First, I went over the general trends and numbers of what’s going on in the mobile space – nothing in my opinion moves faster, or changes more frequently. It hard to keep-up, and new stats come out everyday.

To start here’s my presentation (hosted on SlideShare), you can download the PDF here, or listen to the podcast.

The first step (after learning a bit about mobile in general) is determining what type of mobile project you have:

• Mobile First
• Content
• Application or ecommerce
• Entertainment

Each of these have specific properties that will help inform your strategy. As an example, if you’re creating a Mobile First product – you’re going to need to target multiple devices, starting with one of the dominate mobile OSes: iPhone or Android. You’re going to most likely go native, as your project being mobile specific will need access to many of the phones core functionality. That, vs a content site with a well established .com – who would want to go with something like a mobile formatted website as a companion to the desktop site.

The second step is to get into the design process, which has lots of factors:

• What parts of your existing site need to go mobile? (if you have an existing site…)
• Who are your mobile users?
• What devices are they using?
• How do you design for mobile?
• What devices do you need to focus on?
• What technologies do you use?

I try to answer all these, and almost like a decision tree, you usually come out with a solid plan to move forward.

At the end of the presentation I go over a number of upcoming trends surrounding mobile. I’f you’re looking to keep up with mobile trends, I’ve created a twitter account that posts all the mobile related articles I’m currently reading: @mobilefeeds

Luke W. (www.lukew.com) attended my talk, and posted a recap - IA Summit: The Mobile Question – and boxesandarrows just posted the podcasts, you can download my presentation’s podcast here.

My slides make a bit more sense with me talking to them ;-) so I’d like to see everyone in the Dallas, TX area come see me at Big (D)esign on Saturday, May 29th – and if you’re getting ready for a mobile project, see me at the conference for some one-on-one.

The thing about mobile is that it’s always changing. Today as I write this on a plane with my iPad (which just came out this past weekend) i’m wondering about the iphone event apple is putting on later today and how that will effect my presentation. Hopefully not much :-) Either way, I’m ready for tomorrow and interested to hear stories from all the UX professionals at the IA Summit.

In my presentation I have a snapshot of the current mobile space (side note: whenever I try to type “c” I try to use my fingernail, which doesn’t work on a touch screen…) and then I walk through a way to help you and your team to come up with a mobile plan. A plan that’s specific to your experience, users, and technology.

Mobile has been a passion of mine for a long time. I’ve had Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Palm, Blackberry, Nokia, Sony, iPods, etc… And never until I tried an iPhone did someone get it right, a light and fast experience that responds like an extension of your arm.

I’m not fully a iPhone fanboy – I really like a lot of the AI (After iPhone) devices. I’ve played with Android, and Palm Pre devices – all really nice, in fact some better than the iPhone in some ways. This “age” of mobile is just exciting! I don’t think since the first GUI devices have we seen so many new human-computer interactions developed in such a short time.

As i’ve mentioned before, as technology becomes smaller and cheaper – talking, connected, interactive, disposable, video cereal boxes here we come!

If you’re here at the IA Summit, I hope you stop by to discuss mobile design and development with me!

Last week me and Stephen Thomas presented to our company’s UXC Luncheon. This is a quarterly event open to all the different User Experience groups in the company. Our topic was upcoming trends in Design and technology. This is actually the fifth time I’ve presented a presentation like this one, starting back in 2005. While some trends are still developing, there are some new and interesting things that will shape the years to come.

This year we hit on 23 different topics – ranging from the less practical interactive holograms, to something we’re enjoying today – location based gaming.

Due to the nature of many of these new technologies, we included a lot of videos this year – I tried to include a link to most of them.

So here it is – 2010 and Beyond:

Some notes – one of the biggest trends which I missed until this year was Augmented Reality and all it’s many flavors. This seemed to be one of the biggest trends coming in the next year. Once Apple releases it’s 3.1 update for the iPhone we should see a flood of these types of apps hit the app store, and quickly gain wide adoption.

Some topics like the command line, twitter, and location were back with updates for 2009. And although RFID has been around for a while, this is the first time the phrase “Internet of Things” appeared in my presentations.

