confused when the top result was not Facebook, but an article on Read Write Web.

Opening the conversation to the room, a lot of discussion was about the responsibility of the UX/UI professional to help fix these issues. Bolstered by points such as the increase in age of users to Facebook and the web in general, Chris mentioned a quote from an article by Gillian Andrews about web literacy and our expectation that everyone knows what a URL is.  Google’s video showing that people are not really aware of what a browser is pushed the conversation forward.

Moving to the iPad and iPhone, Chris then steered the conversation towards the simplicity of devices and asked, will that solve some of the problem?  I think the initial problem (about logging in to Facebook) will remain until the iPad does away with Safari completely and becomes the browser itself.  Though it wasn’t brought up I was reminded about ‘The Social Agent‘ by Chris Messina and the direction that is taking.

All-in-all I thought it was good discussion (barring some early technical difficulties) and I’m looking forward to the next meeting.

More to mobile than cell phones

With the iPhone and other “smart” phones, access to the web is now easier than ever.  They have pretty much hijacked the term “mobile web” in the public perception, so it was great to hear a talk by Dan Young (of DXY Solutions) at NEOUPA in June covering some of the myriad of different mobile projects they are connected with.

“10 years ago no one thought of dropping their landlines”

Dan passed around his very own Apple Newton, which pretty much set the stage for where we are now with mobile.  He also outlined the differences they see with today’s devices.

He pointed out that laptops are portable and generally, if its a work one, people don’t mind sharing them to check email.  Phones are mobile, and very personal, even if its company owned.  People seem to have a reluctance to share PDA’s and phones.

A lot of the work Dan is involved in use mobile devices other than phones.  These are the units that you see UPS or Meter Maids use.  They have a lot of different considerations such as:

• Environment – Sun glare, extreme cold or heat, dust or rain
• Size – Too small could sour the experience
• Dexterity – Can they use it one-handed? Do they wear gloves?
• Connection – Support isn’t always at hand
• OS – Java/J2ME, Blackberry, WinMobile, Symbian, Android etc.

Dan stepped through a little of their process. Screen flows help a lot to build the logic that a users follows (there’s no help on a cell phone). Having focus groups and watching the users handle and interact with both the device and the software, helps them make changes on-the-fly and re-test very quickly.  These sessions have also made them aware that users will “mask their fear” of the device initially, so when working with companies to provide these type of solutions they make sure employees are comfortable.  They have to also be cognizant that every touch (calls, back light use, etc.) drains the battery.

It was an interesting look into a still developing arena, from a local company heavily involved.

Technorati tags: dxysolutions, danyoung, mobile, small, devices, design, ui, neoupa