This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998 -- Laying out more technical usability detail than I did in yesterday's post, Jakob Neilson, usabilty guru, takes on the special case of the mobile web, distinct from the desktop web...
"Summary: Mobile phone users struggle mightily to use websites, even on high-end devices. To solve the problems, websites should provide special mobile versions."
Part of why where I'm working is called again mobile is just this issue of starting again, applying what's been learned in the last 5-10 years about interactive media on the web, but more importantly, translating it and transforming it (as well as trashing some of it) for the mobile world. One of the similarities/problems of both the web in 1998 and mobile in 2009 that Neilsen mentions is a fallback to old-media design.
"In the 1990s, many site designs mimicked good-looking print publications and offered weak interaction support. Today, sites are designed as, well, websites. More specifically, they're designed as desktop websites, and that's the wrong media form for mobile use; even on the best phones, driving the interaction is painful and simple designs are a must."
I guess it didn't take that long for the web to be considered "old media".
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