Mobile Users - Not necessarily "mobile"

Stephanie Rieger writes about Mobile Users, and largely debunks some of the most obvious arguments about what to put in (or not put in) your mobile app. 
The article is well worth the reading, but to summarize
  1. Mobile users are not always on the go.  Just because its called a "mobile" phone doesn't mean that its only used when you are mobile! Think about how you use your phone - in fact I bet that you are reading this either on your phone, or as you read this on your computer, your phone is sitting right there next to it.  It is not now, and arguably never has been, only a "I'm in a hurry" device.
  2. KISS everywhere:  Given the form factors, it behooves you to design your mobile apps so that they are simple, easy, elegant, blah, blah, bah.  But then again, you should do the same for your desktop apps!
  3. Complexity isn't going away: Yes, there are some things that are just too complicated to be done easily and simply.  Thats ok, life is like that - use the opportunity to look at alternatives.  There may be different ways of doing the same thing (heck, its a phone, call customer support!), or you might be able to do away with the feature altogether.
The last point is worth going into - we are so used to trying to satisfy everybody all the time, we usually end up satisfying nobody.  Adding in those extra radio-buttons so that you can add just a little bit more flexibility into what your customers can do might help those two edge-case customers, but it quite probably adds immeasurable confusion to the remaining 99.99% of your customers, who are now unhappier.  And an unhappy customer is, well, not going to be a customer much longer.
Ergo, think about who you are trying to satisfy in entirety, and make your decisions across your entire user-base.  Finally, and for gods sake, don't confuse yourself with your user-base!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Erlang, Binaries, and Garbage Collection (Sigh)

Cannonball Tree!