BDConf: Richael Hinman presents The Mobile Frontier
In The Mobile Frontier, Richael Hinman (@hinman) explains how mobile is transforming the world and how we should embrace mobile as its own unique medium instead of simply translating traditional computing methods.
- Mobile is the wild west. Mobile has hit the mainstream and everyone has ideas for apps. As more people design for mobile, there's an eery "sameness" emerging. There's an opportunity to invent new, useful ways for users to interact with information.
- As more people design for mobile, there's an eery "sameness" emerging.
- Mobile is a new computing model, but we bring old baggage in the form of old computing and design models.
Shapeshifting
- There's a growing expectation for experiences to flow between devices. We've made the web in our own obese image. In order for our experiences to go more places, our content and services need to be nimble.
- The "page" metaphor holds us back from creating truly great mobile experiences. Get out of the page mentality and into the system mentality.
- We think people approach technology w/ an existing mental model, but often times interactions are handled ad hoc. For example, someone will approach a copy machine and simply start pushing buttons.
- There's a shift in our contextual assumptions. The way we've historically thought of context is falling away. We need to validate our work situated in the context in which mobiles are used.
- There is a shift in our sensibilities as content as a design material. We historically focused on the frame around the content, not the content itself. And content is more than just text and images. Sound, video, etc play an increasingly-important role.
Brave NUI World
- We're reaching the edge of what GUI can do. Tools like Microsoft word is dying under its own GUI weight.
- Our mobile needs are too different to continue the GUI paradigm. There's a fundamental shift towards NUI interfaces.
- NUI is a step towards direct manipulation of content. We're in a transitional period between GUI and NUI interfaces and this creates new design challenges. NUI will eventually lead us into the future.
- GUIs: You give data physical properties , heavy chrome and icons. NUI lets content be the star. Instead of "What you see is what you get", it's "What you DO is what you get."
- GUI experiences are anchored, but NUIs allows the experience to unfold like a game. NUIs are awkward at first, but can be learned over time.
Mobile experience patterns
- Nested Doll - go deeper into an experience, one screen at a time
- Hub and Spoke - like Flipboard
- Bento Box - tightly related pieces of information. Adjust one thing and it updates adjacent content.
- Filtered View Pattern
Comfortable Computing
- The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life -Mark Weiser
- It's all about usage. People describe their tablets as an intimate, "cozy" device that they take to bed and around with them everywhere.
- There's huge unexplored opportunities. People are looking for comfort and connection from their device experiences. How can we as designers bring that to them? We should look to sense intent.
- We have to shift our notions on how we create things. Text input via a keyboard isn't great. We're cemented in content as words and that's holding us back.
- It's not about design of web pages, its about the conversations the experience creates.