Mobile Interaction Design

Mobile Interaction Design covers important issues relating to this ever-changing technology, including, developing interfaces and devices with a great deal of sensitivity to human needs, desires, and capabilities. This book is written to inspire and challenge designers' preconceived notions of this marketplace and to convey lessons learned, and principles involved, in the development and deployment of interactive systems to the mobile environment.

Table of Contents:
Preface xv Acknowledgements xix Part I: Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Possibilities 3 Key points 3 1.1 Introduction 4 1.2 What are mobile devices? 6 1.2.1 Communication or information device? 9 1.2.2 Appliance or Swiss army knife? 11 1.2.3 Cherished device or commodity tool? 13 1.3 Impoverished or extraordinary interfaces? 14 1.3.1 The Fastap keypad 15 1.3.2 Peephole displays 16 1.3.3 Accommodating human capabilities and limitations 17 1.4 Impoverishing interactions? 28 1.4.1 Reasons for poor design 28 1.4.2 Impacts of poor design 29 1.5 Outline of the rest of this book 35 Summary 36 Workshop questions 36 Designer tips 36 Chapter 2: Products for people 39 Key points 39 2.1 Introduction 40 2.2 Useful 41 2.2.1 Function before form 41 2.2.2 Evolving uses 42 2.3 Usable 43 2.3.1 Usable in itself 44 2.3.2 Usable in life 51 2.4 User experience 54 2.4.1 Strong identity 55 2.4.2 Interaction as package 58 2.5 Technology acceptance 63 Summary 64 Workshop questions 66 Designer tips 66 Chapter 3: Innovating 67 Key points 67 3.1 Introduction 68 3.2 Technology-centered approaches 69 3.3 Transferring from the desktop 74 3.3.1 Applications 75 3.3.2 Interface styles 78 3.4 Building on past mobile success 81 3.5 Drama 83 3.6 Frameworks for human-centered thinking 85 Summary 89 Workshop questions 89 Designer tips 90 Part II: Developing Effective Mobile Applications 91 Chapter 4: Interaction design 93 Key points 93 4.1 Introduction 94 4.2 Designing what? Designing how? 94 4.3 Understanding users 96 4.3.1 From biology to psychology 96 4.3.2 Field studies 97 4.3.3 Direct questioning 99 4.3.4 Distilling the findings 100 4.4 Developing prototype designs 100 4.4.1 Shaping and managing the design space 100 4.4.2 Prototyping 105 4.5 Evaluation 106 4.5.1 Testing with users 107 4.5.2 Testing in the absence of users 109 4.6 Iterative development 112 4.7 Multiple viewpoints 113 4.7.1 Many techniques and tools 113 4.7.2 Many disciplines 113 4.7.3 Participation and collaboration 116 4.8 From interaction design to deployment 117 Summary 118 Workshop questions 118 Designer tips 119 Chapter 5: Watching, asking, probing 121 Key points 121 5.1 Introduction 122 5.2 Focusing the study 124 5.2.1 How focused should the study be? 124 5.2.2 Finding people to study 125 5.3 Top techniques for understanding people 129 5.3.1 Observing 130 5.3.2 Enquiring 138 5.3.3 Diary studies 141 5.3.4 Discount methods 145 5.3.5 Focus groups 149 5.3.6 Creatively engaging methods 151 5.4 Making sense of observations 155 5.4.1 Activities 155 5.4.2 Analysis perspectives 156 5.5 Personas and scenarios 160 5.5.1 Personas 160 5.5.2 Scenarios 163 Summary 167 Workshop questions 167 Designer tips 168 Chapter 6: Prototypes 169 Key points 169 6.1 Introduction 170 6.2 What is a prototype? 