Darren Twiss

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mobile Context having recently been involved in designing various mobile products and applications.

So what is context? Well a definition I like is:

“the relevant constraints and unique opportunity of the communicative situation”.

Basically,

• Where, When, Why and How will my mobile application be used and by Who?
• What constraints does this place on the design?
• What opportunity does this context provide and how can I use this to my advantage?

Regardless of the mobile application, be it Mobile Web, a Handset Application, Messaging or devices that interact with mobiles,  I believe context will emerge as the most important design parameter. Traditional software and web-design hasn’t yet required this kind of consideration as the context of the user is generally known (i.e the user is normally seated, has a full screen and keyboard and uses a mouse for navigation).

Context and The Mobile Web

An example of Mobile Web Context is a airnz.mobi, the newly launched mobile website for Air New Zealand. Recently, I needed to find arrival details for my Wife’s flight so I could pick her up at the airport. I used my desktop browser to try and find these details and logged onto the full airnewzealand.co.nz website. I searched around (in a hurry) but couldn’t find them. I switched to my mobile as I left the house and visited their mobile site. The front page has a menu of which “Arrivals and Departures” is the first option. In fact the entire site only contains a subset of content, arranged in a way that is useful for people who are mobile or traveling. That is context in action.

Another great way of thinking about mobile context and user experience on the mobile web is Google’s Mobile User Experience Strategy (full article at Information Week)

Google breaks down mobile web users into 3 categories:

1. “Repetitive now”
2. “Bored now”
3. “Urgent now”

The “repetitive now” user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.

The “bored now” are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don’t offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.

The “urgent now” is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries.

My airport example fits in to “Urgent Now” category. The “urgent now” description also touches on the role of Location in context. That is something that I hope to share some thoughts on soon. (in the meantime checkout Musings of a mobile marketer’s thought on the topic of “Location Based Services - Are they all missing the point?”)

To conclude,  Context is a major design parameter. Designers must give consideration to Where, When, Why and How their application will be used and by who. For Mobile Web in particular, the site design and the content must give consideration to the user’s context. Simply miniaturizing a full desktop website without any thought to the purpose of a mobile site is in my opinion, a waste of time.