Category: Mobile

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Mobile communication in the developing world – a design challenge

Neil Clavin has written the latest contribution in the ongoing series of emerging markets articles that are on a weekly basis being published Vodafone Receiver’s magazine.
In his paper for receiver Clavin argues that for better design, we must first of all understand different user needs around the world. The prime design challenges he sees are: richer communication, social tools and reconfigurable interfaces.

“Current mobile interfaces and services are not designed for the developing regions of the world – many users have problems reading and writing, some services are not relevant and native languages not always supported. Many users complete only the basic functions of dialling a number or answering an incoming call.” […]

“The current mobile experience is designed for a literate section of the world who can expect interfaces in their native language. Another section of users have problems navigating text-based interfaces and need to reinforce links with the families they have left behind.

For successful mobile experience design we must provide alternative interfaces, social tools and better native language support. The mobile experience for developing regions will be rich with audio-visual communication, genuinely useful social networks and reconfigurable interfaces.

Designing for these user needs creates better experiences also for advanced countries. Simpler audio-visual interfaces will benefit children, elderly people and users with learning difficulties. Social networks will mature from hipster hangouts into tools for achieving meaningful and progressive goals. Touchscreen devices will become cheap enough for anyone to afford and the languages of cosmopolitan populations fully supported.”

Neil Clavin is a design manager for Vodafone Group User Experience. He worked as a user experience designer for BBC New Media & Technology and as a research assistant for Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art, London, before joining the Vodafone User Experience Concept Development Team based in Düsseldorf, Germany. There, he leads concept design for mobile communication, information and entertainment experiences.

Read here

vivek

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My article on Adobe DevNet: Designing for mobile devices using Fireworks CS4 beta

Designing for mobile devices using Fireworks CS4 beta

My another article published on Adobe Devnet “Designing for mobile devices using Fireworks CS4 beta”. This Article is on importance of designing for mobile devices and why its so much important to think on that 🙂

“The visual elements that comprise the user experience on mobile devices are themselves becoming more important as devices become more complex and users become more adept. I believe there is a great opportunity at this time to help shape the future of user interfaces on handheld devices and promote intuitive interaction as a standard. Making something beautiful, as well as functional, will result in an application that is useful and offers a more interesting and compelling experience for consumers.”

“Put simply: small is beautiful. When interface design effortlessly fulfils the purpose of an application while also enhancing its aesthetic, there is a greater chance that the end product will be successful. Users are naturally more drawn towards an application that they view as enjoyable and engaging.”

i2fly-designing for mobile devices

From Pre planning to final application even the smallest design elements is very important to place.

I use Fireworks CS4 beta almost exclusively on every project I create for mobile devices. It is my first choice because I find it to be much more user friendly in terms of creating graphics and exporting files to a wide variety of formats. Additionally, the integration between Fireworks CS4 beta and Adobe Flash is just fantastic. This article provides real-world considerations and tips for creating assets for your mobile development projects using Fireworks CS4 beta.

You can read this article in following below links

Designing for mobile devices using Fireworks CS4

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/design_mobile_devices.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/

As usual love to know your feelings. Feel free to post your comments/suggestions/views anything. Curious to know about it 🙂 .

vivek

Porting Flash Lite content to the Apple Iphone:b.Tween

Via Thomas Joos , This week they released Rock Werchter Mobile Guide, a music festival application in Adobe Flash lite. “The cool part is that for the first time in the mobile history we ported our Flash Lite Project to the iphone/ipod touch, taking advantage of all the oppurtunities the iphone UI has to offer. He used b.Tween: an eyeGT FRAMEWORK technology to make this work 🙂Few advantages:

  • The code that uses the framework is compiled to machine code, that means several orders of magnitude faster than the ActionScript equivalent (AS3 in Flash 9 is JIT compiled but we are talking about mobile platforms here where there is no AS3 and no JIT compilation, for the moment at least)
  • Parts of the code that are unused are left out the final compiled application, so size and time to transmit/load are reduced to the minimum
  • Native code can access ANY feature of the hosting platform: wants Bluetooth? Wants to process received SMS? Wants to read the phone book? All possible from native applications not so from a player based one.

Cool, read the complete process to how to Port Flash Lite content to Apple Iphone.

Other blog news

Excellant information as collected from Krvishal, i2fly

vivek

Conversation with Raphael Grignani of Nokia Design about Homegrown

Nokia homegrown

An Intresting interview with Raphael Grignani of Nokia Design about Homegrown project. Must read to know about new design thinking on sustainability.

