Mobile Computing One of the things that makes mobile computing an interesting topic of research and design is that the area is strongly driven by innovation, characterised by rapidly evolving use, and has enormous market potential and growth. New technologies are constantly being developed, new use domains are constantly being explored, and successful new ideas and applications reach millions of users. In fact, by the end of 2010 more smartphones than personal computers were, for the first time, being sold worldwide, with more than 100 million units shipped in the last three months of that year alone. Reflecting this dynamic and rapidly evolving nature of the area, the industrial lead position has been passed on several times within only a decade, from Palm to Nokia to Apple, and is most likely to be passed on again in the future. This obviously motivates researchers and designers to keep innovating and developing new technology and applications. A primary driver of mobile technology development has been the enormous uptake of interactive systems and devices for work as well as for leisure. Mobile phones have long been something almost everyone owns at least one of and uses extensively for personal purposes and not just for work. With Internet and multimedia-enabled phones such as the Apple iPhone, smart phones have now firmly reached this mass market too and are no longer something exclusively for a small elite of business professionals. The uptake of mobile technology in our work and private spheres has had a huge impact on the way we perceive and use these technologies. They are no longer just computers on batteries. They have become functional design objects, the look, feel and experience of which we care deeply about, and that we juggle in multitude in our everyday lives. Chapter Table of Contents 9Mobile Computing 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Seven waves of mobile computing 9.2.1 Portability 9.2.2 Miniaturization 9.2.3 Connectivity 9.2.4 Convergence 9.2.5 Divergence 9.2.6 Apps 9.2.7 Digital ecosystems 9.3 Interaction design for mobile computers 9.3.1 The role of context 9.3.2 Research impact on practice 9.4 The road ahead: towards digital ecology 9.5 Where to learn more 9.5.1 Conferences 9.5.2 Journals 9.5.3 Recommended reading 9.5.4 Recommendations from my own publications on the topic 9.6 User-contributed notes 9.7 References 9.1 Introduction Mobile computing is a relatively new field of research with little more than three decades of history. During its lifetime, it has expanded from being primarily technical to now also being about usability, usefulness, and user experience. This has led to the birth of the vibrant area of mobile interaction design at the intersections between, among others, mobile computing, social sciences, human-computer interaction, industrial design, and user experience design. Mobile computing is a significant contributor to the pervasiveness of computing resources in modern western civilisation. In concert with the proliferation of stationary and embedded computer technology throughout society, mobile devices such as cell phones and other handheld or wearable computing technologies have created a state of ubiquitous and pervasive computing where we are surrounded by more computational devices than people (Weiser 1991). Enabling us to orchestrate these devices to fit and serve our personal and working lives is a huge challenge for technology developers, and “as a consequence of pervasive computing, interaction design is poised to become one of the main liberal arts of the twenty-first century” (McCullough 2004). The field of mobile computing has its origin in a fortunate alignment of interests by technologists and consumers. Since the dawn of the computing age, there have always been technological aspirations to make computing hardware smaller, and ever since computers became widely accessible, there has been a huge interest from consumers in being able to bring them with you (Atkinson 2005). As a result, the history of mobile computing is paved with countless commercially available devices. Most of them had short lifespan and minimal impact, but others significantly pushed the boundaries of engineering and interaction design. It is these devices, and their importance, that I wish to emphasize here. 9.2 Seven waves of mobile computing The history of mobile computing can be divided into a number of eras, or waves, each characterised by a particular technological focus, interaction design trends, and by leading to fundamental changes in the design and use of mobile devices. In my view, the history of mobile computing has, so far, entailed seven particularly important waves. Although not strictly sequential, they provide a good overview of the legacy on which current mobile computing research and design is built. Portability Miniaturization Connectivity Convergence Divergence Apps Digital ecosystems The era of focus on Portability was about reducing the size of hardware to enable the creation of computers that could be physically moved around relatively easily. Miniaturization was about creating new and significantly smaller mobile form factors that allowed the use of personal mobile devices while on the move. Connectivity was about developing devices and applications that allowed users to be online and communicate via wireless data networks while on the move. Convergence was about integrating emerging types of