{"rowid": 156, "title": "Mobile 2.0", "contents": "Thinking 2.0\n\nAs web geeks, we have a thick skin towards jargon. We all know that \u201cWeb 2.0\u201d has been done to death. At Blue Flavor we even have a jargon bucket to penalize those who utter such painfully overused jargon with a cash deposit. But Web 2.0 is a term that has lodged itself into the conscience of the masses. This is actually a good thing.\n\nThe 2.0 suffix was able to succinctly summarize all that was wrong with the Web during the dot-com era as well as the next evolution of an evolving media. While the core technologies actually stayed basically the same, the principles, concepts, interactions and contexts were radically different.\n\nWith that in mind, this Christmas I want to introduce to you the concept of Mobile 2.0. While not exactly a new concept in the mobile community, it is relatively unknown in the web community. And since the foundation of Mobile 2.0 is the web, I figured it was about time for you to get to know each other.\n\nIt\u2019s the Carriers\u2019 world. We just live in it.\n\nBefore getting into Mobile 2.0, I thought first I should introduce you to its older brother. You know the kind, the kid with emotional problems that likes to beat up on you and your friends for absolutely no reason. That is the mobile of today.\n\nThe mobile ecosystem is a very complicated space often and incorrectly compared to the Web. If the Web was a freewheeling hippie \u2014 believing in freedom of information and the unity of man through communities \u2014 then Mobile is the cutthroat capitalist \u2014 out to pillage and plunder for the sake of the almighty dollar. Where the Web is relatively easy to publish to and ultimately make a buck, Mobile is wrought with layers of complexity, politics and obstacles. \n\nI can think of no better way to summarize these challenges than the testimony of Jason Devitt to the United States Congress in what is now being referred to as the \u201ciPhone Hearing.\u201d Jason is the co-founder and CEO of SkyDeck a new wireless startup and former CEO of Vindigo an early pioneer in mobile content.\n\n\n\nAs Jason points out, the mobile ecosystem is a closed door environment controlled by the carriers, forcing the independent publisher to compete or succumb to the will of corporate behemoths.\n\nBut that is all about to change.\n\nIntroducing Mobile 2.0\n\nMobile 2.0 is term used by the mobile community to describe the current revolution happening in mobile. It describes the convergence of mobile and web services, adding portability, ubiquitous connectivity and location-aware services to add physical context to information found on the Web.\n\nIt\u2019s an important term that looks toward the future. Allowing us to imagine the possibilities that mobile technology has long promised but has yet to deliver. It imagines a world where developers can publish mobile content without the current constraints of the mobile ecosystem.\n\nLike the transition from Web 1.0 to 2.0, it signifies the shift away from corporate or brand-centered experiences to user-centered experiences. A focus on richer interactions, driven by user goals. Moving away from proprietary technologies to more open and standard ones, more akin to the Web. And most importantly (from our perspective as web geeks) a shift away from kludgy one-off mobile applications toward using the Web as a platform for content and services.\n\nThis means the world of the Web and the world of Mobile are coming together faster than you can say ARPU (Average Revenue Per User, a staple mobile term to you webbies). And this couldn\u2019t come at a better time. The importance of understanding and addressing user context is quickly becoming a crucial consideration to every interactive experience as the number of ways we access information on the Web increases.\n\nMobile enables the power of the Web, the collective information of millions of people, inherit payment channels and access to just about every other mass media to literally be overlaid on top of the physical world, in context to the person viewing it. \n\nAnyone who can\u2019t imagine how the influence of mobile technology can\u2019t transform how we perform even the simplest of daily tasks needs to get away from their desktop and see the new evolution of information.\n\nThe Instigators\n\nBut what will make Mobile 2.0 move from idillic concept to a hardened market reality in 2008 will be four key technologies. Its my guess that you know each them already.\n\n1. Opera\n\nOpera is like the little train that could. They have been a driving force on moving the Web as we know it on to mobile handsets. Opera technology has proven itself to be highly adaptable, finding itself preloaded on over 40 million handsets, available on televisions sets through Nintendo Wii or via the Nintendo DS.\n\n2. WebKit\n\nMany were surprised when Apple chose to use KHTML instead of Gecko (the guts of Firefox) to power their Safari rendering engine. But WebKit has quickly evolved to be a powerful and flexible browser in the mobile context. WebKit has been in Nokia smartphones for a few years now, is the technology behind Mobile Safari in the iPhone and the iPod Touch and is the default web technology in Google\u2019s open mobile platform effort, Android.