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

Partnering with Smashing Ideas, the teams collaborated on the initial concept and through brainstorm sessions defined the project goal: Build an immersive digital experience that speaks to the heart of Polly – Adventure! And encourages girls to  make every day the Best Day Ever.

This super fun and incredibly adorable site is seamlessly driven by several advanced front-end and back-end technologies. You can play games, watch videos, explore Polly World and go on adventures from your Adventure Tracker. PollyPocket.com is a unique online destination packed with delightful discovery that’s  unmistakably POLLY!

Balloon Burst Races is a sport-tacular game targeted primarily toward the youngest Polly Pocket fans (5-6 yrs.), with an emphasis on fun, surprises, and Polly adventure.  Three unique levels create a story as girls pop as many balloons as they can on land, air, and water! Mini activities between levels keep girls engaged and bring them into the overarching story.

PBS KIDS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in a first-time collaboration with Head Start centers and other community-based organizations will make the Dinosaur Train math apps available at no cost to help increase access to educational children’s mobile content in underserved communities.

The project was funded by a Ready To Learn grant awarded to PBS Kids and CPB by the Department of Education with the goal of making a suite of educational learning experiences for kids with a goal of accelerating learning.

Find out more at PBS:

PBS Kids Lab

App Gap Press Release

Smashing collaborated with the teams at both Jackks Pacific and Topps Trading Cards to design and develop anonline destination where boys 6-12 can immerse themselves in the Monsuno experience.  The site showcases the characters, the world they live in and provides a plethora of information on the new action figures, accessories, trading cards. You can catch the new animated series on Nickelodeon.

The site was built using a Django framework, allowing for ease of updates and localization.

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?

Smashing Ideas is honored by the recognition. We hope the readers enjoy both eBooks as much!

Learn more about the apps at iTunes: pat the bunny® and Alice for iPad.

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

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