Face-thing for Friday
Go here and click on your favorite face parts…
Mobile Information Needs and Design
Researchers at UC San Diego conducted a diary study of 20 people’s mobile information needs over the course of two weeks (Sohn, Li et al 2008). At the end of the day their analysis shows us what users really need when their mobile and helps us design more effective mobile site profiles.
In their analysis, Sohn et al dissected 421 information needs and analyzed the heck out of them. But the most interesting findings are probably just the information needs themselves. They placed each need into one of 16 categories. The following categories occurred most frequently:
- Trivia (e.g. How did Bob Marley die?) : 18.5%
- Directions to a known destination: 13.3%
- Directions to a Point of Interest (destination unknown): 12.4%
- Friend information: 7.6%
- Shopping: 7.1%
Of course, you can make the common academic comment that people would make about these types of studies, which is:
“But people only think of these information needs because it’s the type of information that’s actually available on the web…if their minds were open to reporting any information need, we’d probably see a lot more variation or a lot more needs over a period of two weeks from 20 people.”
After reading the article, though, I can tell you that these researchers did a lot to try and not bias the results. I’ll let you read about their methods in the article though (linked below).
At any rate, the raw categorical data does shed some light on how you can design a site’s mobile profile to better address mobile users. For example, if you’re designing a site for a floral shop, you may want to make directions and pricing information more prominent in the mobile profile than in the large screen profile. The directions section would ideally ask someone to type in their “from” address, and submit the form to take them to a mapping service with directions to your store. The pricing section might have three elements:
- a search box at the top for quick flower or arrangement lookups,
- a list of 3 to 5 of the most popular flower arrangements or flowers,
- and perhaps a one-click reservation button that allows users to reserve a flower by entering their name and date. (I can think of several friends whose anniversaries would be saved by such a feature)
Their study goes into a lot more detail about the reasons people do or don’t address their information needs while mobile, but I found those conclusions didn’t help as much as understanding the type of information users need in the first place. If you want to read more about the study, you can download it at Tim Sohn’s page at the University of California, San Diego.
Please, let me know if this type of post jives with the rest of the site and Refresh Tallahassee’s goals. If not, I could always find something else that’s closer to our mission.
Cheers!
References
UI samples for the day
Yes, I’m a sucker for new interface concepts. With the recent public release of Photosynth and the demo video of Aurora, I though this was worth passing along… 10 Futuristic User Interfaces compliment of Smashing Magazine.
Site design for the day
After seven years, IDEO launches a new design. Thoughts?
Article for the day
In his article “Divide,” Jack Shedd discusses how idealism (and ego) can divide designers and developers. The bottom line (literally):
They are one team, which produce one product. Stick their desks together and see what happens.
Read the juicy details.
Source: Cameron Moll’s Premium Linkage
Fire your clients and start a Product
If you have ever kicked around the idea of starting your own company that is internet-related, then you may find this article useful. After weighing in on pros-and-cons, it turns out that the author is strongly in favor of product-related businesses. Find out why!
Photoshop vs. Fireworks
So, which is better for the web designer: Photoshop or Fireworks?
This article has on hand several “experts” offering interesting comments on the pros/cons of Photoshop and Fireworks. If you have used both of these programs you probably already have your own opinion - but read on to see what others think (and maybe you will even change your mind)!
UI Concept for the day
Also created by Aza Raskin is a site named Songza. Though I haven’t dug into the site, check out the nice mechanism for taking more than one action on a link.
Source: Signal vs. Noise
