Today I went to the mobility conference. Here are a few things that I learned:
When developing a mobile app you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:
Stickiness over time - will the user be installing it and forgeting all about it or will she be using it always.
- stickiness will be created also by using Facebook and twitter and other such posts in social media.
- viral is very important - word of mouth is much better than buying your users (i.e. Advertising)
- create value to the user
- make it social
- make it enjoyable
- make it very viral
- very little apps offered to VCs are life-changing ones
- lowering the customer acquisition costs - interesting someone else to use it - if the only way I can use it is if you use it - it helps you use it - and helps me gain new customers.
Respond to every support call
Challenges facing the mobile market:
- Security on mobile is challenging
- Discoverability is very hard
- Revenue streams are shocking
- new challenges - the mobile market place brings in bouncers - a new phase of rejects from the marketplace/apple/google etc. adds and other layer of challenges
- Problems with revenue streams especially when direct to consumer
- Ad revenue alone is a bad model
- Different mobile users are of different user types and should be considered accordingly
What is the user experience, what the apps does the user usually use. Do your best to create a single application connected to all the application's the user uses, or unifying them. Try changing the UIx using the same backend(s).
The new user paradigm : There is no such thing as the final user - all users are middle users, and will be RE sending an edited version of the data in a new way to someone else – who will again be a middle user recreating and sending it to someone else. So the data itself needs to be dynamic and available (perma links).
Analytics are very important!!! Not only in web but even more so in mobile apps. What's tabs are pressed, how the user uses a system, what gestures are used etc.
The smart phone is not always connected, think not connected systems think synchronization
Real time collaboration - the users are used to real time collaboration with their colleagues, think constant syncing with server think multiple user interface think multiple users.
Platforms: every couple of months and you platform comes out, each platform comes with its own resolution, abilities, controls and OS.
Try to think cross-platform: maybe abstraction layers like HTML 5, phonegapp, flex
UIX
- All female users are righties (except for a small promil)
- Most male users are righties
- A lot of male users are colorblind
idea of Cool:
- Users need to be set in a certain zone
- There should be a flow to the application - remember when you scroll on the iPhone the scrolling continues even for a bit - even though you've stopped scrolling
The user’s mental image should agree with the user's experience
| REACTION | VISUALIZATION | |
| SIMILAR | DIFFERENT | |
| SIMILAR | positive | nothing/positive |
| DIFFERENT | BAD!!! | N/A |
if the users visual experience is the same* and the reaction is similar meaning the same gestures apply the same interaction takes place the user uses the same cognitive abilities to manipulate the screen then to the reaction is a positive one
However, if the users visual experience is the same however the reaction required by the user is different such as scrolling vs. Gesturing, right clicking vs. long press, gesturing with two fingers vs. Selecting with a mouse Et cetera, the user's learning curve would be longer, and their overall experience would be bad.
* the screen looks the same on a desktop and on the mobile or on the tablet/pad