\n\n3. The iPhone\n\nThe iPhone has finally brought the concepts and principles of Mobile 2.0 into the forefront of consumers minds and therefore developers\u2019 minds as well. Over 500 web applications have been written specifically for the iPhone since its launch. It\u2019s completely unheard of to see so many applications built for the mobile context in such a short period of time.\n\n4. CSS & Javascript\n\nWeb 2.0 could not exist without the rich interactions offered by CSS and Javascript, and Mobile 2.0 is no different. CSS and Javascript support across multiple phones historically has been, well\u2026 to put it positively\u2026 utter crap.\n\nJavascript finally allows developers to create interesting interactions that support user goals and the mobile context. Specially, AJAX allows us to finally shed the days of bloated Java applications and focus on portable and flexible web applications. While CSS \u2014 namely CSS3 \u2014 allows us to create designs that are as beautiful as they are economical with bandwidth and load times.\n\nWith Leaflets, a collection of iPhone optimized web apps we created, we heavily relied on CSS3 to cache and reuse design elements over and over, minimizing download times while providing an elegant and user-centered design.\n\n\n\nIn Conclusion\n\nIt is the combination of all these instigators that is significantly decreasing the bar to mobile publishing. The market as Jason Devitt describes it, will begin to fade into the background. And maybe the world of mobile will finally start looking more like the Web that we all know and love.\n\nSo after the merriment and celebration of the holiday is over and you look toward the new year to refresh and renew, I hope that you take a seriously consider the mobile medium. \n\nBy this time next year, it is predicted that one-third of humanity will be using mobile devices to access the Web.", "year": "2007", "author": "Brian Fling", "author_slug": "brianfling", "published": "2007-12-21T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/mobile-2-0/", "topic": "business"}
{"rowid": 158, "title": "10 Ways To Get Design Approval", "contents": "One of the most challenging parts of the web design process is getting design sign off. It can prove time consuming, demoralizing and if you are not careful can lead to a dissatisfied client. What is more you can end up with a design that you are ashamed to include in your portfolio.\n\nHow then can you ensure that the design you produce is the one that gets built? How can you get the client to sign off on your design? Below are 10 tips learnt from years of bitter experience.\n\n1. Define the role of the client and designer\n\nMany of the clients you work with will not have been involved in a web project before. Even if they have they may have worked in a very different way to what you would expect. Take the time at the beginning of the project to explain their role in the design of the site.\n\nThe best approach is to emphasis that their job is to focus on the needs of their users and business. They should concentrate on the broad issues, while you worry about the details of layout, typography and colour scheme.\n\nBy clarifying what you expect from the client, you help them to provide the right kind of input throughout the process.\n\n2. Understand the business\n\nBefore you open up Photoshop or put pen to paper, take the time to make sure you properly understand not only the brief but the organization behind the site. By understanding their business objectives, organizational structure and marketing strategy your design decisions will be better informed.\n\nYou cannot rely upon the brief to provide all of the information you need. It is important to dig deeper and get as good an understanding of their business as possible. This information will prove invaluable when justifying your design decisions.\n\n3. Understand the users\n\nWe all like to think of ourselves as user centric designers, but exactly how much effort do you put into knowing your users before beginning the design process?\n\nTake the time to really understand them the best you can. Try to meet with some real prospective users and get to know their needs. Failing that work with the client to produce user personas to help picture exactly what kind of people they are. \n\nUnderstanding your users not only improves the quality of your work, but also helps move the discussion away from the personal preferences of the client, to the people who\u2019s opinion really matters.\n\n4. Avoid multiple concepts\n\nMany clients like the idea of having the option to choose between multiple design concepts. However, although on the surface this might appear to be a good idea it can ultimately be counterproductive for design sign off.\n\nIn a world of limited budgets it is unwise to waste money on producing designs that are ultimately going to be thrown away. The resources would be better spent refining a single design through multiple iterations.