I grew up with stories of staying away from eclipse as they harmful in some way, and even though I knew there was no substance to it as I grew up, I couldn’t get myself to break the unwritten rule. As my son turns 4 this would have been his first lunar eclipse and I didn’t want him shackled by the stupid chains as myself. I threw convention aside grabbed a camera, and took my wife and son to watch our first lunar eclipse… it was spectacular.

Facebook has declined to comment on the rumors stating

Our mobile strategy is simple: We think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social. We’re working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world.

Apple and Microsoft have already announced a tight integration of Twitter in their mobile platforms. Google is building it’s own version of Facebook with Plus which is bound to be deeply integrated in Android in the days to come and can be a serious threat to Facebook.

Mobile is on it’s way to become the biggest delivery platform and Facebook should control their own destiny instead of relying on Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone which have their own social agendas that’s bound to undermine Facebook in the long term.

Facebook could work on improving the following areas to create a mobile user experience tailored towards social activities:

Tight integration with the Phonebook

There is already an overlap between your Phonebook contacts and your Facebook friends, integrating Facebook contacts merges the two networks and they’re all there in a single place with their updates available at a glance.

Integration with Photo and Video Gallery

Facebook became the largest photo sharing site a while back, this just takes it a step further with easy access to your photos and videos locally on your phone along with all the contextual data like “comments” and “likes”.

Bring Facebook’s Apps to the Mobile Space

Increasing number of people are spending more time using mobile apps compared to the web, a Facebook phone can give the flourishing Facebook app ecosystem a jumpstart on the mobile space. It can also provide better access to native phone features like alarm, scheduler and so on, to create richer 3rd party apps to improve the user’s lifestyle.

Integration with Mobile Payment Gateway

This can do for Facebook app developers what iTunes did for mobile app developers. An amazing way to reach the mobile consumer and monetize their hard work and open up a whole new world of socially inclined apps for the users.

Gather Contextual Data

Now this is a goldmine that Google’s been exploiting for a long time, imagine the power to gather contextual data from usage habits of user not just while they are using your app but while they go about living their lives. This has a huge potential to better position their offerings which complement each user’s unique lifestyle.

Targeted Content Delivery

Content consumption on the mobile is growing by leaps and bounds. With tight integration, the phone can identify your interests based on your mails, shares, browser history, tweets, location and so on, and aggregate the articles you’ll be most interested in automatically.

Integration of their new Features like Jobs and Answers

It’s an easier way to reach out and educate the users about new features.

These are just a minuscule number of things that can be leveraged by Facebook. I’m sure there are hundreds of other tweaks that will help Facebook provide a better social experience but won’t be allowed by phone platforms because of their vested interests.

As Facebook’s CTO puts it, “Mobile devices are inherently social”, with deep integration in the mobile interface, a Facebook phone can create a mobile user experience tailored towards friends and social activities.

Originally published in .net Magazine

Human Computer Interaction
Stanford

Mobile User Experience Design
Stanford

Game Theory 
Yale

Game Design
MIT

Computer Graphics
IIT

Introduction to Computer Graphics
IIT

Besides the free courses there’s also a paid online MS in HCI from DePaul College, exam can be taken across the world

MS in Human Computers Interaction, DePaul College of Computing & Digital Media, US

Here is a list of popular resolutions related to content consumption on various devices:

Designing for multiple devices involves much more that simply resizing content to display on different screens. It must be truly viewable and usable across screens. We have to determine how our content changes from one screen to the next; more specifically, we have to control how this content gets resized, even to the extreme of accounting for both portrait and landscape orientations. To do this, it’s necessary to develop an effective strategy to target a diverse range of devices and screen sizes.

Different Devices, Different Experiences

Every device does something different. Each device is better at doing certain things, and worse at doing others. So, not all features make sense on all devices. You need to identify how the user will use the product in different contexts. Mobile users want different things from your product than desktop users. As an example, consider a website about movies currently in theatre. On the desktop, users want an immersive experience including trailers and production details. On mobile, they focus on movie listings, nearest theatres, and showtimes. We need to maximize the user experience for all devices so users believe that the application was actually designed for their devices instead of being simply stretched to fit the screen on their devices.

Understand Context of Use

Users consume content from multiple devices throughout the day. It’s important to understand the context in which these devices are being used to craft experiences that specifically suit them. You need to provide the right content, on the right device, at the right time.

