When he’s asked whether designers should target apps or mobile Web first, designer Steven Hoober says mobile Web.
“It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s discoverable, it’s got no publication process, and (it can be used) for analytics,” he says.
Steven, who co-authored Designing Mobile Interfaces, was one of six presenters at the second annual Float Mobile Learning Symposium, held in conjunction with Techweek in Chicago on Monday, July 25.
Float’s Jeff Tillett caught up with Steven in the hallway leading to the brand-new tech startup incubator 1871 inside the Merchandise Mart to discuss the most common mistake designers make when approaching a mobile project, the benefits of mobile Web, and what people should plan for on a project.
“Plan the whole project like you do with any big, serious project,” Steven says. “If you are gonna build something that people are gonna rely on… think about data security and long-term storage and expanding out to other platforms and how it works on the desktop Web browser or any place like that.”
Steven advocates thinking about everything when designing – voice, SMS, even paper. During his presentation, he shared a clever anecdote. While en route to Chicago for the Symposium, Steven stayed overnight in a hotel. Someone who worked at the hotel had slid the bill under his door. The bill – generated from a computer system – had his room number written in pen on the back of it. Steven said this was a hack around the system hotel employees had to use, and parlayed it into an opportunity to think about how the design over that system could be improved.
“What about the system you’re building is so dumb that people will not even bother hacking around it (so that) they’ll just use a competitor’s system?”
Steven’s session can be seen in full below.