\n\nWhat is more, multiple concepts often cause confusion rather than clarity. It is common for a client to request one element from one design and another from the second. As any designer knows this seldom works.\n\n5. Use mood boards\n\nClients are often better at expressing what they don\u2019t like than what they do. This is one of the reasons why they favour producing multiple design concepts. An alternative less costly approach is to create a series of mood boards. These boards contain a collection of colours, typography and imagery which represent different \u201cmoods\u201d or directions, which the design could take. \n\nMood boards are quick and easy to produce allowing you to try out various design approaches with the client without investing the time needed to produce complete design concepts. This means that by the time you develop a concept the client and designer have already established an understanding about the direction of the design.\n\n6. Say what you like\n\nIt is not uncommon for a client to ask for a design that looks similar to another site they like. The problem is that it can often be hard to establish exactly what it is about the site that attracts them. Also in many cases the sites they like are not something you are keen to emulate!\n\nA better approach that was suggested to me by Andy Budd is to show them sites that you think the design should emulate. Keep a collection of screen captures from well designed sites and pick out a few that are relevant to that particular client. Explain why you feel these designs might suit their project and ask for their feedback. If they don\u2019t like your choices then expose them to more of your collection and see what they pick out.\n\n7. Wireframe the homepage\n\nOften clients find it hard to distinguish between design and content and so sometimes reject a design on the basis that the content is not right. This is particularly true when signing off the homepage.\n\nYou may therefore find it useful to establish the homepage content before producing the design. That way once they see the design they will not be distracted by the content. One of the best ways to do this is by producing a basic wireframe consisting of a series of content boxes. Once this has been approved you will find the sign off of design much easier.\n\n8. Present your designs\n\nAlthough it is true that a good design should speak for itself it still needs presenting to the client. The client needs to understand why you have made the design decisions you have, otherwise they will judge the design purely on personal preference. \n\nTalk them through the design explaining how it meets the needs of their users and business objectives. Refer to the mood boards and preferred sites the client approved and explain how the design is a continuation of those. Never simply email the design through and hope the client interprets your work correctly!\n\n9. Provide written supporting material\n\nUnfortunately, no matter how well you justify the design to the client he is almost certain to want to show it to others. He may need his bosses approval or require internal buy in. At the very least he is going to want to get a second opinion from a friend or colleague.\n\nThe problem with this is that you are not going to be there to present to these people in the same way you did for the client. You cannot expect the client to present your ideas as well as you did. The reality is that you have lost control of how the design is perceived.\n\nOne way to minimize this problem is to provide written documentation supporting the design. This can be a summary of the presentation you gave to the client and allows him to distribute this along with the design. By putting a written explanation with the design you ensure that everybody who sees it gets the same message.\n\n10. Control the feedback\n\nMy final piece of advice for managing design sign off is to control the way you receive feedback. A clients natural inclination will be to give you his personal opinion on the design. This is reinforced because you ask them what they think of the design. Instead ask them what their users will think of the design. Encourage them to think from the users perspective.\n\nAlso encourage them to keep that overarching focus I talked about in my first tip. Their tendency will be to try to improve the design, however that should be your problem not theirs. The role of a client should be to defend the needs of their users and business not do the design. Encourage the client to make comments such as \u201cI am not sure that my female users will like the masculine colours\u201d rather than \u201ccan we make the whole design pink.\u201d It is down to them to identify the problems and for you as the designer to find the most appropriate solution.\n\nSo there you have it. My 10 tips to improve design sign off. Will this ensure design approval every time? Unfortunately not. However it should certainly help smooth the way.", "year": "2007", "author": "Paul Boag", "author_slug": "paulboag", "published": "2007-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2007/10-ways-to-get-design-approval/", "topic": "business"}