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

Listen to the podcast of ‘design ethnographer’ Kelly Goto of Gotomedia at Webvisions 2006.

“In this enlightening session, design ethnographer and web veteran Kelly Goto discusses the evolution of Web, handheld, and product interfaces and their cultural impact. Learn how companies are utilizing ethnographic-based research to conduct rapid, immersive studies of people and their lifestyles to inform the usefulness and viability of interfaces both online and offline.”

Kelly takes designing for ubiquitous computing one step further, she calls it Designing for Lifestyle.

“Interaction design is no longer limited to the web. The concept of user experience is being redefined as multiple delivery methods of social and business interaction merge into our lifestyles. As design migrates from the web to mobile devices we carry and interact with on a daily basis, our approach must also shift into cycles of design and research centered around the way people actually live.”

Podcast link - About Interface: Designing for Lifestyle. More podcasts of the event are available here.

Last week I have been working on a project with Kelly Goto from gotomedia. Kelly has been at the forefront of web and online usability for 16 years. Kelly and I both share the same vision:

While the wireless market has largely been dependent on the experimentation of the youth culture (especially in Asia) and the early adopter, the next wave of mobile success is dependent on creating sustainable brands, products and services that offer real value in the migration process to mobile.

Mobile usability design and user experience research and testing will be an essential key in helping defining successful mobile business applications and services for companies. The next coming years, any serious business needs to be easy accessible globally through diverse mobile devices and different network technologies.

The success of mobile products lies in the fact they need to be simple to use, they need to work and they need to have a clearly identified added value for the end user. This looks simple ‘on screen’ to write down but mobile professionals know how difficult this is; just look how many mobile products & services fail due to not respecting one of the above reasons…

Until now the mobile usability design space has been merely used by mobile value chain players but the convergence of 3G/UMTS/WiFi networks in combination with the availability of hybrid phones will open a different kind of mobile market space to content providers. The arrival of MVNO’s introduces a new era in mobile. More initiatives are to be expected coming from existing and/or new internet services moving in the mobile market space.

The mobile industry gathered around theW3C’s Mobile Web Initiative is busy working to develop a set of technical best practices and associated materials in support of development of Web sites that provide an appropriate user experience on mobile devices and that is needed.

In order to start a new dialog around web usability and discussions towards mobile, Kelly has launched the gotomobile blog, that will focus on mobile usability, mobile user experience (mUXP) and convergence.

In a recent article on mUXP - mobile user experience, she writes:

“Wireless companies and developers are typically put in the position of either chasing developing trends or taking the costly risk of launching new products and services that may never catch on. How can mobile designers, developers and content providers create effective mobile user experiences with the speed and accuracy required to succeed in the market?”"The answer lies in adopting mUXP, a user-centered approach to mobile authoring that focuses as much on the needs of specific consumer lifestyles as on technical considerations. The purpose of this blog is to provide an overview of both the cultural and technological trends shaping the wireless market from a usability and user centered point-of-view, and to outline best practices for incorporating these factors into the development and deployment of mobile products and services.”

I am encouraging this initiative - and will help guest-writing the blog, because we are talking for more then 5 years about the mobile internet but, personally, still I haven’s seen too many webs, applications or services correctly working on a mobile phone. A lot of work needs to be done still so I think more focused information and disseminating knowledge in this area is valuable for the mobile industry, no doubt about that. What about you?

TAGS: gotomobile gotomedia muxp mobile user experience mobile usability mobile usability design participitary design user-centered design interaction design ethnographics design research mobile web mobile internet contextual research mobile trends mobile life m-trends.org mtrends