Mobile Design UK

Mobile apps vs Mobile web… you’ve no doubt got your point of view, bring it along and join in the discussion on the constraints and benefits of each.

Over the course of the evening we’d like to look at what makes a successful app in terms of desirability, feasibility and viability, and are thrilled to have Mark Curtis, Jason Fields and [TBC] present their views on the topic.

Mark Curtis
www.flirtomatic.com
www.handmademobile.com

Mark is co-founder and CEO of Handmade Mobile, the company behind Flirtomatic, whose mission is to reinvent dating as entertainment for the mobile generation. Flirtomatic has over 2m users and a ground breaking and successful approach to making money on the mobile internet.

He is also a co-founder and board director of Fjord, the digital innovation company headquartered in London and with offices in 4 countries. In 2005 he wrote “Distraction – Being Human in the Digital Age” (Futuretext) about the effects and direction of digital media on society.

He previously co-founded CHBi which became Razorfish London in 1998 and has been working in digital media since 1993. His background before this was marketing.

He has five children and likes running, cycling, food, wine, mountains – not always together.

Jason Fields
http://app.itize.us

Jason is a user experience designer and strategist having spent more than 15 years in the online and mobile web space. Originally from Los Angeles, then San Francisco he currently lives in London with his wife and son and works for the BBC as a UX&D department head. In his spare time he writes the design focused iPhone app review blog app.itize.us, a curated presentation of the best designed iPhone apps available.

We have asked Mark, Jason and [TBC] to reflect on their own experiences and industry case-studies to help explore the following questions:

• What’s the value in having a native app vs a web app?
• How can design help to improve the desirability, feasibility or viability of an application?
• What’s the return on investment for the brand, the end-user and the developer?
• Who is making money, getting traffic and traction?
• Which is a better channel to get your message across?

Once again we’d like to thank Forum Nokia for their generous support of Mobile Design UK. We’re booked back into the Tavern Room at RSA (on John Adam Street) on Monday April 19th, 2010, and as usual the doors open at 6:30 with presentations kicking off at 7:00pm.

Tavern Room @ RSA House
8 John Adam Street, London
Monday April 19th, doors open 6:30pm
[ view map ]

Registration for this event is now closed.
To register for any spots that become available please add yourself to the waiting list on the Yahoo Group.

We’re extremely happy to announce the details for the upcoming Mobile Design UK event generously sponsored by Forum Nokia and scheduled for Monday February 23rd, 2009 in the Tavern Room at RSA on John Adam Street. The doors will open at 6:30 and we’re aiming to get things underway by 7:00pm. Tavern Room @ RSA House 8 John Adam Street, London Monday February 23rd, doors open 6:30pm [ view map ] I’d really like to thank our gracious presenters for participating in this event; Scott Weiss from Human Factors International, Gil Kahana from Seren Partners, Antony Ribot of Ribot, and Marek Pawlowski from PMN - Mobile Industry Intelligence, as all are sure to bring a wealth of insight and experience to the evenings discussions. A description of each of their presentations, along with a short bio can be found below. As the venue only holds 50 people registration has been closed at 50 people. If for whatever reason you cannot attend after registering please post a message to the group so we can free up your space for someone else. At this point registration for the event is now closed. If you’d like to be placed on the wait list please add your name to the wait list via the Yahoo Group to be notified if any spaces become available.

Speaker Bios and Presentation Descriptions

A Concept for Mobile Assisted Way Making for London Transport

Scott Weiss @sdweiss Executive Director-London, Human Factors International Scott will take existing user experience modalities and iterate them into a conceptual design for Transport for London (TFL). This presentation will embark from his World Usability Day rant about the existing mobile user interfaces (both good and bad) that are deployed by TFL, and culminate in a first draft UI compatible with today’s XHTML mobile browsers. He will present a set of storyboards to demonstrate his ideas as well as some conceptual user interface snapshots. Scott Weiss is the Executive Director for Human Factors International’s London office, where he leads UI design, usability research, user experience curriculum development, and usability institutionalisation efforts for clients including AT&T, BT, GSK, Thomson-Reuters, Vodafone, and many others. He is well known for his passion for the mobile user experience, his first book, “Handheld Usability” and related blog (http://handheldusability.wordpress.com), and his frequent and world-wide public speaking and teaching. Scott has spoken in the US, UK, Europe, Singapore, and Hong Kong on wide ranging mobile user experience topics. He recently spoke at Informa’s Mobile User Experience conference in London on the iPhone’s competitive opportunities, where he also taught a workshop on User Experience Strategy and Implementation. He chaired Handsets World USA in San Diego, where he also presented the Mobile Design and Development Platforms workshop. He presented Documenting Mobile 2.0 Information Architecture at the Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam, and presented Mobile Social Networking at the Monetize Web 2.0 & Mobile Social Networking Conference in London.

Stories From the Field

Gil Kahana Consultant, Seren Partners Gil will speak about two exciting projects he worked on at BBC New Media which were about using your mobile to collect information from physical objects and posting video comments next to plants. He will also share a few stories about user research he completed in Russia and India last year, along with some final thoughts about social networks sneaking into our daily mobile routines. After obtaining a Master’s degree at Central Saint Martin’s College in Communication Design, Gil discovered the world of mobile user experience as an interaction designer at BBC New Media. At the BBC he worked on some fascinating innovation projects including location-based content and cross-platform content delivery. Gil is currently working as a consultant at Seren Partners helping companies like Nokia, Orange, Vodafone and O2 to make better products by using User-Centered Design methodologies.

The Process of Design

Antony Ribot @ribot Co-founder and CEO, Ribot Utilising his last 9 years of work in the digital industry, Antony will give a talk on how the development and integration of a design process can make for a mobile application with improved user experience. Antony is one of the founder members of ribot - a UK design house/ideas lab that focuses on user interfaces, interaction design and the user experience for small screen devices. He spent his early years with London-based tomato, during which, amongst other things, he earnt a D&AD pencil award for a interactive web project for Levis. Inspired by the simple things in life, he then went back to University to study ants, bees and termites, where simple agents work together to form complex systems with emergent behaviours.

15 minutes of Positive Mobile Experience

Marek Pawlowski @marekpawlowski PMN - Mobile Industry Intelligence It’s easy to fixate on what’s broken in mobile user experience. We’ve all heard the horror stories: new handsets full of bugs, important features hidden behind complex menus and product marketing teams more concerned with megapixel count than usability. However, amid the gloom of specification sheets and indecipherable acronyms, an increasing number of bright stars are starting to shine. As part of the upcoming Mobile Design UK meeting, we want to know about your most positive mobile experience! Please email, text or Tweet (@marekpawlowski) your favourite example of truly user-focused mobile design to Marek Pawlowski. He’ll be highlighting 3 examples in his talk ‘15 minutes of Positive Mobile Experience’. Please keep your suggestions short and ‘Tweet’ - i.e. no longer than you’d send in a text. Again, as the venue only holds 50 people registration has been closed at 50 people. If for whatever reason you cannot attend after registering please post a message to the group so we can free up your space for someone else. At this point registration for the event is now closed. If you’d like to be placed on the wait list please add your name to the wait list via the Yahoo Group to be notified if any spaces become available. Lastly, if you are interested in speaking at an upcoming event, would like to showcase your project or even sponsor space and/or refreshments for an event please do get in touch via the Yahoo Group, Twitter or email us at ‘hello at mobiledesign.org.uk’.