We had a longer list then the 23 we got to – this took us about 1 1/2 hours to get through – we’ll save those for next time!

Please comment if you feel we left something out – or thought something shouldn’t have been included. See you next time!

Big (D)esign has come and gone. I was fortunate to be part of the planning team that put this successful (yes, I can now call it that now ;-) conference. Over the past months, I was able to see behind the scenes of the conference: event planning, sponsorship, contacting speakers, scheduling, logistics – and got to play a part in many of these activities. It was great to see people from UPA, Dallas Refresh, and IxDA (among others) come together to put this together – that and the 500+ people who ended up attending!

In the past Dallas had been home to a couple of User Experience conference, we’ve had Wemaster Jam, Design Thinking, and Forrester had a Customer Experience Forum here last year. But none of these were happening in 2009. While Dallas may not have any UX focused conferences, we have an abundance of local clubs. I really mean abundance… Depending on what you’re interested in, you could literally go to a meeting about every night.

Dallas Refresh, UPA, IxDA, DSVC, AIGA, Adobe, Microsoft, Java, Ruby, Facebook Dev Garage, Mobile Monday, iPhone Dev, Social Media Club, the list could go on and on. That’s not counting special community events, like DevHouse, HackDay, BarCamp, etc…

Dallas really does have a really good, supportive community of Designers, Developers, Usability Professionals, and many others in User Experience related fields.

If you missed Big (D)esign, here’s a quick video I put together to learn a little more:

Big (D)esign 2009 from Jeremy Johnson on Vimeo.

And of course we had an afterparty ;-)

Big (D)esign After Party from Jeremy Johnson on Vimeo.

If you want even more! Here are some photo galleries on Flickr:

• My photos
• T. Scott’s sketching
• Carissa’s photos

I hope if you’re in the Dallas area, that you join in and become part of the community, join a club, attend a meeting, volunteer, share your knowledge, and continue to watch our community grow!

Last month I gave a talk here at our Customer Experience University about what I call “Emerging Interface Patterns”. Very often we get buried in day-to-day work and miss out on new experiences, new things that are going on in interaction design just pass us by. This is tragic for those who don’t take the time to stop smell the pixels ;-) Everyone should be paying attention because these new experiences are great creative stimulus for innovative ideas.

In the below presentation I try to run the gamut of what’s new in User Experience, and Interaction Design – scouting ahead for what’s changing the landscape. As someone who is passionate about these topics, I love discovering new interaction patterns, and better ways to do something that was thought adequate before. And by consuming all these new patterns, you can blend them into current projects, and even synthesize something new.

What’s going on in Game Design? What are some of the newest UI trends? How is information design contributing to the interaction design practice? How are we bringing the real world into applications? These are just some of the questions I explore below:

Download PDF

At the end of the presentation I featured the recently revealed Adaptive Path Aurora concept “browser”. I was actually mostly done with this presentation when Aurora was revealed, and thought it was the perfect closing to my presentation. Why? Because it is the product of many of these emerging patterns we see in other areas of product and interaction design. You could say the design is somewhat reminiscent of the Sugar UI in the OLPC computer, or that having things fade away into the distance is bringing the real world into the experience. The way you can quickly type in a search, or the contextual menu that pops-up to reveal more actions. These are all things we’ve seen before, just not together in this new and innovative idea.

While you could of lived in a cave for the past couple of years and had the same ideas, I theorize that by observing these trends you are “building on the shoulders of giants” and can better combine, iterate, test, and innovate.

I did want to mention a combination I’ve had in my head for awhile :-) on page 30 I have a shot of the Prius fuel consumption screen. I think by using game design and comparing this to other drivers (not just Prius, but all cars) people would instinctively want to “win” by having the best gas mileage. If we could get a mandate for all car companies to include a version of this, with a way to transmit “scores” to a central database, I think we could be off foreign oil in no time! The elevator pitch would be “It’s like Nike+ for fuel consumption” ;-)

via: http://flickr.com/photos/88262773@N00/2525850407

Last, things change fast. Since presenting this we’ve seen new patterns in Google’s Chrome browser, and Mozilla’s Ubiquity. Remember to keep up, stay informed, and absorb as much as you can.

