Mobile Information Architecture
Mobile Differences
• Location?
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Everywhere
Household
Automobile
Fieldwork
Officework
• Purpose?
- Everything (Integrated Devices)
- Single Task (Appliances)
• Interface?
- Personalized
- Simplified
• Audio In
• Audio Out
- Modal
- Contextual
Mobile & You
• Intimacy
- Not just My Yahoo
- My Device
• Faceplates
• Ringtones
• Button Overlays
• Ubiquity
- Proximity
- Interoperability
- Connectivity (always on)
• Content
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Dynamic Streaming Data
Email – Voicemail – Pic mail
Web Data
Synchronization
• New Designs and Functions
Mobile Functionality
• Bandwidth
- Wireless
• Security
- Financial Mgmt
- Cryptography
• Ubiquitous Computing
• Privacy
• Cultural
- Adoption
- Revolution
• Locating and Relocating Information
- Directions, Shopping Lists, Contacts
Mobile Tasks
• Task-specific use that is very modal
• How does this change design?
• Navigate – Locate – Recognize – Act
- Human Short Term Memory 7+/-2
• Unfamiliar Tasks & Cognitive Overload
- Minimal Graphics (& Resolution) Affects Landmark Use
- More Skimming, Information Lost
- Task Focus Equalized Among Tasks
- Leverage Existing Mental Models
• Hierarchical Models
• The Right Schema (Appearance)
Mobile Design vs IA
• Most Guidelines are for Interfaces, Not Information
(Architecture)
- Not Just Less Information
- Not Only Lists, but Structures
- IA May Help More Than UI
• Re-Think Web Design Ideas and Guidelines
• “Web Browsing vs. Strategic Information Seeking”
• Task-Specific
- Look-Ups (Reminding and Refreshing)
- Not Exhaustive Searches (Learning)
- “Answer Clearly Articulated Questions”
• On-Line Comprehension
- Even Less on Handhelds (Note Cards?)
- Context & Concise Information
• Order of Problems & Tasks
• Relative Semantic Representations of Information
Mobile IA
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From Crumlish (Yahoo!)
• Mobile is coming of age & affordability
- Should work with your existing IA
- Not the desktop anymore
• The Mobile Web is Everywhere (Everyware?)
• Asking questions with concrete goals
- Less browsing, more personal context
• Interface changes
- Vertical lists (with # key equivalents)
- Do we mean Web sites with mobile versions?
- Or altogether new designs?
• New IA & Content Management challenges
- Google Mobile
- Amazon Mobile
Mobile IA Redesigns
• Smaller lists
• Limit categories to 5
- Number key access *
- Make thinks links as often as possible
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Understand SmartPhone limits
Use (w)CSS effectively
Reduce content on each page
No sidebars
First try - a mobile sub-set site?
Mobile Web Strategies
• How do you add value to lives with mobile
technology?
• Design for small PCs with functionality rather than
phones
• Why should it be mobile?
• iSchool
• Google Maps
• Alamo Drafthouse
• Paper prototyping & user evaluations on the spot
• Usability testing for mobiles is still new
• Lab testing often difficult past initial designs
• IA Deliverables
- Simple Site Maps
- Heavy user scenarios
- Icon & graphics design more important (if any)
Questions for Mobile IA work
• How do you navigate with much less space?
• Do all concepts/units of information have the
same weight in all situations?
• What does Web standard markup mean for
mobiles?
• Try it out: 1-800-GOOG-411
IA Re-Design
• How would you re-design a site for Mobile?
• iSchool Web page
• Alamo Drafthouse
• Google Maps
1. Sketch a design on a full page
2. Iterate and sketch on an index card
1.Repeat
2.Have a user scenario in mind
IA & Mobile for the Future
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“Smart Mobs” – Howard Rheingold
“Contextual Computing”
Invisible Computer – Don Norman
Good Old-Fashioned Future - Bruce Sterling
Industrial Design
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DoCoMo
Apple Knowledge Navigator
HP “Cooltown”
IBM Pervasive Computing
UbiComp
IEEE Spectrum
Japan