It’s also important to understand how the usage of different devices overlaps and how they complement each other. Here are some interesting findings from a Nielson survey of time spent on different devices for daily tasks:

· 70% of tablet owners and 68% of smartphone owners said they use their devices while watching TV.

· Tablets and TVs complement each other very well; 30% users used tablets for browsing the Web or accessing TV-related apps while watching TV. Only 20% of smartphone owners did the same.

Define Device Groups

Although there’s a myriad of devices with varying screen sizes out there, it’s possible to manage this diversity by defining device groups based the tasks that the user is likely to focus on and device capabilities:

Here’s an example of device width groupings:

• Featurephones: 128, 160, 176, 220, 240
• Smartphones: 320, 480
• Tablets: 800
• PC: 1024+
• TV: 1600+

Note: This is an arbitrary example; create groups based on your user research.

Identify User Goals for Different Groups

Smartphones are personal; they are used mostly for micro-tasks, acting on locally available info, entertainment, and social sharing. Tablets are shared; they are considered an alternate to laptops and are primarily used for content consumption. Adapt the experience for each context of use.

You need to identify the different scenarios in which your product will be used across the groups of devices, and design an experience suitable for each of those scenarios. For example, to create a good mobile application, keep it simple by focusing on core functions and the activities mobile users require.

Break down the basic interactions and functionality offered by your application, and make combinations suited to each different device group. The information and UI design of each variation should reflect this, with elements repositioned or reorganized accordingly. If you’re designing for mobile, reorder the categories by priority to best suit the needs of the mobile audience. For example, Google’s mobile website focuses on different items in the navigation than in their desktop website.

Evernote is a popular note taking product and it’s available on multiple devices. It’s PC and tablet versions are optimized for content consumption whereas the smartphone versions are optimized for photo and audio input, and notes are location-tagged.

Create a Scalable Reference Design for Each Group

Once you’ve identified the features to be supported for each device type group, create a reference design which contains the essential components of the application that will scale across the range of screen sizes across the group of devices by defining a set of principles, patterns and guidelines. Make sure to address different orientations.

BBC Mobile Style Guide

Design for Mobile First

Usually applications are designed for PC or desktop and then ported to mobile. However, it’s better to design for mobile first as it has the most constraints and will help you focus.

When designing for PC, we face the ‘kitchen sink’ problem where lots of things get added to the product, especially when multiple stakeholders are involved. This is because adding things when you have a lot of real estate is relatively easy. When you design for mobile first, you can better decide what matters most and you can then apply the same process of judiciousness to the other versions of the product, be it on PC, tablet or TV.

Luke Wroblewski, who wrote the book Mobile First, discusses some of the ways designing for mobile first can help mitigate some of the thorny issues that have plagued designers for years.

Synchronize

Based on usage scenarios, you might want to ensure that the content consumption on each device is in sync. For example, if you started reading an eBook on your smartphone, when you shift to the tablet you should be taken back to the point where you left off on the smartphone. Amazon’s Kindle handles synchronization of multiple devices very well.

Get the Details Right

Designing for multiple devices involves a lot of complexity. Sweat it out to get the details right to create quality experiences for each group.

You need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each device and how they are used in order to design an experience suited for them, consider such variables as user posture (stationary, mobile, leaning back, leaning forward), device input capabilities, device display capabilities, and navigation style while defining the scenarios in which user may be using the product. Depending on the scenarios, it may be beneficial to design two or three different versions of the product.

Mobile Web vs. Native App

The easiest way to reach multiple devices is mobile web; however, mobile web and native apps offer different benefits and serve different audiences. You need to answer a number of questions:

• What experience does your product need to deliver?
• What you are trying to achieve?
• What is your business model?
• What is your budget?
• Who is your target?
• Et cetera.

Weigh the pros and cons of both the mediums and decide what works best for you.

Mobile Web

Native App

Reach a larger audience The majority of users don’t own a smartphone and don’t access app stores. They are more likely to use a mobile browser and access the Internet from their mobile phones. The barriers to accessing a site via a browser are lower than those to downloading an app, even for Smartphone owners Lower cost and time to market The biggest benefit mobile web offers is that you design once and it’ll run on all mobile platforms with minimal tweaking. The fragmented nature of the mobile industry means that porting apps to different platform environments costs money, especially when you include maintenance and marketing costs. Instant updates Whatever changes you make become available instantly to users. No censor Mobile web does not censor content and allows you to publish when you want and what you want. Low barrier to entry and no revenue share Mobile web has no entry costs, and you get to keep 100% of the revenue