Starting in 2005 when returning from SXSWi a coworker and I would put together a trends presentation talking about up-and-coming technologies, patterns, websites, etc… and 2008 is no different. The presentations keep getting longer and longer, as innovation keeps building on the previous year, moving faster and faster. This year my co-presenter was Dustin Askins of Travelocity, and we gave the presentation internally to our UX groups, and just this week at the Dallas UPA Chapter.

Why SXSWi? I think it’s really good for getting a pulse of what’s going on in the User Experience field. You get to meet with a wide verity of people from different practices, and hear from some of the top web professionals. An while there are many great conferences (like UIE, IA Summit, UX Week, etc…) SXSWi is consistent on it’s wide ranging topics (great for “T-Shaped” People).

When looking at trends across technology, marketing, UX, and business you start to see patterns of what the leaders in their respective groups are expecting for 2008 and beyond. Things I keep seeing rise to the top: Mobile, Open Platforms, Data Control, Mixing Virtual and Reality, Semantic Web, Interoperability, and Location Based tools (see slide 33). None of these are unexpected, I sure we’d all agree these are hot items that will effect multiple areas.

I’ve never posted these presentations before, so I have 2005, 2006, and 2007 to post along with 2008. So if you’re new to the web and User Experience, now is your chance to catch up on a couple years worth of knowledge.

So say hello to 2008:

| View | Upload your own

2007 On SlideShare

2006 On SlideShare

2005 On SlideShare

I also have most of this presentation in a podcast (I think my recorder battery went dead…), so listen in. Hopefully I will continue to keep this trend of my own, it’s always interesting to look back…

[EDIT 05/12/08]
Here’s some video from our UPA talk:

Me & Dustin speaking @ Dallas UPA from Jeremy Johnson on Vimeo.

Awhile back (also known as 2 months ago) Stephen posted about his bookstack. What he was reading, referencing and scanning. He tagged me to share my bookstack, and I was embarrassed with my lack of current books. But, with Christmas here, I actually have a couple of non-digital things in my bookstack.

First, I’d like to talk about what I do spend my time on. Besides work and family my “consuming media” time is divided between the following: movies, RSS feeds (iphone), online articles, Forrester reports, Xbox 360 (hellojeremy), Wii (4881 7550 0253 9687), and TV Shows. This does not count “creating” activities, like photo editing, etc…

That’s a lot of media to split between the time Owen goes to bed, and the time I go to bed. Were do books fit into today’s media soaked society? I am by no means anti-books, but I’m sure the argument has been made that books are an outdated way to interact with a story, or to learn about a subject. Blasphemy you say? Maybe. I read to my son as much as he’ll listen, and enjoy the personal interactivity over a TV show. Before Owen I used to read every night, now as a parent I just pass out ;-)

But enough about me – you’re here for the books!

Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee

I heard the author recently on NPR and it sounded like a great book. I’ve always had a soft spot for inside stories about companies, workers, and the culture (or lack of) they have.

Option$: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody

I’m a Apple fanboy, what can I say. And I didn’t really follow this when it happened, so I thought it was time to dig in.

The Plenitude: Creativity, Innovation, and Making Stuff (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)

When John Maeda came to Sabre, I was impressed & inspired with his speech. This book is in the same series as John’s “Simplicity” – and sounds like a good read.

The Star Wars Vault: Thirty Years of Treasures from the Lucasfilm Archives

This was a surprise from my parents. A extremely detailed account of the making of and culture that surrounded Star Wars, with replicas of old and rare memorabilia. Very cool.

So, I also threw my iPhone and Xbox 360 controller into the photo to show where my “media consumption” time has shifted to. On my iPhone I use Google Reader and I have my custom tailored news feed that I read constantly. On the Xbox I have queued up: BioShock, Assassins Creed, and Orange Box.

So that’s my bookstack. Hope you enjoyed it. What are you reading?