digital mobile devices, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, music players, cameras, games, etc., into hybrid devices. Divergence took an opposite approach to interaction design by promoting information appliances with specialised functionality rather than generalized ones. The latest wave of apps is about developing matter and substance for use and consumption on mobile devices, and making access to this fun or functional interactive application content easy and enjoyable. Finally, the emerging wave of digital ecosystems is about the larger wholes of pervasive and interrelated technologies that interactive mobile systems are increasingly becoming a part of. 9.2.1 Portability The first mobile computers, the precursors to present time’s laptops, were developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s inspired by the portability of Alan Kay’s Dynabook concept from 1968 (Kay 1972). The Dynabook concept was originally thought of as a machine for children, but observant entrepreneurs, such as the founder of GRiD Systems, John Ellenby, quickly realised that the starting point for something that innovative would have to be “the customer with the most money and the most demanding need” (Moggridge 2007). Figure 9.1: Alan Kays Dynabook: a personal computer for children of all ages (Kay 1972). Copyright © GRiD Systems Corporation;Alan C. Kay. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available The first laptop computer was the GRiD Compass 1101 designed by Bill Moggridge as early as 1981 in response to the design brief of fitting within half the space of a briefcase (Moggridge 2007; Atkinson 2005). The Compass had a 16MHz Intel 8086 processor, 256K DRAM, a 6-inch 320x240 pixel flat screen display, 340kb bubble memory, a 1200 bit/s modem, weighed 5 kg, and ran its own graphical operating system called GRiD OS. It was primarily sold to the U.S. government and was, amongst others, used by NASA on Space Shuttle missions during the early 1980s, and in combat. The GRiD Compass featured a stunning forty-three innovative features in its utility patent, including the flat display and hinged screen. The first portable computer to reach real commercial success, however, was the suitcase-style Compaq Portable from 1982, which as the first official IBM clone could run MS-DOS and standard PC programs. In 1988, Grid Systems also developed the first tablet computer, the GRiDpad, initiated and led by Jeff Hawkins who later designed the first PalmPilot and founded Palm Computing. In terms of design longevity and impact, Bill Moggridge’s work on the first laptop computer and Jeff Hawkins’ work on the GRiDpad illustrates the value of careful and well-considered interaction design in mobile computing. The GRiD Compass was superior in terms of its design and performance for a decade. It defined the folding design still used in today’s laptops 30 years later, and its basic form factor was not surpassed until the Apple PowerBook 100 introduced the, now standard, clam-shell design and integrated pointing device in 1991. The basic design of the GRiDpad paved the way for tablet computers and handheld devices such as the Apple Newton, the PalmPilot, and even the iPad. Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section Exceptions in the copyright terms below. No higher resolution available Copyright © Compaq Computers. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Copyright © GRiD Systems Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Figure 9.2 A-B-C: Mobile computers in the 1980-90s: GRiD Compass 1101 (1981), Compaq Portable 1 (1982), and GRiDpad 1910 (1989). 9.2.2 Miniaturization By the early 1990s, the size of computer hardware had reached a point that allowed radically new and smaller form factors of mobile computers to evolve and emerge on the market. These predominantly handheld devices were labelled palmtop computers, digital organizers, or “Personal Digital Assistants” (PDAs). PDAs differed from laptop PCs by being truly mobile and something that the users could operate while actually moving around physically. They were not thought of as alternatives to desktop or laptop computers, but rather as small and lightweight supplemental devices for busy businessmen spending some of their time away from their PC. The first PDA was the Apple Newton from 1992. In 1997, the first PalmPilot was introduced, and in 2000 Compaq released the iPAQ Pocket PC. Whereas the focus of laptop computing was predominantly on portability and mobile access to documents and applications available on desktop computers, palmtop computing introduced an additional focus on applications and interaction styles designed specifically for mobile devices and mobile users. The PDA generation of mobile devices represented a number of distinct interaction design choices and form factors. Most notably, they introduced the combination of a relatively small touch-sensitive screen and a separate pen (or stylus) for user interaction. Using the stylus, the user could interact with content directly on the screen and enter text via an on-screen keyboard or through handwriting recognition software. Other interaction design innovations included function buttons for accessing pre-defined applications and functions, navigation keys for operating menus, and the “one-click” dock for synchronizing with a stationary computer and for charging. While the Psion series 3 to 5 replicated a “laptop