It's a Write/Read Mobile Web - Luke W

22 Jan 2014

I recently attended Designers+Geeks, at Yelp HQ in SF, and took some notes on LukeW's great talk, It's a Write/Read Mobile Multi-Device Web.

I had soaked up lots of knowledge from Luke at AEA SF back in 2011 so this time expected lots of similar charts on the growth of mobile device usage, and he delivered. If you need to make a case for mobile to reluctant stakeholders, check out his site for loads of powerful data. My notes here are on the rest of his talk.

• Top sites (by time spent in the US) are all write/read experiences (Facebook, Aol, Yahoo, Google, Youtube)
  • They require users reading/writing to work. Ex. What is Facebook without people posting?
  • They are now all mobile:
  • Facebook 78% mobile. They’ve had flat growth on desktop but huge growth on mobile.
  • Twitter 75% mobile.
  • They had a "Mobile moment" when the balance shifted from more desktop to more mobile use.
• Mobile is not just about consumption, creation is booming.
  • Mobile used to be mostly entertainment but now real tasks are done on mobile.
• One hand use
  • Input: Keep the keyboard away until necessary
  • Smart defaults and smart suggestions/guesses
  • Don't just shrink desktop UI patterns, actually design for the one thumb use case
• Focused flows
  • Tim Cook: “Creativity is not a process. It’s people who care enough to keep thinking about something until they find the simplest way to do it. They keep thinking about something until they find the best way to do it."
  • But simplicity is not easy. It takes a lot of work to go small.
  • Paradigm shift: Hotel Tonight simplified booking a hotel (on an app) to 8 sec. It’s competitor Hotels.com takes 108 sec to book. Hotel Tonight's CEO says this simplicity is their competitive advantage.
• Just-in-time actions
  • Josh Clark: We learn in the moment
  • Wrong approach: the instructional intro screen
    • It’s skipped or forgotten by the time the user needs help.
    • Instead teach in the moment
  • Actions can be in the moment as well: surface UI only when needed
    • Ex.  G+ app feed - header/footer toolbars hide when you’re scrolling, then reappear when you pause at a post.
  • Content actions - Asking the user to do something (ex. find friends) from within the flow of the app instead of adding another menu item.
    • After checking in to a location on Foursquare, they ask you to leave a tip for other users. It’s shown just in time, instead of adding another button in the toolbar for tips.
  • Don't get in people's way
• Multi Device World
  • Sequential and simultaneous use between devices
    • Synced place holding - ex. kindle or Chrome
    • Use each device for what it's good for
  • Control: use one device to control another
    • Your TV is not good for input, design so that connected mobile devices can control it.
  • Push: ex. Ebay’s desktop site connects to their mobile app so you can use your phone camera to capture photos instead of the arduous task of using a traditional digital camera and transferring the images.