mTrends – mobile media lifestyle trends – m-trends.org

On Thursday October 29, 2009 we’re organizing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona (MACBA) the first Mobile Design Session during the Barcelona Design Week.

For this first Mobile Design Session, we’re inviting some of the most forward-thinking leaders in Mobile including Adam Greenfield – Head of Design Direction for Service and User-Interface Design at Nokia, Timo Arnall – Oslo School of Architecture & Design, Willem Boijens – Principal Manager Global User Experience – Concept Development at Vodafone Group Marketing, and Brian Fling – author of O’Reilly’s Mobile Design and Development, who will share the challenges they see for the coming years: designing mobile services for a total mobile user experience, understanding the needs of the user within her environment.

During the last decade we have seen an increased flow of innovation around the mobile phone, which is becoming an indispensable gadget in nearly everyone’s life. Mobile devices outnumber desktop and laptop computers three to one worldwide and they are already the most popular access platform to the Internet. The convergence of mobile phone and web services is just the beginning of what may be regarded as true “ubiquitous computing”. The paradigm of anytime, anywhere, anyhow has become a reality in everyday life in a very short time.

Understanding the user context (who? what? where? when? how?) has become the major challenge for designers of all industries, also in order to create mobile services that are relevant in people’s everyday life.

With improved capabilities of devices including sensoring technology, we’re moving towards networked and context-aware environments, embedding computational power into the objects and environments that surround us (also known as “urban computing” and “locative media”). Visual browsing is possible today with augmented reality solutions changing the way we interact with what’s around. This increasing influence and permeation of the digital layer is launching a new wave of service ideas in industries such as media, consumer goods, retail, automotive, healthcare, etc.

Understanding how the mobile ecosystems work and in particular the correlation between design and mobile and between innovation and technology becomes increasingly important for any designer working in any industry.

More info to be released soon on the Barcelona Design Week website . Stay tuned!