in miniature” design, the Newton, PalmPilot and iPAQ all represented a fundamentally new mobile computing form factor where the majority of the device’s surface was used for its display. In terms of interaction design, the PalmPilot in particular was a product of careful and detailed rethinking of the emerging class of handheld computers; what they should look and feel like, what functions they should perform, and how they should perform them. As an example, the creator of the PalmPilot, Jeff Hawkins, later explained how he carried blocks of wood with him in different sizes and shapes until he had reached the perfect physical form for the device (Bergman & Haitani 2000). Copyright © Apple Computer, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Copyright © Palm Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Full quality Copyright © Psion. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (550 x 400 pixels. 40 KB) Copyright status: Unknown (pending investigation). See section Exceptions in the copyright terms below. No higher resolution available Figure 9.3 A-B-C-D: Mobile computers in the 1990-00s: Apple Newton (1992), PalmPilot (1997), Psion 5 (1997), and Compaq iPAQ (2000). With the emergence of PDAs came also new categories of applications developed specifically for mobile devices and users. The devices each had their own operating systems, optimized for their particular screen sizes and input capabilities, and a suite of standard applications for calendars, contacts, note taking, and email. Adding to this, a wide range of 3rd party applications soon became available for purchase or, as something new, downloadable via the Internet. By the late 1990s, application development specifically for mobile devices was an acknowledged research area and profession, and in 1998 the first international workshop on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices (Mobile HCI’98) was held in Glasgow specifically addressing the emerging challenge of interaction design and user experiences for mobile devices, systems and services. Join the design elite and advance: 1.Your career 2.Your network 3.Your skills Join the design elite ! About our funding and business model 9.2.3 Connectivity The third wave of mobile computing had its origins in wireless telecommunication. As early as 1973, a Motorola team led by Martin Cooper developed and patented a handheld mobile phone concept that led to the first commercial mobile phone small enough to be carried, the DynaTAC 8000X, in 1983. Full qualityFigure 9.4: The first handheld cell phone: Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983). Copyright © Motorola. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (620 x 400 pixels. 41 KB) In the 1980s and early 1990s, mobile phones were not really considered to be computers. However, with the introduction of the digital Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile phone system in 1991, which also included the Short Message Service (SMS) communication component, the complexity and functionality of handsets began evolving rapidly. So did the uptake of mobile phone technology by the broad population worldwide. This meant that mobile phone developers were suddenly faced with a huge challenge of interaction design not only for making phone calls, but also for handling contacts, calendars, text-based messages, and browsing the Internet. In the late 1990s, interaction design for mobile phones was unarguably dominated by the work at Nokia, which led to a series of ground-breaking handsets. The challenges of the time were to design for tiny low-resolution displays and for input capabilities limited to a 12-key numeric keypad alongside a small number of function and navigation keys. One of the first mobile phones explicitly resulting from a careful process of interaction design in the 1990s was the Nokia 3110. It introduced a simple graphical menu system and the “Navi-key” concept for simplifying user interaction — an interaction design that reached the hands of more than 300 million users through subsequent Nokia handsets (Lindholm & Keinonen 2003). In 1999, the basic interaction design of the Nokia 3110 was extended with T9 predictive text for SMS messaging, games, customisable ring tones, and changeable covers for the extremely successful Nokia 3210. Full quality Copyright © Nokia. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (254 x 419 pixels. 17 KB) Copyright © Nokia. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Full quality Copyright © Nokia. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (330 x 450 pixels. 32 KB) Figure 9.5 A-B-C: Three mobile interaction design milestones: Navi-key, T9, and WAP: Nokia 3110 (1995), Nokia 3210 (1999), and Nokia 7110 (1999). In the late 1990s, the enormous, and completely unexpected, uptake of SMS inspired attempts to bring the Internet to mobile handsets too. This led to the development of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) allowing simplified websites to be viewed on small displays and paving the way for Internet access on mobile devices. The first mobile phone to feature a WAP browser was the Nokia 7110. In response to the need for scrolling through long WAP pages it also featured the first “Navi-roller” thumb wheel. As an interesting example of interaction design, the 7110 also featured a spring-loaded cover concealing the keypad, which was inspired by the film The Matrix where the