Mobile first is already a buzzword. Before it loses all meaning, what does it mean? Anthony D. Paul of Columbia's ADG Creative blogged some smart thoughts on the subject from an agency's perspective.
The “mobile first” approach is merely asking us to stop assuming we need “a website”, “an app”, or “a hammer” and to return to first determining what matters most to our customers, our users, our administrators, and our businesses. Using mobile devices as a flag-carrier, their seemingly limiting screen size helps you to assess the most important pieces of our digital products as they relate to each device.
Good stuff. Now, what does mobile first mean from a user's perspective?
I wrote the following in a Google Plus comment to another ADG employee:
Increasingly, mobile will have been the first introduction to computers for young consumers, the ones you have an opportunity to shape a lifetime of buying habits for. Even if they pick up non-mobile/tablet devices later, which is far from a certainty, their habits and expectations will be shaped by the mobile experience.
While I believe that sharing DSLR or edited photos on Instagram is acceptable, even desirable, whether users should is a worthy debate.
A worthy debate for the user community, which holier-than-thou arguments like this one at best ignore, and at worst insult.
In opposing the publishing of DSLR or edited photos on Instagram, freelance photographer, video and content producer Nate Benson writes that uploading non-mobile, non-real time photos is not what Instagram was intended for.
I'm not sure whether he has inside knowledge of the creators' intentions, but even if he does, that's not for him or the creators to decide. The purpose of a social platform is whatever users say it is. Right now, some users are saying that Instagram is in part for sharing DSLR and edited photos. And other users, like Benson, are saying that it's not.
Great. Let the debate play out. If enough users agree with Benson, their feedback, through negative reactions to DSLR or edited photos, including ignoring them, and positive reactions to unadulterated smartphone photos, will correct the behavior of users who agree with me.
Until then, or until the opposite result, who is Benson to say that users are using the platform improperly, and who am I to say that they're using it correctly?
To accept otherwise is to stymie the generatvitiy that made the Internet what it is — or, for that matter, made the Internet. I'm perfectly open to arguments against evolutionary uses of Instagram, or any other service, but they need to be made on narrower grounds.
OK, try this one: How much do you enjoy spending time outside on a sunny day?
A lot? Me, too.
One more: How much do you enjoy a glass of ice cold milk?
A lot as well? Hey, we should hang out sometime.
When we do, we can drink milk on my stoop and laugh about how you actually do enjoy maintaining your vitamin D intake after all. And, if you're not too busy, I'll tell you how you probably enjoy news a lot more than you think, too.
In general, how much do you enjoy keeping up with the news?
They received the response you might guess: Not so much. Only 37 percent said they enjoyed it a lot.
Would the proportion have been higher had they said "following" or "consuming?" "Keeping up with" makes it sound like a chore. In any case, the proportion definitely would have been higher had they asked about the editorial equivalents of nice weather and thirst-quenching drinks.
News organizations do a good job of providing such utility. Just good luck finding it. The examples linked to above are the exception. Focused, interactive and action-oriented, they package content for the audience and situation rather than packaging it for some arbitrary atomic unit of news. (Trying to find a new one is missing the point.)
Indirect reasons people consume news, such as easing boredom, satisfying the need to read and feeling socially connected, which Chyi and Lee mention, offer opportunities as well.
So, yes, if they want people to be interested in news, and perhaps pay for it, news organizations should make their content and services more accessible.
But, in marketing and in editorial presentation, they also must communicate that it is. This is what gets the subconsciously interested in news consciously interested in news, a crucial first step.
It sounds obvious, but, once people say they're interested in news, Chyi and Lee found, they are considerably more likely to pay for it. Only age was a stronger predictor.
That brings us back to news organizations' perfect paying customer: the young male interested in news. According to the authors' survey, which weighted a 767-person online sample to represent the U.S. Internet population, he's a minority of a minority of a minority: Most users are over 34 (66%), female (52%) and not interested in news (60%).
Given the demographics, news organizations should cater to him but shouldn't bend over backward for him. Converting a small percentage of the age, gender and affinity majorities, through the repackaging and rebranding this post outlines, could be just as lucrative.
Rather than food, animals or Dr. Seuss characters, perhaps the alphabet strips over grammar school whiteboards should illustrate the letters with yoga poses.
At once rigid — every yogi does the same series of 26 postures (just enough for our alphabet strip!) every class — and loose — there are no levels or grades and the instructor does not lead the routine — Bikram yoga, Gartner explains, empowers students and teachers to pursue personal mastery, rather than arbitrary standards, and to pursue that mastery together, rather than in isolation — or worse, in opposition.
