Welcome to the first newsletter for 4ourth Mobile Online Training. You will get one of these emailed out to you every month or so as long as you stay subscribed. If you want me to change the address, just tell me about it. If you don't like getting them... well, I am not sure why you signed up, but tell me and I'll remove you from the list.
This is probably going to occasionally contain minor marketing like if I launch another major product (a new book?) but will mostly be occupied with describing the updates to the training, and the date for the monthly call.
- 27 January 2016 at 1 pm Central Time (GMT -6) ACCESS TBD!!!! SEND INVITES VIA GOOGLE CALENDAR???
Think about what you want to talk about, with me and whoever else shows up for the call. If this time is terrible, tell me a better one. First try so it may move around a bit.
Today UXmatters published an article of mine, TITLE/LINK. Like much of what I write, it started as a screed against the provincialism of the tech world. I ended up (also as usual) making it more positive and useful, so it's hints about how people in rural America, and much of the developing world actually work, live and experience mobile technology. Also, tips to keep this in mind and stop assuming, or looking down on others so much.
Updates are basically just things I find online which seem relevant. I bookmark them and come back occasionally to update the decks. Now, since it took a long time to finish the decks and the state of the industry moves fast, as I start writing this I have 55 links to get through! I won't be getting to all of them this month, and some I may sneak in as I am embarassed at how long some have been languishing but what we have is:
All The Mobile Numbers You Ever Wanted (but were afraid to ask) - The big mobile stats blog for 2015 is finally here - Tomi finally published his 2015 numbers and Almanac and there's a lot to see in there. I updated some numbers, and added more to the existing slides but you can just read the blog post. Note, at least for a bit the almanac (where he puts ALL this still) is half price until 11 January 2016. Now, full price is all of €10, so it's worth it anyway. Link to buy is at the bottom of the linked blog post. - The Complete Guide to Designing Mobile User Experiences, Part 1) The Phones are Here to Stay - Resources
Responsive Images - Jason Grigsby wrote a ten part treatise on the principles and practice of responsive images in mid/late 2015. Should be up to date for a bit. You may note how I didn’t actually talk about these much in the video, and that’s because it’s crazy complex, and at the principle level some of the best solutions are pretty adaptive. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone as they love calling it all “responsive” still. Seriously, if you bring this up, it makes people nervous and they might not do it, so be careful what you say. - The Complete Guide to Designing Mobile User Experiences, Part 5) Adaptive or Responsive? - Resources
ACCESSIBILITY 101 WITH GREG TARNOFF - An hour long podcast where the ctrl+click cast people interview Greg Tarnoff on accessibility, of course, but from the structural point of view that basically is what my whole thing is about. I've seen him speak twice and they are always great, so I added this to the links in the speaker notes also. If you have a spare hour, listen to it. Sorry, no transcript. - Designing Products for Everyone
The benefits of a single task-driven classification / navigation - This ideal for decades has been the 1:1, personalized experience. From an IA/nav point of view, this has always been a challenge though. We never really have enough data to do it automatically, and we cannot ask them. I have encountered the exact issues this paper outlines. Now it’s clear we need to be very, very careful building custom nav trees for individual user types, and can get good results by being task-focused instead. - The Complete Guide to Designing Mobile User Experiences, Part 6) Information Architecture - Resources
Links for Empowering Tech - Robin Christopherson continues to not actually write or have a particularly good video anywhere, but he's still clever and gives good talks. I've added this link to a bunch of neat technology (for accessibility mostly) to the relevant place where I mention his "temporary disability" concept. - Designing Products for Everyone
A breakdown of the demographics for each of the different social networks - I like to talk about how SMS is giant, and a good way to notify, share, etc. But maybe you want to promote, share, or link back and forth between your social media presence. Pick the right one for your audience, not what you use. Some good data here, though outside the US it gets even more complex. - The Complete Huide to Designing Mobile User Experiences, Part 7) Outside & Between - Resources
Vestibular Disorders and the Internet - Marissa Christina joins Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin to discuss her path as a web designer diagnosed with a debilitating vestibular disorder. This is a summary by Greg Tarnoff, but there's a link to the podcast. If you think I need more than one slide on vestibular disorders, do tell me. - Designing Products for Everyone
More than half of all Google searches now happen on mobile devices - You think maybe those sites where the majority of traffic is mobile are weird? Wrong. Mass market stuff used by everyone, like Google, are majority mobile now, and mobile traffic use is growing faster than desktop. And not, oddly, they don't count tablets as mobile for this! - The Complete Guide to Designing Mobile User Experiences, Part 2) People & Technology - Resources
Data entry error and tailstrikeinvolving Boeing 737-838, VH-VZR - You know all those airlines ditching paper for iPads? Well, things don’t always get better. Why? I can speculate, but instead of calling this a design problem, it’s a good example of a test problem. Check everything with your users, in their actual environment. Moving from paper to digital, from web to app, etc. causes changes in interactivity, and in user expectations. Old processes may not work; what are the consequences of failure. - The Complete Guide to Designing Mobile User Experiences Part 13) Design at Scale - Resources
Web/OS integration stumbles: Apple TV: A World Without Webviews weirdly, Apple removed the ability to use Webviews in the new Apple TV. Native or nothing. Be Happy the New Apple TV Ditches the Web You can always rely on someone to defend every odd decision by Apple. This one basically says that Webviews are bad anyway because the Web is scary so it's good Apple removed them. Whatever. The result is the same. The Web is a bit less universal now. Firefox OS is dead Firefox OS (which was awesomely well done, and whose UI in no small way was guided by my principles) is dead. So that’s two web-centric mobile OSs dead and stumbling along like zombies. The principles are solid, but who is going to build this web-everywhere world? - The Complete Guide to Designing Mobile User Experiences Part 4) Hybrid or Native App? + the references file
The Cost of Frameworks - I don’t get too far into code too much, but this is worth a long treatise sometime. I may write an article on how our over-reliance on frameworks makes things happen fast, but at the cost of being slow, unreliable, not what you wanted, and it takes a lot of time and money to make them work. I say, hire good FEDs who can write you custom raw code, and do your best to plan (simple first, complex over time) so you can use it, and own how your site works. - The Complete Guide to Designing Mobile User Experiences Part 5) Adaptive or Responsive? - Resources
The Comprehensive App Economics Blog 2014 - An app alone won’t make you rich and famous. A website is no better. Have a good business, a service people want to pay for, first. Mobile is huge, but it’s not magic. App developer trends Q1 2015 Vision Mobile (who provided much of Tomi's data) disagrees… a bit. But only in details. Even their numbers show a wild disparity between high and low profit app developers. - The Complete Guide to Designing Mobile User Experiences Part 3) Platform Choices
If a deck says it was updated, that also means I revised the PPT and the video with the new info. Which, you may now see, is why I don't get to all of them at once.
I also find other things interesting, but haven't always got a place to put them in decks, columns, etc. Here's a few of those:
Apple is staying quiet about how many Apple Watches it has sold. Why? - Despite the title, there is a number in there. Not for Apple, but for the whole market "estimates that just 17.7 million smartwatches were shipped by all companies globally last year." That's shipped, not sold, and not in use. You know me, I like installed base numbers. But no one talks so we just have estimates. Now I think smartwatches are brilliant, but only a few and they haven't caught on yet. These numbers, compared to the mobile scale, make it easy to pick your battles when someone asks if we need to build a watch app. Not unless there's some specific reason, no.
A Designer's Guide to Wearables Not a bad set of principles for wearables, but oddly presented, shallow and too focused on smartwatches. There's lots of devices out there waiting to be connected up well. But, it's a good start.