Joey Marburger of The Washington Post during his presentation on the state of mobile.
This morning Joey Marburger of The Washington Post presented “The State of Mobile,” a session about using data and interface design to craft a successful mobile strategy.
Here are five keys points from his talk:
1. Simplify Simplify Simplify
On mobile, the speed of the app correlates with the satisfaction of the user. The sooner the app does what the user wants, the better. Succesful apps fulfill basic user tasks quickly. Understand and target the experience to one of any variety of new platforms (desktop, tablet, mobile, but also Google glass, smartwatches and curved screens).
Interfaces are going to have to get simpler. Work with an offline first strategy (loss of internet connection shouldn’t interrupt the experience).
2. Responsive web design is not a mobile strategy
Mobile advertising revenues hit $11 billion (up from $9 billion the year before), but it’s a safe bet that most of that revenue was not going to journalistic organizations.
“New advertising spaces have to be created for mobile,” Marburger said.
3. Display ads are not a business strategy
Remotely loading another site into a banner ad on your site is a recipe for crashing. Try new strategies like geotargeting advertising.
4. Data
Some interesting data points on the importance of mobile:
- Mobile data traffic grew 70% in 2012.
- 885 petabytes of data coming through mobile in a year.
- Globally, mobile now ranks first in media consumption.
5. Information
Almost every phone has an accelerometer that can tell you how the user is holding it, what they’re doing with it. Harness this information (using this GitHub repo perhaps) can help you craft a better experience. For instance, if you can tell the user is leaning back, move the videos on the page up.
Margburger concluded with this quote from Doctor Who:
“I am and always will be the optimist, the hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improblable dreams.”
You can download a full copy of Marburger’s presentation here.