Boxes and Arrows has an article titled "Four Key Principles of Mobile User Experience Design" written by a former academic mobile UX (User eXperience) researcher. As the author transitioned to private sector he felt that when mobile UX was discussed it was too driven by the gee-whiz factors and not practical principles of mobile user experience. He authors these four principles as a result, which I am summarizing here.
1: There is an intimate relationship between a user and his/her mobile device.
The example the author cites is loaning your phone to someone on a hot, sticky day. Most of us are uncomfortable letting someone fiddle with our phones — partly because of personal data on the phone, and partly because we are so physically tied to our phones we don't want others to soil them.
2: Screen size implies a user's state. The user's state infers his/her commitment to what is on the screen.
The author argues that the declining screen real estate between movie screens, TVs, computers and, ultimately, mobile phones corresponds to the commitment the user has to watch a movie. The real point I take from this that it is far easier to abandon a non-functioning site when on a mobile device, when your attention is already probably minimal, than it would be if you were using a full computer, with the ability adjust a bad experience through browser features and so on.
3: Mobile interfaces are truncated. Other interfaces are not.
Mobile phones themselves do not offer the full array of input options as a computer does. A small QWERTY keyboard (at best), touch screen, and maybe some accelerometers are a far cry from a 12-key number pad, but they don't offer all the options that a desktop computer offers with a mouse, multiple document interface, accelerator/modifier keys and so on. Expecting users to casually enter as much data on the mobile device as they would on their desktop computer is a bad starting point. This has always made me wonder why the .mobi TLD was approved when it has one more character than .com.
4: Design for mobile platforms — the real ones.
The author reminds us that there are four components to mobile devices: Voice, messaging, internet, and applications. It's common for the industry to get caught up in manufacturer-specific features and forget the core of the platform.
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There are some good comments on the article furthering the discussion of mobile as a platform beyond just web browsing.
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