main character uses an earlier Nokia phone modified by the film’s production crew to have this functionality. “Life imitating art” (Wilde 1889) you could say. WAP, however, never lived up to the expectations due to slow data transfer and poor usability (Ramsay & Nielsen 2000; Nielsen 2000) and was soon superseded by access to the real web on mobile devices. Nevertheless, mobile phone design in the 1990’s had a fundamental and lasting impact on the future of mobile computing to come. 9.2.4 Convergence One of the most interesting eras of mobile computing began when different types of specialised mobile devices began converging into new types of hybrid devices with fundamentally different form factors and interaction designs. The first phase of this was the emergence of “smart phones”, which combined the functionality of a PDA with that of a mobile phone. The development of smart phones involved exploration of a wide range of form factors and interaction designs and led to a series of innovative solutions. Many of these involved designs where the physical shape of the device could be changed depending on what the user wanted to use it for. Other designs, like the Blackberry, introduced a “wide-body mobile phone” form factor with a PDA size display and a miniature QWERTY keyboard in place of the traditional 12-key numeric keypad. The first smart phone that, as well as making phone calls, could also be used for calendars, addresses, notes, e-mail, fax, and games was the IBM Simon from 1992. It had no physical buttons, but only a touch screen, which could be operated with a finger or a stylus. Copyright © IBM. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Copyright © Nokia. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Copyright © Ericsson. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Full quality Copyright © Blackberry. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (712 x 951 pixels. 106 KB) Figure 9.6 A-B-C-D: Smartphones exploring different physical form factors and interaction styles: IBM Simon (1992), Nokia 9000 (1996), Ericsson R380 (2000), and Blackberry 5810 (2002). The second phase of convergence combined mobile phones with various rich media capabilities, such as digital cameras, music players, video recording and playback, and television and radio reception. Whereas smart phones were attractive for business professionals’ work activities and productivity, multimedia phones were attractive for everyday people’s leisure, fun and socialising. Copyright © Sharp. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Copyright © Nokia. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Copyright © Nokia. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Full quality Copyright © Sony Ericsson. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (1236 x 1249 pixels. 371 KB) Figure 9.7 A-B-C-D: Converged mobile devices: camera-phones, game-phone and walkman-phone: Sharp J-SH04 (2001), Nokia N-Gage (2003), Nokia N90 (2005), and Sony Ericsson W600 (2005). The most notable example of convergence for leisure was the invention of the camera phone. The first mobile phone to feature a digital camera was the Sharp J-SH04 from 2001. It was only available in Japan through the i-mode mobile Internet service, but the rest of the world soon followed. Two years later, more camera phones were sold than digital cameras, and in 2006 half the world’s mobile phones had a built-in camera — making Nokia the biggest brand of digital cameras and forcing prominent brands such as Minolta and Konica out of the camera business. By 2009, there were more than 1.9 billion camera phones in existence, and mobile phone photography had already had a huge social impact through new ways of capturing and sharing photographs over the Internet (cf. Kindberg et al. 2005; Gye 2007). Whereas early camera phones were clearly phones with cameras, novel interaction design led to several converged devices truly blurring the boundaries between the two (Murphy et al. 2005). As an example, it can be hard to tell if the Nokia N90 is a phone or a camcorder. Another converged functionality to become widely available on mobile phones was the ability to listen to digital music. Most notably, Sony re-launched its successful “Walkman” brand of the 1980s in the shape of the converged Sony Ericsson W600 in 2005. With the W44 multimedia phone from 2006, they even went a step further and extended video and music playback with the ability to watch and listen to digital TV and radio. Convergence also led to the creation of hybrid game-phones like the Nokia N-Gage with form factors resembling handheld game consoles. The fundamental driver behind the trend of convergence is that mobile user experience is proportionally related to the functional scope of interactive mobile devices and systems: “more means more” (Murphy et al. 2005). As a consequence, convergence has often been criticised for generating weak general solutions with usability comparable to the Swiss army knife: clumsy technology with a wide range of functions, none of which are ideal in isolation (see e.g. Norman 1998, Bergman 2000, Buxton 2001). However, in my view the real strength of convergence should not be sought in the simple availability of several functions implemented in the same device. Rather it should be found in the potential creation of something new and hybrid that facilitates use that wasn’t possible before, like for example