Mobile Manners

Five simple ways to be nicer to your mobile users.

Transcript

1. Ryan Swarts Sr. Usability Architect, Enterprise Holdings, Inc. Mobile Manners Five simple ways to be nicer to your mobile users. My Comments!
2. Mobile Manners • Ryan Swarts • Saint Louis, Mo. Manners “Unenforced standards of conduct which demonstrate that a person is proper, caring, non-grouchy, polite, and refined.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manners Having good mobile manners means showing respect for your users. By doing these things, we can make them more successful and happier (which will lead to more loyalty).
3. Mobile Manners • Ryan Swarts • Saint Louis, Mo. Things we can do to be nicer. 1. Show the way. 2. Be consistent. 3. Help out. 4. Do one thing at a time. 5. Lose the some buttons.
4. Mobile Manners • Ryan Swarts • Saint Louis, Mo. Show the way. The mobile screen is small. We can save room by hiding things, but be sure to let users know where they are. We follow patterns but there is no such thing as a totally standard interface, especially because all of the new rules are being written as we speak. Help users along by showing them.
5. Show the way. Help new users with hints on interacting with the app or highlight key features like YP.com and Groupon do here.
6. Show the way. Google Chrome highlights key areas when installing and also includes a tour, like the real estate app Trulia does.
7. Mobile Manners • Ryan Swarts • Saint Louis, Mo. Be consistent. Controls that look similar should work the same way. Let’s create consistent user interfaces that give people confidence. Being consistent puts users in control, which makes them more comfortable and helps them accomplish their goals. Consistency cuts down on confusion. It’s empowering.
8. Be consistent. The standard share icon in Apple’s iOS opens a list of options like the one on the right. This is pretty consistent across the system.
9. Be consistent. But Apple’s own photo app breaks this convention. Want to add or remove a photo? Click the share icon. Both the function and the look of what comes up breaks the expectation. Did I do something wrong?
10. Be consistent. Major League Baseball’s app isn’t consistent in how it shows which team is active. When listening to a game and looking at a game's box score, the highlighted team is treated oppositely. It'll only take a second for users to figure out, but you've broken their trust. It's something they shouldn't have to think about.
11. Mobile Manners • Ryan Swarts • Saint Louis, Mo. Help out. We can save users time by doing some jobs for them. If we have access to their location, why ask them to enter it? Phones are smart enough today to take care of a lot of our work. Let’s take advantage of that.
12. Help out. Avis and many other apps populate search results as you type. Google anticipates that I’m entering the wrong kind of password and tells me before I even submit.
13. Help out. Apple suggests a category name when grouping apps. ATT knows you may not be sure which login to use and gives you some hints. The new Google Chrome app provides common dedicated buttons up-front on this screen when you need them.
14. Mobile Manners • Ryan Swarts • Saint Louis, Mo. Do one thing at a time. Good mobile experiences are focused. Let’s not ask users to do everything at once. By breaking things up, we can simplify things. There’s isn’t a lot of room on most mobile devices. We can make things easier by sometimes breaking up actions into their specific parts. A tap isn’t the same thing as a click.
15. Do one thing at a time. The YP.com app gives space to the most important item (price) and hides the rest behind a simple tap. It’s a concept called progressive disclosure. Let users decide what they want.
16. Do one thing at a time. More steps aren’t necessarily a bad thing. The “more clicks are evil” mantra came about at a time when page loads were slow. Airbnb simplifies the two-part date selection by breaking it up into two steps. It’s simple and quick. There’s no guesswork and nothing new to learn (and remember).
17. Mobile Manners • Ryan Swarts • Saint Louis, Mo. Lose the some buttons. Mobile real estate is expensive. Where it makes sense, let the content itself be the control. For the past 20-30 years our digital spaces have been Graphical User Interface (GUI) worlds. We’re now transitioning toward Natural User Interfaces (NUI) where we interact with content directly.
18. Lose the some buttons. Gestures via: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1071 Rather than moving screens or opening items with buttons and controls, as these examples show we can interact with the content itself just by touching it.
19. Lose the some buttons. Or, like the IA Writer app. Forget about “File...Open.” Just touch the content to start editing it. Like you would with a sheet of real-life paper.
20. Mobile Manners • Ryan Swarts • Saint Louis, Mo. Thanks! Ryan Swarts Sr. Usability Architect, Enterprise Holdings, Inc.