170 6.3 Different prototypes for different purposes 170 6.4 Low-fidelity 171 6.4.1 Self-checking 171 6.4.2 Communicating with others 173 6.4.3 Interaction prototyping 174 6.4.4 Empowering users 176 6.5 Higher-fidelity 178 6.5.1 Deciding what to prototype 178 6.5.2 Hardware and software integration 178 6.6 Finishing the process 186 6.6.1 Evolutionary 186 6.6.2 Revolutionary 186 6.6.3 Process 187 6.7 Issues in prototyping 189 6.7.1 Some considerations 190 6.8 A final note on development 191 Summary 192 Workshop questions 192 Designer tips 192 Chapter 7: Evaluation 195 Key points 195 7.1 Introduction 196 7.2 Classifying evaluation 196 7.3 ‘Quick And Dirty’ 197 7.4 Conceptual model extraction 197 7.5 Direct observation 199 7.5.1 Finding out what users are thinking 199 7.5.2 How to record observations 200 7.5.3 How to not bias the experiment 203 7.5.4 Happy users 203 7.6 Interviews 204 7.7 Questionnaires 205 7.8 Non-user methods 207 7.8.1 Heuristic evaluation 207 7.8.2 No people whatsoever 209 7.9 Experimental evaluation 209 7.9.1 Hypothesis 210 7.9.2 The users 211 7.9.3 Tasks 212 7.9.4 Experiment design 212 7.9.5 Conducting experiments 213 7.9.6 Experimental results 214 7.10 Considering context – evaluating mobile systems 214 7.10.1 Physical context 214 7.10.2 Technological context 216 7.10.3 Social context 216 7.10.4 Other contexts 217 7.11 Complementary evaluation 218 7.12 Conclusion 219 Summary 219 Workshop questions 219 Designer tips 220 Part III: Design Gallery – Directions and Guidelines 221 Chapter 8: Controlling Complex Functions 223 Key points 223 8.1 Introduction 224 8.2 Menus and memory 225 8.3 Hierarchical menus 225 8.3.1 Learning structure 225 8.3.2 Improving classification 226 8.3.3 Context information 227 8.4 Icons 227 8.5 Manuals 233 8.5.1 Online manuals 233 8.5.2 Website manuals 234 8.6 No menus? 234 8.6.1 Data structures 235 8.6.2 Alternatives 235 8.6.3 Design ideas – data structures 238 8.6.4 Evaluation via experiment 238 8.7 More complex menus 242 8.8 Some concluding thoughts 244 Summary 245 Workshop questions 245 Designer tips 245 Chapter 9: Information access 247 Key points 247 9.1 Introduction 248 9.2 Small-screen impacts 250 9.2.1 Lessons from the past 251 9.2.2 Impact on browsing complex content 255 9.2.3 Impact on searching 256 9.3 Designs for browsing 258 9.3.1 Guidelines 259 9.3.2 Schemes 261 9.3.3 Packaging content 271 9.4 Improving search 272 9.4.1 Assessing sets of results 272 9.4.2 Judging the value of individual results 274 9.5 Mobile information ecologies 280 9.5.1 Fitting in 280 9.5.2 Case study: the laid-back search tool 283 9.5.3 Peer-to-peer schemes 286 Summary 287 Workshop questions 287 Designer tips 288 Chapter 10: Beyond text – using images on mobile devices 289 Key points 289 10.1 Introduction 290 10.2 Ethnography 290 10.2.1 Where have all the photographs gone? 291 10.2.2 Digital ethnography 292 10.3 Finding photos 292 10.3.1 Meta-data 293 10.3.2 Meta-data management 294 10.4 Browsing photos 294 10.4.1 Timeline 295 10.4.2 Treemaps 295 10.4.3 Rsvp 296 10.4.4 Speed Dependent Automatic Zooming 298 10.5 Downscaling case study 300 10.5.1 Arranging photos 300 10.5.2 Screen size 300 10.5.3 Write once, run anywhere 301 10.5.4 Meanwhile, back with the users 301 10.5.5 User testing 304 10.5.6 Platform 306 10.6 Advanced technology 306 10.7 What are photos for? 307 10.7.1 What are we sharing? 309 10.7.2 Using audio with photographs 311 10.7.3 Video 311 10.8 Looking to the future 312 Summary 312 Workshop questions 313 Designer tips 313 Chapter 11: Impacting the community; impacting the world 315 Key points 315 11.1 Introduction 316 11.2 The digital divide 316 11.3 Mobiles work 316 11.3.1 The rise and rise of mobile technology 317 11.4 Planning a project 318 11.5 That culture thing 320 11.6 Case studies 325 11.6.1 Empowering people – Cybertracker 325 11.6.2 Education 327 11.6.3 Communitization 328 11.7 Call to arms 333 Summary 333 Workshop questions 333 Designer tips 334 Resources 335 References 339 Credits 365 Index 367