taking pictures and sharing them immediately with your friends, browsing the Internet on your phone, or purchasing music directly on your iPod. 9.2.5 Divergence Contrasting the convergence approach, the trend of divergence suggested a single function/many devices or “information appliance” approach where each device is “designed to perform a specific activity, such as music, photography, or writing” (Bergman 2000). The driving force behind this line of thought is that having a wide range of good specialised tools is better than a general one that does not perform any task particularly well. Specialised tools facilitate optimisation of functionality over time and refinement of well-known paradigms of use. The fundamental view promoted by the trend of divergence is that mobile user experience is inversely proportionate to the functional scope of interactive mobile devices and systems: “less is more” (Murphy et al. 2005). Copyright © Apple Computer, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. No higher resolution available Full quality Copyright © Archos. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (579 x 400 pixels. 29 KB) Full quality Copyright © Sony. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (640 x 352 pixels. 70 KB) Full quality Copyright © Apple Computer, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (746 x 495 pixels. 72 KB) Figure 9.8 A-B-C-D: Specialised mobile media and gaming devices: Apple iPod (2001), Archos Gmini (2004), Sony PSP (2004), iPod Nano (2010). The 2000s saw the emergence a wide range of diverged mobile devices dedicated to do one specific task really well, particularly mobile music players, video players and games. Of course functionally dedicated mobile devices were not a new phenomenon as, for example, early mobile devices such as pocket calculators, cell phones, GPS receivers, digital cameras, and PDAs could unarguably be classified as information appliances too. But what was interesting about the trend of divergence in the early 2000s was that it was a deliberate interaction design choice and not a technological necessity. Probably the most legendary example of an information appliance was the Apple iPod from 2001. Although not the first mobile digital music player, its interaction design, including the integration with iTunes and later the iTunes Music Store, fundamentally changed global music consumption and purchasing behaviour. Although most mobile phones on the market in the mid-2000s were able to play MP3 files, people still preferred to carry an additional device, the iPod, for playing their music as it provided a better user experience for that particular task, and the device itself had become a popular fashion item. In late 2010, the total number of iPods sold had exceeded 290 million units. Other diverged mobile devices included video players like the Archos Gmini from 2004, the Sony PSP game and video console, and later versions of the iPod extended with video playback capability, but within the same basic information appliance interaction design. The interaction design challenge of a diverged mobile device is considerably different from that of a converged one because its functional scope is much narrower. However, as diverged devices are by definition typically used in concert with a plethora of other interactive devices and systems unknown to the designer, there is a huge interaction design challenge in supporting good and flexible integration and “convergence-in-use” (Murphy et al. 2005). 9.2.6 Apps In June 2007, Apple launched the iPhone. Like many of its contemporaries this was a converged mobile device functioning as a camera phone, portable media player, and Internet client with e-mail, web browsing, and high-speed wireless network connectivity. However, rather than being just another incremental step in the evolution of converged mobile devices, the iPhone represented a significant rethinking of the design of mobile interactions and a series of notable interaction design choices. It featured a large high-resolution capacitive multi-touch display with simple gesture capabilities, such as swiping and pinching, and departed completely from the predominant use of physical keys and a stylus for text entry and interaction. Instead of navigating large and deep hierarchies of menus, the user experience was much more fluid and aesthetic, and the phone was both extremely easy and pleasurable to use. The iPhone also featured a number of embedded context sensors, which changed the orientation mode of the display depending on how it was held, as originally proposed in a UIST conference paper by Hinckley et al. (2000), and it thereby changed the mode of the phone application when held close to the face during a call. The later inclusion of GPS and a digital compass extended this “context-awareness” capability to also enable location-based services. On the software side, the iPhone’s web browser actually made it possible to access web content on a mobile device with a positive user experience, and many soon described handling email on the iPhone as favourable compared to its desktop counterparts. Dedicated applications provided direct access to watching video content from YouTube and purchasing music from the iTunes Store. In concert, this meant that people actually started using their mobile device as a preferred gateway to the Internet, rather than as a last resort. Consequently, iPhone OS dominated