I’ll be speaking to the Refresh Dallas group about the Mobile Web this Thursday (10/11) at IMC2. Over the past year I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with a couple different mobile projects, and in the process have learned a great deal about the mobile space. I’ve had to evangelize XHTML-MP, figure out how to test on mobile devices, and give overviews of mobile technology to an assortment of internal teams. So I figured it was time to share the wealth. My goal with this presentation is to help other designers and developers move to the small screen, and create a great mobile experience.

Here is the “official” description:

Jeremy Johnson presents: The Mobile Web

Ready to move to the small screen? How does designing and developing for mobile differ from a traditional desktop experience? How do you architect an experience that is contextually sensitive to both time and location? We’ll discuss these questions and more while demonstrating how you can create a great mobile experience.

Jeremy will also give a behind-the-scenes look at a recently developed WAP 2.0 site, and a preview of a new iPhone application.

Buzz words included: XHTML-MP, WAP 2.0, iPhone, Ajax, SMS, Widgets, Mobile Research, and more! ;-)

Also, I’ve heard the IMC2 offices are pretty cool, so I’m looking forward to checking them out – here is the address:

12404 Park Central, Suite 400, Dallas, Texas 75251 Google Map Link
It will be in the Sun Room, on the 4th floor, on the North side.

I hope you can attend, I’ll be ready to answer your questions and hopefully spark some discussion about mobile devices.

Thanks!

SXSWi has come and gone again, this was my fourth time to attend and it just keeps getting bigger every year. When I first visited in 2003 (or was it 2002?) Bruce Sterling was still throwing SXSWi parties at his home and FROG Design hosted everyone in their office, unfortunately that doesn’t really scale to the size of the conference today. But, the panels were as diverse and interesting as ever – and I came back with the following brain-dump:

(note to readers, I tend to take notes in bullet-point format, which is reflected below)

Emerging Social and Technology Trends

(More detailed notes here)

• Check out: http://outside.in/
• Check out: http://www.indie911.com/
• The age of sharing your information publicly is here to stay, it’s normal for “kids” – they wonder why you are not blogging what you had for lunch
• Room to add more control, maybe you only connect with people you’ve met with in real life (RFID to Linkedin?)
• In india you can send an email to a post address, and a post to an email address

Getting to Consistency

(More detailed notes here)

• If working on a suite of applications, look for “connection points” – the apps don’t need to be 100% consistent
• You don’t need to be consistent just for legacy sake
• There is room for some discovery within a UI
• Sometimes a clean break is the best way, when upgrading applications
• Remember: Goals no Features!!!
• Integrate what is valuable and saves time
• See when your users evolve. Adobe noticed things like RAW workflow, widescreen monitors, etc… Breaks based on user habits
• Watch out for reusing objects if they don’t provide the same experience
• Design for workflows
• Capture what the user wants to do
• Adobe found users all most always select the advanced mode when given a choice, they feel like they are missing out on something if the don’t
• Pick up on user patterns
• BMW has consistent “signatures” from the MINI Cooper to the top of the line BMW
• All about goals, again – goals not features
• Make it easy for developers and designers to stay consistent with guidelines and toolkits
• Use peer review to pick up on problems in consistency

Stop designing products

(More detailed notes here)

• Design from the outside in
• Check out: http://www.flickr.com/about/

Designing for Convergent Devices

(More detailed notes here)

• 10ft design vs. 2ft design vs. 6in design
• Control, Branding, Standards, Trust
• Check out: http://www.zannel.com/
• Look for the “Golden Pathway”
• Remember the ecosystem (not just your product)
• Support: Environment, Activities, and Device (Display, Input, and Platform)
• Remember things like: Screen, Font and Colors, Input Devices, Focus States, User Feedback, Task Complexity, and User Expectations
• Have the web be a companion for mobile. If possible have users fill out information on the web, then interact with the mobile experience.
• Keep it simple, get only NEEDED data upfront – and continue to fill out a user profile as your “relationship” goes on

Mobile Design

(you can download the full presentation here)

• 60% mobile users access mobile data once a month
• XHTML-MP is WAP 2.0
• Common devices to test for: Nokia S40, RAZR, Treo, “Give-a-ways”
• Check out: http://www.deviceanywhere.com/

