MobileUX

I’ve had many people ask about the UX guidelines we refer to at work when creating mobile app and site experiences.  Thought I’d put them together here.  There are more extensive lists of guidelines out on the web, but these are the ones I find we have been referring to the most.

• .mobi dev guidelines – mobile websites
• Apple HI guidelines
• Android UI guidelines
• WebOS HI guidelines
• Windows Phone 7 guidelines

A recent IDC Report predicts the shift in smartphone operating systems over the next few years. Regarding sheer numbers, we are looking at 270 million smartphones being shipped in 2010, more than a 50% increase over 2009 shipments.  What this represents is the growing trend of smartphones replacing traditional features phones.  End users, particularly average and behind-the-curve users, are expecting more than just calls and texts from their mobile device.  Smartphone OS’s are capturing consumer mindshare at a rapid pace.

The report also highlights how the players in the smartphone market will be shifting share over the next 4 years.  The graph below highlights the changes, with  big winner being Android.

What is not clear from the report is what will happen once the iPhone OS, currently locked to AT&T, moves to other carriers in the U.S.  Android has done a good job of making it onto devices across all four main U.S. carriers, hence positioning themselves well for anyone on one of these carriers to have at least one, and in most cases many, Android options. But when the time comes when an iPhone is sitting next to the Androids at the Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint stores, will users be selecting Android devices over the iPhone?  Both are competitive on price and service plans. And even though Android is considered a more open platform, it has also introduced fragmentation across the OS and the Android Marketplace. And as far as overall usability, the iPhone is more polished and has less of a learning curve.

Granted the U.S. smartphone market is only a fraction of the worldwide market, so we can’t expect a radical shift once the iPhone breaks away from AT&T. But it will be interesting to see what impact it will have once the carrier playing field is level.

(image credit: John Brecher / msnbc.com)

Facebook is pushing the mocial envelope these days. At the MobileBeat 2010 conference in SF earlier this week, Facebook announced that it will be extending its Open Graph platform to mobile, moving away from an individual mobile app strategy and moving into a let’s-allow-facebook-to-be-connected-into-everything strategy.

What does this mean?  App makers will now be able to connect into the Facebook platform and incorporate data into their own apps, leveraging information such as friend recommendations.  It’s easy to imagine a scenarios that combine information from your friends with location-based services – say Foursquare but with your whole Facebook community and history.

For marketers this means greater opportunities to serve offers at the right time and place, but with the added benefit of having the backing of your friends. A hotel chain’s app that leverages a user’s Facebook community could connect friend-recommended POI’s and restaurants with discounts to stay in at a nearby hotel property.  Or a retailer could show you your friend’s reviews of the product you are looking at while on the showroom floor.  Pretty cool.

Facebook also stated that they have 150 million mobile users of Facebook and are growing.  A nice plus that they just implemented too is the ability to sign up for a new Facebook account completely on your mobile device.  Good call, and good move toward further breaking mobile’s tether to the desktop.

More info check out:  http://social.venturebeat.com/2010/07/13/facebook-mobile-platform/

Apple’s iPad has only been on the market for two months, but already it is changing how we engage with content. The iPad is poised to change the landscape of magazine publishing—both in how readers consume their favorite editorial content, and in how magazines, struggling with the decline of print readership and advertising, can grow their revenue streams in new and immersive ways.

After Steve Jobs announced the coming of the iPad in January 2010, the editors and publishers of Entertainment Weekly magazine wanted to create an iPad app to coincide with the launch of the new product. We positioned the opportunity for Entertainment Weekly as compelling, easily consumable editorial content tied to e-commerce—the magazine’s first step toward- redefining its future and creating a new business paradigm.

The app takes a simple and very popular feature of the magazine, “The Must List”— featuring the Top 10 pop culture phenomena of the moment—and presents it in a playful, interactive set of panels that makes excellent use of the iPad’s scale, touch interface and visual punch. (free download from iTunes)

I recently sat down with ZAAZ’s Jon McVey, Executive Creative Director, and Tim Klauda, Creative Director, to talk about their strategic and creative work on EW’s ipad app – hit up the ZAAZ Blogs for the full discussion!