the total amount of mobile web traffic worldwide by mid-2009 (Admob 2009). In addition to this, data and media content can be integrated seamlessly with the user’s other devices and computers at home or at work through cloud computing services such as MobileMe in a way never seen before in mobile interaction design, illustrating initial steps towards the creation of digital ecosystems of mobile and stationary computer systems connected through the Internet. The iPhone completely redefined mobile computing and set new standards for mobile interaction design and user experiences that other companies, such as Google and HTC, still struggled to match up to 4 years later with the Android open source mobile operating system and associated online application store. In many ways, the iPhone was the device that mobile interaction design researchers had envisioned for a decade, and its enormous uptake worldwide, with over 120 million iOS enabled devices sold by September 2010, confirms that we were indeed right in our speculations about what people would want to do with mobiles — if only we could provide them with a good enough interaction design and user experience. The biggest impact of the iPhone, however, was not only in the interaction design of the device itself and in the high quality of its native applications. As it turned out, it was in the creation of an interaction design that provided users with easy access to a vast and unprecedented amount of applications for their mobile device. In 2008, Apple launched the online “App Store” which provided a mechanism by which iPhone users could easily download, and pay for, third-party application content directly from their mobile device. These Apps span a range of functionalities, including social networking, productivity tools, personal utilities, games, navigation, and advertising for movies and TV shows. For creating this application content, an iPhone OS software development kit (SDK) was released for free along with a business model where Apple handles payments and distribution while leaving App creators with 70% of the profit. By 2012, more than 25 billion Apps had been downloaded from a selection of more than 500.000, making this hugely profitable for both Apple and for the individual third-party creators of particularly popular Apps, which in return has motivated the creation of even more application content. As an indication of the incredible size of this business, third party mobile software developers generated a total income of $2 billion by selling their products through the Apple App store in less than three years. Contrary to developing mobile applications in Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME) or Qualcomm’s Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW), developing in iPhone SDK involves no need for customizing applications for a vast range of different handsets, which means that more time can be spent on application design. Also, in sharp contrast to the generally horrific mobile phone user interfaces for installing especially J2ME software, the iPhone provides not only a supply chain and billing model out-of-the-box, but also an application shopping user experience that is positive in itself. Hence, prior to the iPhone, downloading and installing software onto a mobile phone or PDA was something only technology-savvy people would do. Today this is common practice for millions of users, no matter their age and computing experience. As an interesting effect of the iPhone-approach to mobile interaction design, improving the hardware specification of devices was suddenly surpassed in importance in favour of improving the software that is available for them. This is evidenced in the pace and scope of software developments and updates compared to equivalent hardware ones, which is an important shift within the design of mobile interactions. It indicates that a level of stability has been reached in terms of physical form factors and basic input and output capabilities, in favour of a focus on applications and content. Full quality Copyright © Apple Computer, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (440 x 305 pixels. 51 KB) Full quality Copyright © Apple Computer, Inc.. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine (as permission could not be obtained). See the Exceptions section (and subsection allRightsReserved-UsedWithoutPermission) on the page copyright notice. Download or view full resolution (400 x 288 pixels. 24 KB) Figure 9.9 A-B: The Apple iPhone and iPad (2007 and 2010). Apple’s success with the iPhone led to a third endeavour within mobile computing, the iPad, which was released in April 2010. Initial media reaction was mixed, but commercial uptake was unprecedented, and the iPad was sold in over 2 million units in its first two months, reaching 15 million units sold by the end of the year. While Microsoft’s explicit interaction design approach for PDAs and tablets had long been to replicate the Windows 95 OS (Zuberec 2000), Apple took the opposite approach with the iPad tablet and based it on iPhone OS rather than MacOSX. This was a surprising move for many, admittedly including myself, but it had the effect of reinterpreting, and subsequently redefining, the so-far troubled category of “tablet computers” into a new category of mobile devices that are not just laptops without keyboards. Although criticised for being a closed system, the strength of