The middle school social studies teacher applies the yoga metaphor to fundamental challenges and opportunities facing educators in the accountability and digital age, from the limits of one-off, all-or-nothing tests to the seemingly limitless applications of new technological tools.
In the information age, many teachers are rightly moving away from direct instruction models that position teachers as the sole arbiters of information. With increased instantaneous access to information, the purpose of school is shifting away from memorizing finite amounts of knowledge and beginning to focus more on the skills of finding, analyzing, manipulating, and creating content. With the new function of education, so to should develop a new function of teachers as guides and facilitators on the educational journey, rather than solitary gatekeepers of knowledge.
If you're at all vested in K-12 education (and from its effects on property values to crime rates to economic growth, who isn't?) Gartner's blog post a must-read, both for all it says about the current state of schools and for the clever way it says it. Even if you don't have an interest in schools (again, hard to believe) you're sure to find parallels in your own work and life and how you define and encourage success from yourself and from those around you.
Maryland voters fell as short as they did this week in part because the bar was set high.
Yes, there's a hidden win in Tuesday's turnout fail, when, according to early tallies, about 21 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in Maryland's presidential primary — the lowest proportion in 32 years, my colleague Steve Kilar reports.
The upside to the low turnout quotient is the pace by which the denominator has grown. Buoyed by the historic 2008 presidential election cycle, when registered voters rose more than 10 percent over the previous cycle, over the last decade, voter rolls grew more than twice as fast as the population.
From February 2000 to February 2010, Maryland added more than 825,000 voters to its active rolls, to surpass 3.4 million, a growth rate of 32 percent, according to state Board of Elections data. Over the same period, the state added 480,274 adult residents, to surpass 4.4 million, a growth rate of 12.2 percent, according to U.S. Census data.
Since 2010, active registered voters have climbed further to more than 3.5 million.
While not a perfect comparison — not everyone 18 or older is eligible to vote — the striking difference suggests that, despite motor voter woes, voter registration efforts have been relatively successful.
Had they been less successful, Tuesday's turnout likely wouldn't have been quite as dismal. (I qualify because it depends on who stayed home more, recent registrants or established ones. Generally, voting patterns favor the former.)
So, even amid historically abysmal numbers, the glass is half full. Hmm, maybe I should run for office.
A man is shot and killed on an East Baltimore street corner late on a Friday afternoon. From police, further information is not immediately available. That's the story, the too familiar story. The brief, as sad as it is to say, nearly writes itself.
But not if you don't let it. Not if, even at the end of your shift, at the end of your week, after having just returned from another scene, you go there. Not if you go there with an open mind — and a smartphone.
Staubs, wearing a black dress shirt and a black-and-red tie, says he once regularly traveled from West Virginia to Baltimore to score drugs. Six years ago, he says, he was saved by God and got clean. He now makes the same trek to spread the Gospel.
More with less. Whether it refers to the daily wonder that we're carrying in our pocket or purse several times the computing power that once required entire floors, or to the growing demands a fragmenting media landscape places on shrinking legacy brands, perhaps no other single phrase so succinctly captures the triumphs and trevails of the digital age.
With mobile, the adage describes the challenge and opportunity of doing what we did before, plus all kinds of fun, visually and locationally aware new stuff on a smaller screen and, depending on the hardware and network involved, varying degrees of limitations on data speed and usage, connectivity and battery life.
Like a good copy editor, the constraints force all involved to focus on what matters: More signal, less noise.
Like a good copy editor, the constraints force developers, designers and content producers to focus on what matters, often resulting in a better user experience: More signal, less noise.
If you want to know where innovation will arise, just look at the limits. From poor cellphone users in India, to the lack of Internet infrastructure in Kenya to a saturated app market in the United States, here are seven ways, from all seven continents, mobile practitioners are doing more with less.
ASIA: Missed call ecosystem (India)
Everybody makes them and gets them. But most people, in the West at least, probably have not thought about using them. In India, missed calls, the "poor man's text message," are used all the time, by people, by apps, even by infrastructure.
From GigaOM, here are a few things Indians are doing with free missed calls:
Friends, family or business associates might place a missed call to communicate a pre-determined message or, if the recipient is able and willing to pay for a text or call back (incoming calls and texts are free in India), to signal that they would like to communicate.
After receiving a missed call at a designated number, a system developed by a cloud telephony company and Bangalore-based partner will call users back with dynamic information, such as the current daily deal or real-time bus schedule.
By attaching a receiver and SIM card, to authenticate that the call is coming from an authorized number, to a switch, startup RealTech Systems created a device that lets farmers turn on and off irrigation systems remotely, saving them from miles-long walks.
