Speed: It can make you look like a rock star or a rock star’s discarded gig wear.
Mobile UX: It can make you a helpful, innovative leading-edge company or it can make you look like someone’s old Windows 3.1 application.
From a banking application to a quick Twitter session with your friends, I believe that speed and ease of use are the ultimate drivers for mobile applications. Web and application developers have been going through a growth path that includes the typical questions:
- What’s a mobile application?
- Who would ever trust such a thing as a mobile application?
- How fast can I get one for my business?
Years ago, the question surrounding the viability of mobile, image-less browsing was relegated to R&D and people with a great deal of time on their hands. These days, it’s becoming more and more a requirement in our proposals and presentations. Have you seen an increase? Do the requests make sense?
Trust Me
Trust is a key factor in many of the decisions our customers make as to whether or not they belong in the mobile community. My personal advice to any company who has a service or application that can be used in quick sessions (less than a three-minute transaction) is to go for it. Build the application using the latest and greatest security you can employ and create your mobile application as soon as possible.
Trust comes with time. Established in x year. Since xxxx. Time is a great way to generate trust to your audience. It isn’t going to carry you very far, but it’s a start and it’s something you won’t have if you don’t move now.
Again, Again!
Once you’ve gone through a comprehensive design for the mobile version of your offering, it’s critical to keep the ball bouncing. By standing still and keeping your early iterations in production, you’ll lose the edge.
Paying attention to new browser versions, the ability to incorporate time-saving development environments and keeping your application or service fresh is going to keep the customer alert and keep you on the right path.
Remember the Past
It’s a significant effort to produce the right UX for a mobile environment. It takes a deep understanding of your product, your staff and the design process for human factors and behavior.
Additionally, it takes time. Most often, we notice that failing mobile ux is a product of not taking enough time to sort out the business requirements. It’s not effective to take what you have and “re purpose” it. The mobile version should have the same care and feeding that was established with the big sister or big brother product.
In most situations, you’ll run into some nasty speed bumps such as
- language versions / regional codes
- brand elements
- functional buttons / iconography
- vanity
That last bullet is pretty important. Vanity can kill a mobile application. If the logo is too big, the first impression might be that the provider cares much more about themselves than they do about me. If it’s too small, or ignored altogether, the customer may feel that the provider isn’t being transparent.
Corporate vanity has a strong place in the mobile world: marketing materials, about pages and tasteful watermarks.
Conceive and Create
Use your product knowledge and your creative staff to work together. It’s an effort that can not be successfully carried out by one or the other. Both departments (or vendors) need to work in harmony to effectively produce your mobile application or service.