Connectivity Productivity in a browser depends on constant connectivity, and in the real world data connections can be transient. Native apps can be built to interact with users even if offline. Device-based caching Native apps can cache data persistently, reducing data usage and providing faster access to the data. Richer experience Native apps can tap into the device’s functions and features, providing richer experience and seamless integration with native features such as camera, address book, etc. Users prefer an app that feels like it belongs on the phone rather than a Web app that seems shoehorned into the device. Immersive experiences Immersive apps like games need a lot more horsepower to deliver rich, polished experiences, which the native apps can achieve easily. Stronger engagement Native apps currently present better opportunities for stronger engagement, not only because they offer richer services and experiences, but also because they place the brand icon on the user’s home screen. Discoverability Native apps can be found easily in an app store. It is easier to build great marketing around apps than around mobile web links.

For further reading on this topic, check out these posts from Mobiletech, Forbes and CMSWire.

Conclusion

When designing for multiple devices, the best strategy is to keep the end-user experience in mind. Ensure that on all devices, users can complete their task with ease and efficiency, and the experience is tuned to their expectations from that device.

Originally published in UX Magazine

I’m glad they’re not showing ads on the right panel. I bet this is targeted based on user’s tweets and follows. Very original.

Valuable
Clearly articulates the value proposition and the purpose of the product for the target audience, taking into account factors like right set of features, cost of ownership, context of use and ethnography.

Usable
Users can achieve their tasks with ease and efficiency, with the least amount of effort, without experiencing any frustration, wondering where something is located, or struggle to figure out how to do something.

Trustworthy
Work as expected, every time, without glitches. It lets the user achieve their goal without hitting any roadblocks.

Delightful
Elicits a positive response. Delight could be achieved by adding things that may not be required, but when added bring value.

This is a fairly vast topic and the above parameters just touch it at a very high level. Here are bunch of posts for further reading to delve down deeper:

• User Experience Design, Peter Morville
• Ten principles of good design,  Dieter Rams
• Quality of Experience, Lauralee Alben
• The Meaning of User Experience, Tuomas Nurminen
• Definition of user experience, Niko Nyman

Updated 1st Nov

Carnival of Mobilists is a monthly collection of some of the finest in mobile blogging. The latest edition at Tomi Ahonen’s blog covers LBS, gesture, advertising, design strategy and more.

It also features my post NFC will make our daily lives better

If you have a shoddy phone, can’t get service in a certain area, or have trouble running the apps on your smartphone, then you shouldn’t have to suffer with it. Device manufacturers like LG phones, tablets, and work devices are meant to be productive devices for their users and not a hindrance on performance. Here are some things you can do if you are experiencing technical difficulties with your phone or provider.

Be Assertive

One of the most frustrating things about dealing with a large phone company is the endless amount of bureaucracy you must deal with in order to get what you want. Customer service hotlines are set up to lull you into complacency and make you cooperative. If you want to get a new phone to replace your old one, then make your demands known upfront. Sounding weak and passive to a service rep will make them want to go through the pre-scripted motions with you and get the best deal for them.

Do Your Research

Walking into a phone store unprepared could lead to a possible disaster. You will find yourself having to negotiate with sales staff and being uninformed could set you up with a phone or plan that you want nothing to do with. Visit websites, talk to friends, and conduct practical research before even setting foot in the retail phone store.

Politeness Never Hurts

The sales reps and customer service hotline people are always faced with rude and ignorant people everyday they work. If you treat the employees of these establishments with the basic human decency they deserve, you will find that they have a lot of leverage in getting you the things that you want. This rule should be applied to anyone working in the service industry.

Turn to a Third Party

If all else fails on your quest to get a new phone, contract, or upgrade, you need to take your business elsewhere. If you want to the latest model of a phone and your company won’t allow it, go to sites like eBay and Amazon to find the best deals on refurbished phones. If your contract is getting you down, try to terminate it and go with a prepaid phone option instead.

When dealing with these companies just remember that they have a lot at stake in terms of proper customer service. If you want something bad enough they will often give it to you; no questions asked.

Nokia’s design team led by Marko Ahtisaari has been working to simplify navigation model and provide users with a more easily glanceable device. Their solution, let the user access the last 3 recent apps by swiping right.

I disagree with Nokia solution being better than Apple’s or even Android’s solution to get to recent apps. If you double press on the home button in iPhone or if you press and hold the home button on Android you get to the recent apps, how is that worse than swiping right… they provide the same functionality and they have almost similar discoverability issues.

Thoughts?