The term “Mobile First” is thrown around more and more often – I think we’ve all heard it by now. What “Mobile First” means is subjective at times, and when philosophy is applied to process, there are bound to be exceptions to rules, edge cases, etc.

What is Mobile First?

For most people, the initial thought is mobile devices. But what is “mobile”? Mobile is mobility. This is important, because mobility speaks to the humanistic qualities of experience, whereas devices are hardware.

The most important piece of a Mobile First process is the context of the user. I recently attended DrupalCon Denver, where Michael Keara, of That User Advocate Guy and My Planet, compared a user to a traffic cone. A traffic cone, in and of itself, is inconsequential. But when placed in any environment, the traffic cone should alter its environment to its purpose. People are the same way, and the goal of any Mobile First process is to nail down the context of that user. More great reads in Michael Keara’s blog.

“When a Product is being developed, people pay a great deal of attention to what it does. User Experience is the other, often overlooked side of the equation—how it works—that can often make the difference between a successful product and a failure.”

- Jesse James Garrett, author of The Elements of User Experience

User Experience(UX) isn’t just about how people interact with technology, it permeates our lives. Observing your everyday interactions can inform your thinking process when planning out your next website or app. Take your experience with cars for example. Cars are incredibly complex, with thousands of moving parts, but think back to last time you “interacted” with a car unfamiliar to you, say a rental or friend’s car. Most likely you drove it with minimal effort because you’ve learned that pressing down on the gas makes you go faster, stepping on the brake slows you down, the steering wheel takes you left and right, and so on.

When things don’t behave as expected, the experience can be very different. For example, I borrowed a friend’s truck a while back and ended up returning it with the wipers still going. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to control them. “It’s easy” he said, “All you have to do is tap it up, down, wiggle, left, right, wiggle and it will stop.” Knowing my friend was joking, I laughed it off, but was still confused about why it didn’t work the way I expected it to.

UX for digital has many of the same pitfalls. When things don’t behave as expected and you end up needing to hunt and peck your way around, it creates a break in the experience. It takes you away from doing what you want to be doing and forces you to focus more on how to do it. This has the potential to cause frustration and even anger, emotions nobody wants associated with their brand and products.

When it comes to planning a positive user experience, there are things you have complete control over and things you simply don’t.

Content, interactions, and visuals are things you can control within the user experience. But, there are many factors like emotional state, distractions, time, and place playing a role, that you simply have no control over. These elements must be taken into account and planned for–by knowing your users, their goals, and the context of how and where they would most likely use your product. This planning has a substantial impact on the overall experience and can mean the difference between a disgruntled user and an evangelist extolling the virtues of your brand and products.

By Clemente Miller, Smashing Designer

Download the UX Poster

How to drive consumers in-store, back to brick-and-mortar, while giving them a true reason to step out of their comfortable homes and traditional online-shopping, is a topic that continues to surface in the mobile marketing & development arena. Several major brands are now providing new, unique digital experiences via large interactive screens, digital shopping walls and kiosks that aim to provide a level of convenience and depth of experience to consumers in-store. So far, it seems like some of these have a ton of potential, as in the case with Adidas’ Virtual Shoe Wall which was unveiled in January at the National Retail Federation convention. The idea that a small boutique store can ultimately increase their shelf space exponentially is a brilliant idea. Adidas isn’t the first to embark on this effort, and I imagine we’ll hear more this year as small and big-box retailers experiment further with multi-screen consumer engagement strategies (it will be interesting to see what emerges from CET World in San Francisco this month).

The main question that comes to mind however, is how retailers will get consumers into their stores in the first place, and provide a choice of tools that won’t limit that engagement on location?

Mobile Download with Brian Burke – February 6, 10:00 AM

Platform Diving: Perspectives on Potential and Planning – February 6, 10:30 AM

Bonus XP for all that attend.

We recently did a full review of The Nielsen Norman Group study on children, “Usability of Websites for Children: Design Guidelines for Targeting Users Aged 3-12 Years,” by Raluca Budiu and Jakob Nielson. The study focused on separating design myths from usability facts as they relate to kids, and it reinforced much of what we’ve learned over the years, including the need to distinguish kids as being in very defined age groups; “…different needs range far beyond the obvious imperative to design differently for pre-readers, beginning readers and moderately skilled readers.”

We thought we’d share a few of what we considered some more interesting points as they relate to age groups:

• Kids today are much more experienced using technology than just seven years ago; the study showed that now only the youngest users (3-5) have problems scrolling and that kids in general have a better grasp of controls and computer UI standards.
• Just like adults, kids would rather have less content that is of a higher quality vs. a great deal of content that is lower quality.
• Feedback is critical, sites or games should always ensure the user receives quick and clear feedback.
• Mid to older ranged groups are reading even less online. As these age groups have become more accustomed to browsing, they’re less inclined to read the copy – always keep it brief, especially Help copy.
• Kids use the Web mainly for entertainment and games and interactive content remain the number one thing kids do online.

The study also reinforced some common mistakes we’ve seen online marketers make across age groups. Here’s just a few of the top don’t dos:

• Don’t assume all kids have the same computer processing capabilities. Kids are often using computers handed down by parents or siblings. Or they may be using school computers that tend to be older models.
• Don’t assume that a caregiver will be sitting next to the child when they are online. Parents often help their younger children gain access to a site, but once there, the parent tends to not remain involved.
• Don’t redefine standard conventions – it will only confuse the child. For example, kids know that the X in the top right corner will close the game they’re playing; moving this may only confuse them.
• Don’t bury access to content – although younger kids love minesweeping (or clicking randomly on pages); make sure the site buttons still look like buttons. If something on the site is clickable, make sure the child can find it no matter what the age-range.
• Don’t mix parent content with the kids’ content. Make sure to distinguish between the kids section and content geared towards parents.

So while there is no such thing as designing for all age groups, there are a few fundamentals that we have found across these very diverse age groups:

• Keep copy to a minimum
• Keep usability intuitive
• Make sure your site offers fun, entertaining interactive elements
• Make sure your users can find the content they’re looking for
• And by all means, offer fun, surprising, engaging visual effects and audio feedback