Moving Corporations to Accessibility

• Use tools like: Contests, Awards, and Classes
• You need a evangelist within the company
• Have guidelines and resources for your developers
• Check out: http://www.webaim.org/

Get Unstuck

(More detailed notes here)

• Make sure your team feels like they are doing good work, being productive, and fulfilled
• Have an open process, open up to other teams in your organization
• Work with Design towards a goal
• “Just add value”
• Stop too much process
• Find the middle ground between user needs and business goals
• Have one member of your team always focused on the end solution

Mobile Application Design Challenges

(More detailed notes here)

• Check out: http://radar.net/
• Remember to be aware of the number of clicks in the UI
• Check out: http://www.smallsurfaces.com/

Design Patterns

(More detailed notes here)

• Focus on solutions, encourage good behavior, and remember – “reusable…”
• Most of the good design work is done in the “fuzzy middle” (hard to provide guidelines for)

Customer Service is the New Marketing

(More detailed notes here)

• Check out: http://www.zappos.com
• Zappos has a “Culture Book” they put out each year
• A recurring job title I keep seeing from the panelists is “Community Manager”
• Find ways to get closer to the customer, let your call centers talk to design/development
• Admit mistakes
• On one forum 60% of questions are answered by users
• 30boxes – 3 employees, 30,000 users, forum only help – they spend about 4-6hrs a week on customer service

Truth about Mobile

(More detailed notes here)

• Does your mobile strategy substitute, or complement your experience?
• Advertising is not ready yet
• Data usage is almost there (currently 32%), better to be ready sooner then later

SXSW also had a good mix of keynote speakers, with Will Wright’s being my favorite of the bunch.

Overall it was a great experience – I learned a lot, while being inspired to do more.

So there you have it. My brain dump, remember podcasts and vidcasts will be available here in the near future.

Are you going to Austin this weekend for SXSWi? Or maybe you’re heading for Austin to attend the new Apple Store opening? Either way, I’ll be around. Visiting all the great independent shops and restaurants Austin has to offer, as well as attending SXSWi for the fourth time. Interested in what panels I’m excited to see? (maybe not so much?) – but here it is anyways, my SXSWi list of panels:

Saturday, March 10th

• 10:00 am » Emerging Social and Technology Trends
• 11:30 am » Getting to Consistency: Don’t Make Your Users Think
• 2:00 pm » Kathy Sierra Opening Remarks
• 3:30 pm » Stop Designing Products
• 4:05 pm » Ruining the User Experience: When JavaScript and Ajax Go Bad
• 5:00 pm » High Class and Low Class Web Design

Sunday, March 11th

• 10:00 am » Designing for Convergent Devices
• 11:30 am » Making Your Short Attention-Span Pay Big Dividends
• 2:00 pm » Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Mobile Web…but Were Afraid to Ask
• 3:30 pm » Learning Interaction Design From Las Vegas
• 4:05 pm » Moving Large Corporations Towards Accessibility
• 5:00 pm » People-Powered Products (or maybe Mash-up Culture…)

Monday, March 12th

• 10:00 am » Get Unstuck: Moving From 1.0 to 2.0
• 11:30 am » Mobile Application Design Challenges and Tips
• 2:00 pm » Dan Rather Keynote Interview
• 3:30 pm » Rails and AJAX: Building Enterprise-Class Web Applications (or maybe People Media…)
• 4:05 pm » Design Patterns: Defining and Sharing Web Interface Design Languages
• 5:00 pm » How to Create A Kickass In-House Design Team

Tuesday, March 13th

• 10:00 am » Customer Service is the New Marketing
• 11:30 am » 12 Values Shaping Technology’s Future
• 2:00 pm » Will Wright Keynote Speech
• 3:30 pm » The Truth About Mobile & The Future of Personal Devices
• 4:05 pm » Data Shrapnel
• 5:00 pm » Bruce Sterling’s SXSW Rant

I’ll be staying at the Hilton Garden Inn downtown, bowling on Sunday night, and enjoying Austin as much as possible.