This week UXmatters published another article I've been slowly working on for a while, Mobile UX Design Approaches: Workshops. While it's ostensibly about running design workshops, much of my initial ranting is against badly done Lean and Agile and things it has led to like the GV Design Sprint. This is pure evil in my book, and it's even necessary.
This is probably the most important bit of research that I've seen in years: The Genetics of Motion Sickness The title really buried the lede there. I'll help: Motion sickness effects about 1/3 of the population. One third! A genome-wide study identifies the exact 35 genetic variations and gave us that number. Big damned deal here. Motion effects and AR/VR cannot be used (may even be disabling) to around 1/3rd of the total population! That means don't plan on an AR/VR world, stop it with parallax scrolling, no more auto-playing video or animated GIFs, etc. etc.
Other articles I think you should read, mostly with my own summary or commentary, but this time a tiny bit ordered and grouped. A little:
Accessibility Guidelines Sadly, a bit messy and not consolidated enough. Just a menu of options from various (referenced) sources. But, it's a checklist and there are sources so that is sometimes useful.
Capture Attention with Updated Features for Video Ads That's the article title, but the data is what you want: 80% of mobile viewers turn off audio on Facebook videos! No, not turning off the video, but watching with no audio. Captioning is becoming critical. 80% of the population is not deaf, but context matters, so here is another case of "accessibility" features being useful for everyone. Add captioning. And don't auto-play videos, too!
All those have been added to the A11y deck, but I haven't actually re-narrated, so it's not in the video version. If you need it to show off or something, remind me and I'll update those slides in the video, also.
How This Massive Structure in the Oregon Desert Keeps Facebook Running Best general overview of a server farm I've seen in a while, plus some really nice bits about how it's not one, but part of the chain. You know I love it when they say resilience! Also the the iPhone trays. If you don't understand what they are doing, or why you dream of being able to do that at work, ask me to explain more.
http://fr.slideshare.net/PersonaeUserLab/smartphone-street-observer-1er-baromtre-dobservation-des-usages-mobiles-saison-3 Waiting for english one, but should be more good data to add to the touch stuff.
Ericsson Mobility Report This is a regular report so if you love it, figure out how to sign up for it or something. This time, some of the good stuff: around 55% of world on smartphones. That does mean 45% on featurephones but the tide is turning. Most people are on 3G or worse, to which I always ask: what are you doing about it? Balloons and satellites aren't needed, just better optimized products. Stop sending so much data. Plan for poor networks from the start.
Smartphones Overtake Computers as Top E-Commerce Traffic Source Likewise, who do you know who is designing for "the web" and hasn't gotten to "mobile" that much? They are so, so wrong. There's no area I can think of where desktop dominates anymore. Now the old trope of research on mobile, buy on desktop has gone away.
The Most Popular Product of All Time You may have heard that with the iPhone selling their billionth device, someone did some math and decided it is the most popular thing ever. Naturally, fanboi alert: That's only true for certain values of popular, thing, and ever. Lest you still be impressed by the number, there are 1.4 billion active Android devices. And that count is by visits to the Play store in some period. A lot of devices (esp in China) never visit for complex reasons, so it's more than that.
An Ode To The Death Of The Platform Wars … And What Comes Next Too much to quote from this. Basically, and overview of the platform wars that led to Android dominance, iOS as... well, as Mac OS, a perfectly good small-share alternative. If you didn't live through this, read it. Future musings are interesting but may or may not be true.
Google vs. Facebook – Almost the final frontier Great data on indian internet use, but mostly good political background; our internet overlords aren't altrustic, at all.
Is this my interface or yours? A piece about perspective Officially about voice, whether you call the stuff "my" or "your" but there's a lot of philosophical thinking about the ownership of digital truth there. I think tone is not just content but structure so this isn't something opinion based or which the team votes on, but is intrinsic to your product. Also see other links in the comments for some good discussions.
Looks Can Kill: The Deadly Results of Flawed Design Remember the Therac? Classic case study in why UX matters. Well, we're sorta killing people all the time now due to design. This goes outside of digital, but if you want to stick to that I bring up the NTSB accident reports, where every fifth one is someone misreading a digital control panel and blowing up a factory or driving a plane into the ground.
Obsolesced: The Rise and Fall of the Gopher Protocol Last time I covered the history of the URL, and this time it's sort of an alternative almost what-if history of the Web in general. These are all very interesting so you understand why things are the way they are. But also, because we tend to assume the good bubbles to the top and any good idea is a foregone conclusion. Not true. There's a lot of politics, money, time, and luck behind success. Predicting the future is hard.
British Airways stops musician from flying with cello as 'it didn't have a visa' Let's have a funny one. Read the article. Giggle. Okay, what went wrong? Not sociologically or politically, but what went wrong with systems? We don't know for sure, but we can guess. The website she booked through required her to give a name to each ticketed "passenger." So she did. The BA system requires each passenger to have a visa. Impasse! Solving this is not just on one system, but both, and all. Edge cases need to be dealt with, and we're in a bad trend of simplifying by removing features instead of designing well. Since it's possible to buy a ticket for a seat to put a not-person there, that should be an option. An obscure, hard-to-find option, but one anyway. And people who mis-allocate in one part of the process, should not be disallowed from fixing it later on. Now, go back and think what you are doing to the systems you design. Can this happen to you?
'Baby Simulator' Programs May Make Teen Girls More Likely to Become Pregnant, Study Finds And let's finish off with one that's not about digital product design at all. Just like DARE results in more kids taking drugs and girls who participate in purity ring programs get pregnant more, the scared-straight style baby simulators don't just not work, but have the opposite effect intended. Gut instinct is no way to run anything, as we see over and over again. Test. Data can be inconvenient, but it doesn't lie.
For a complete index of the monthly newsletters, see http://4ourth.com/wiki/Newsletter
To sign up for 4ourth Mobile Online Training, visit http://4ourth.com/Training/