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Design in the mobile age

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Over the last few years, computing has been moving from “What machines can we give people?” to “What do people want to be able to do?”

The number one answer to that has been mobility. If computers can do cool things for us, we want to access those wherever we are, not just at our desks.

The number two answer has been that people don’t care about hardware and software, but about the media and information that catch their interest in the moment. Listening to music, watching videos, getting information about the weather or local cinema times…

Here’s a canter through how the technology has changed, and a starter for thinking about what it means for designing your documents.

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Don’t be a video-mugger

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If you embed a video in a web page, don’t set it to start up automatically. Ideally, don’t even have it downloading automatically.

When I come to your site, why should my data feed slow down because of content I might not want? Worse still, why should my music listening (or other video watching) be interrupted by some bod piping up out of nowhere, leaving me to scramble for the source of the problem?

If your media content gets classified as a problem, you’ve an extra obstacle to overcome in getting your message across.

Make it the user’s choice to download and launch the content. Use your words and layout to make them want to do it.

Formatting graphics for web pages

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One common mistake I see on web pages is people not knowing how to format graphics properly; or not taking the trouble to do it.

To be fair, the software spoils us a bit. We can throw in any graphic file, and set it to resize however we want. Just like magic! But of course it’s not magic; it’s a technical process that works in certain ways, even if that’s hidden behind the scenes. If you want good results, a little bit of knowledge about file types and making a good web graphic can make a big difference.

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Review: Kindle Keyboard

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The Kindle KeyboardThis is a slightly edited version of a post I published elsewhere in October 2011.

Once in a while I’ll talk about gadgets here, and I recently acquired a Kindle, to take on a few days’ holiday rather than a brace of paperbacks.

Two days later Amazon announced the new Kindle models. Thanks guys. The model I got is being kept on, in the UK at least, as the ‘Kindle keyboard wifi’ (I didn’t pay the extra for 3G), alongside the new, cheaper, keyboardless model. I gather the screen’s the same in the new one, perhaps slightly improved, page turns are a bit faster but storage capacity and battery life are less. So if you want a similar experience for cheaper it might be worth a look.

The Kindle is probably the leading dedicated e-book reader at the moment. It’s Amazon’s best-selling product [now outstripped by the Kindle Fire colour tablet in the USA], and a key part of the company’s strategy, enabling book sales in e-book format, which has now outstripped sales of physical books.

So, what’s it like for convenience and readability?

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