Rachel Hinman, mobile design strategist at Adaptive Path, has conducted an interview with Raphael Grignani of Nokia Design about “Homegrown”, a long term research project looking at how Nokia can help people make more sustainable choices.

mobile_homegrown_nokia

“With Remade, Andrew Gartrell (Homegrown project lead and Remade father) pushed design beyond skin deep aesthetics. He considered covers, key mats, and displays but also engine, connectors, and other components. We discovered that a typical mobile phone contains around 44 of the 117 elements currently known to science. Andrew’s approach was to de-construct everything and rebuild it from scratch using recycled materials and sustainable technologies — from the inside out.

mobile_homegrown_energy_saving_concept

50% of a phone’s energy demand is backlighting.

mobile_homegrown_people

Energy saving graphics “concept”

Another aspect of Homegrown that is really interesting is the work we did around prototyping. Andrew designed in CAD over 100 versions of Remade and prototyped 36 — which could be considered obsessive — but it was through that constant consideration and iteration that we were able to arrive at something that was great.

mobile_homegrown_unplugged_charger

At present, phone chargers waste 300mW of standby power when left unplugged.

Prototyping allowed us to confront our designs — asking ourselves, “Is this the best we can do? What can we reduce? Have we found the essence? What can we make better or what can we make differently?” We questioned every bit of the concepts throughout the prototyping process. Now we can explain every bit of the design; we can rationalize every aspect of it.”

Read interview

Read press release “Nokia”

vivek

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Forum Nokia 2008 Code Camp Competition: Flash lite winners announced

Forum Nokia 2008 Code Camp Competition

Forum Nokia has announced the winners of the 2008 Code Camp Competition. The contest aimed at inspiring Forum Nokia Code Camp attendees to build Web Runtime (WRT) widgets and Flash lite applications.

The Winners are:

Grand Prizes
Flash: CityLite by MSCorp of Coral Springs, Florida. A mobile guide to night life, restaurants, and entertainment venues in Latin American cities.

WRT: Flickret from Mark Caunter of the U.K. A mashup that combines the Flickr photo-sharing application with MapQuest APIs to let users look for and get directions to places of interest.

Europe/Middle East/Africa
Flash: Kuneri Easy Vote from Kuneri of Oulu, Finland. One-button mobile voting lets users vote by mobile phone call, text message, or Web service.
WRT: Flickret from Mark Caunter of the U.K.

Americas
Flash: CityLite by MSCorp.
WRT: Fon11 by Mo’Blast of Berkeley, California. A mobile social-networking utility that lets users share their whereabouts with friends and family and determine if their contacts are nearby.

Asia-Pacific
Flash: WIND from Fieldsystem. This screen saver displays an image of a propeller turning in the wind. If the mobile signal is strong, the propeller spins quickly; if the signal weakens, the propeller spins more slowly. Also, the screen saver’s background scenery changes throughout the day.
WRT: Nutrition from Singapore Polytechnic. This widget is used for calculating your BMI and also calories burned on a daily basis, and it can help the user to check typical food nutrition in order to maintain a healthy life style.

China
WRT: Push To Speak from Beijing Motech Technology. This mobile travel guide to China helps tourists search for restaurants, places of interest, streets and more. Also, when the user clicks a word, the software “speaks” the word in Chinese, a useful feature for asking directions and instructing taxi drivers. The latest version includes information relating to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Congratulation to all winners 🙂

vivek

In Japan, Cellphones Have Become Too Complex to Use

japan mobile life

An interesting short report via Wired that people in Japan feel that phone become too complex with the features they have it. Japan may be in a culture of spec sheets. Where consumers go to electronics stores to buy a cellphone, they frequently line up the specifications side by side to compare them before deciding which one to buy. Some of the famous Japanese mobile companies are NTT DoCoMo, KDDI,  SoftBank and they make 5 % of global mobile phone sales, and rest all of those sales are just domestic.

  • Japanese handsets have become prime examples of feature creep gone mad. In many cases, phones in Japan are far too complex for users to master.
  • “There are tons of buttons, and different combinations or lengths of time yield different results,'” says Koh Aoki, an engineer who lives in Tokyo.
  • Experimenting with different key combinations in search of new features is “good for killing time during a long commute,” Aoki says, “but it’s definitely not elegant.”
  • Japan has long been famous for its advanced cellphones with sci-fi features like location tracking, mobile credit card payment and live TV. These handsets have been the envy of consumers in the United States, where cell technology has trailed an estimated five years or more. But while many phones would do Captain Kirk proud, most of the features are hard to use or not used at all.
  • “Some people care about quality, but first and foremost it’s about the features,” says Nobi Hayashi, a journalist and author of Steve Jobs: The Greatest Creative Director. He estimates that the average person only uses 5 to 10 percent of the functions available on their handsets.