the iPad lay in the user experience created through its meticulous interaction design, which invited the already growing community of iPhone interaction designers and application developers to explore the tablet form factor. Until then, nobody had cared to create web or native application content for tablets (Chen 2010), but with the iPad, tablets suddenly became one of the most interesting and promising mobile platforms on Earth, and by March 2011 there were more than 65.000 applications available for the iPad. 9.2.7 Digital ecosystems As we move into the second decade of the new millennium, the challenges facing mobile computing and interaction design continue to evolve. The technical capabilities of our mobile devices have improved significantly to the point where factors such as screen real estate, input capabilities, processing power, network speed, and battery lifetime are much less of an issue than only half a decade ago. At the same time, we have also become sufficiently skilled at designing for relatively small screens and for the different input capabilities of mobile devices so that millions of ordinary people are actually able to download and use the applications being developed, and are even willing to pay for some of them. To a large extent, therefore, we have now successfully solved the majority of problems facing mobile interaction researchers and designers in the past. However, as the history of all areas of computing have shown us, it is highly unlikely that we have reached an end point. As in the past, the technology and interaction design we are witnessing today is just the starting point for the continuing evolution of the technology and interaction design of tomorrow. But what are then the challenges and opportunities for the design of mobile interactions to come? What will the next wave of mobile computing be about? Fuelled by the enormous interest and uptake of “post-PC devices” like smart phones and tablets by the general population, it is not unreasonable to speculate that a major platform shift away from desktop computing is imminent. Mobile devices are becoming more and more important and widespread. They will soon be the dominating point of access to the Internet, and in combination with the growth of cloud computing they will soon dominate peoples’ use of computational power. Importantly, what we are witnessing here is not just the development of even smarter smart phones with improved abilities to imitate desktop PCs in miniature. It is a radical evolution of a major computing platform for new applications allowing us to do things that couldn’t be done before. This may well be a genuine paradigm shift for mobile computing and mobile interaction design. Looking on the current trends, it appears that the next wave of mobile computing and interaction design is going to be about the creation of digital ecosystems (Miller et al. 2010) in which mobile computing plays a central role in concert with other ubiquitous computing resources. This challenges us to move beyond considering interactive mobile devices, systems, and services as entities that can meaningfully be designed and studied in isolation from the larger use context or artefact ecologies (Jung et al. 2008, Bødker & Klokmose 2011) that they are a part of. Yes, mobile computers, in various forms, play hugely important roles in most peoples’ everyday lives, but they are not the only technologies and artefacts we make use of at home or at work, or in the space between. Most people use multiple mobile devices for different purposes, but they also use a multitude of stationary or embedded computer systems, at work, at home, in their cars, or in the city around them. In concert, this makes up a rich digital ecosystem of interactive devices, systems and services often referred to as ubiquitous or pervasive computing, in which mobile computing is a central, but not the only, component. The challenge of designing mobile interactions in such ubiquitous and pervasive information societies is to facilitate the creation of interactive devices, systems, and services that fit well into this ecosystem of other devices, systems, and services, as well as into the rich new use patterns, for work and leisure, created by these technologies and their users. Like any other type of ecosystem, understanding, creating, and maintaining digital ecosystems requires a holistic perspective on the totality and ecology of the system at play, and not just detailed views on each of its individual components. The digital ecology wave of mobile computing will build on the achievements of previous eras within hardware miniaturization, connectivity, new form factors, input devices, interaction styles, applications, convergence, divergence, and content, but it will broaden the scope to include the wider context of use and an explicit sensitivity for the contextual factors that influence the user experience. It is going to be about creating interactive devices, systems, and services that respond to the broad and diverse aspects of human life, and these not only provide utility and are easy to use, but also provide pleasure and fit naturally into peoples’ complex and dynamic lives of constantly changing settings and situations. Thank you Regards Saeed Khattak SSW OSHAcademy & Computer Institute-Karak
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 10:22:25 +0000
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