The most important thing for any mobile company whether it is a product or services, is to provide unique user experience to end users.”Cellphones are now a days becomes an integral part of life “People are always using them and holding them, even in the middle of a meal anytime anywhere”.

vivek

Qualcomm and Adobe Flash Collaborate to Empower Developer Ecosystems With BREW Mobile Platform

blog_qc_adobe.jpg

Qualcomm and Adobe announced the BREW® Mobile Platform with integrated Adobe Flash® technology and new platform features. BREW Mobile Platform, which leverages Qualcomm’s widely deployed BREW Client software, greatly expands the capabilities for developers and enables them to create rich applications and Web content in Adobe Flash for the BREW environment. The software will fully integrate and deliver Adobe Flash technology to mass market handset devices. By combining the strengths of both BREW and Flash technologies, BREW Mobile Platform brings the mobile application and Web content development communities together, setting a new standard for mass market handset platforms.

The differences between the Flash Lite extension model and the BREW Mobile Platform are:

  • Adobe Flash technology will be directly integrated into the platform, meaning no per/device per/carrier certification will be required
  • BREW developers will be able to use existing native BREW API interfaces directly with Flash via ActionScript – so Flash can become the presentation layer
  • The BREW Mobile Platform will be shipping on all mass market BREW handsets worldwide – for all BREW carriers

Great News and increasing wide areas for Adobe Flashlite developers 🙂

Read more
Indepth thoughts via Bill perry

vivek

SingTel launches mio TV on Mobile service using Adobe Flash Lite technology

mio TV on Mobil

It’s great news coming around the world using Adobe Flash Lite technology specially in terms of on demand videos entertainment industry straight to your pocket mobile devices.

Recently Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) launches mio TV on Mobile service using Adobe Flash Lite technology and Nokia Siemens Networks’ Mobile TV streaming solution. SingTel is the first operator in Singapore and one of the first in Asia Pacific to launch a mobile TV client with true TV viewing experience on mobile phones.

“mio TV has revolutionised the way people watch TV, and the mio TV on Mobile service provides our customers with yet another convenient medium to expand their viewing options,” said Mr Wong Soon Nam, SingTel’s Vice President of Consumer Marketing.

“With Singapore’s high mobile penetration rate and SingTel’s customer base of over 2.5 million mobile users, the largest in Singapore, it makes sense to offer compelling content on our mobile platform so that Singaporeans have access to their favourite mio TV content wherever they may be.”

Expected Launching: July 2008
Price:  $6 per month for unlimited viewing of the live channels. Ondemand price $0.50 per clip.

Read more about mio TV here

vivek

Nokia’s London design event: listen podcast from the UI design team

nokia london design event

Just found this podcast via core 77 of Nokia’s recent London design event which offering a curtainpeek at their design process, ethnographic wanderings, sustainability initiatives, and plans for the future. Nokia has over 300 designers worldwide, and ships over 1.2 million products everyday. So it’s really keen to know what their designers intake for their creative food 😀

Listen now(31min.) | iTunes

vivek

Chunghwa Telecom launches Channel Me, powered by Adobe Flash Cast.

Chunghwa Telecom-Flash Cast service

Via Mark Doherty,  Yesterday in Taiwan Chunghwa Telecom launched their new Channel Me service, powered by Flash Cast. The service launches with some fantastic looking channels, some of which you can play with, see here (press the yellow button). Channels include news, weather, sports, travel, dining out amongst others. The channels look fantastic and really fit the vision of rich and engaging experiences.

The service is supported on Series 60 and Windows Mobile devices from the launch include the stunning HTC Diamond.

vivek

BREW 2008: with interesting session on adobe flash lite

BREW 2008 Conference

The BREW 2008 Conference about to begin in three weeks. And you can’t afford to miss a minute. With an expanded program lineup and our most global group of participants to date, this year’s event promises to be filled with everything you need to push your business to the next level. So tap into the power of BREW experts 🙂 and enjoy with over 90 sessions spanning the conference.

Conference: BREW 2008
Time: May 28 – 30, 2008
Place: Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego, CA

Click here for complete session details

It include very exciting Flash lite session:

TECH-503 – Beyond Content: the Power of Flash® Liteâ„¢ for Core UIs
BREW®’s Flash Lite Extension enables customization at the core UI level, beyond themes and screensavers. Come learn how Flash Lite’s abstraction allows rapid development opportunities.
This session covers:
1. Flash Lite’s extensive personalization opportunities
2. Access to core BREW functions
3. Benefits versus other UI technologies

Speaker: Christian Robertson, Technical Evangelist, Punchcut

I hope to see recording of this session, if possible as usual design is something which always passionate me 🙂

vivek