AFRICA: Texting lions (Kenya)
In East Africa, the lions are disappearing, in part because herders poison them to protect the livestock they depend on to earn a living.
If herders knew where the lions were, the thinking goes, they could instead just move their animals away from danger. Once you collar the lions with GPS units, which must be easier said than done, tracking the animals is a straightforward enough task to accomplish over a wireless or satellite network. But what if you're in a place without established Internet infrastructure, like East Africa?
Attaching a simple modem to the lions' collars as well, as New York-based research company Ground Lab, with the help of nonprofits, has done in Kenya, makes it possible to send lions' locations to a centralized computer via text message, a potential model for other machine-to-machine communication across the Internet of Things, according to this Atlantic Wire summary.
EUROPE : The French Mobile Revolution
They're calling it the French Mobile Revolution. Revolution? Yes, and one that might just spread to other nations.
When you learn it's giving customers unlimited voice, text messages and data for the equivalent of $25.50 a month, you may start to nod your head. When you learn how Internet service provider Free is doing it, you may start head-banging.
It's doing it, coverage by GigaOM's Mobilize blog and PC World explains, by networking five million customers' set-top boxes. Within range of others customers' boxes, nanocells for data, and, being phased in now, femtocells for voice and SMS, provide Wi-Fi-quality service. Out of range, traditional towers, a 3G network, which will throttle customers who consume more than 3 GB of data in a month, and roaming agreements with other providers, fill in the gaps.
While since Free Mobile's launch earlier this month competitors have cut prices some, because their networks depend on large, costly cell sites and antennas that took years to build out, they can't hope to compete with Free Mobile on price long-term.
NORTH AMERICA: Rate everything! Ever-y-thing (United States)
It's funny 'cause it's true?
The people behind what many assumed to be a joke app are acting kinda serious, releasing a second native version, for Android in addition to iPhone, and an API.
You'll get more laughs if you let the above video explain it, but, the app, Jotly, in short, lets users rate anything, then snap a photo of it, tag it and geolocate it.
Whether Jotly indeed started off as joke or the jokes completely on us, you can decide for yourself. Either way, even if it's not the "Best. App. Ever." as the Web versions of users' posts proclaim, it's brillant commentary on marketing hype, feature creep and over-sharing in a crowded mobile app marketplace.
In a way, Jotly is the "Seinfeld" of apps. It's about nothing, and everything, it parodies itself, it's as one reviewer put it, "Dumb and awesome all at once." In short, it's so F- it's an A+.
AUSTRALIA: Training mojos in indigenous communities
At the heart of any mobile content, or any interactive feature for that matter, is the story, not the technology. That mantra is the focus of a government-funded citizen journalism project in Australia, NT Mojos, which seeks to give indigenous residents living in remote areas the tools and training to produce and share videos about their lives.
It's hoped that the project provides other Australians a less marginalized view of their neighbors, promotes education and literacy in the indigenous community, and establishes enough of a foundation and momentum to sustain itself after the initial outreach has ended.
After training, which, according to an article on MobileActive, focuses on journalism fundamentals including media law, newly minted mobile journalists report, shoot, edit and upload videos on whatever topics they see fit, all on an iPhone 4 and, typically, a 3G network.
SOUTH AMERICA: Learning, 160 characters at a time (Brazil)
From augmented reality then-and-now historical tours, to apps that measure air pollution, to self-adaptive virtual tutors, mobile phones are doing things for education that as recently as my high school days might have seemed like science fiction.
These more spectacular m-learning implementations, of course, use smartphones. The root of their power, however, is their interactivity, which even the simplest phones, through the versatile text message, deliver just as well.
In Brazil, where smartphone adoption lags behind North American and Western European markets, SMS subscription services prepare students for a national high school exam and teach them English, among other subjects, The Next Web highlights.
With their immediacy, intimacy, simplicity and brevity, text messages have the power to be a tremendously engaging teaching tool, even more so than many flashy apps.
ANTARCTICA: Here, in fashion and tech, trends are trivial
But in a place where self-sufficiency is not just a virtue but a necessity, the accessibility, versatility and generativity of personal mobile devices are a space-saving, time-saving and potentially life-saving addition to researchers' and adventurers' toolbelts.
Accordingly, users follow pragmatism, not trends, when choosing a mobile operating system. Linux-based Maemo 5 was a "longtime favorite due to its compatibility and expandability with virtually everything," a May post on The Noisecast blog says. But last spring, iOS moved into the lead, according to the post, which speculated about iPhone's and iPad's enterprise, academic and clinical potential.
In the self-publishing age, we're all performers. And, mortal beings that we are, we're all on the clock.
Not that it isn't healthful to check out every now and then. One of the most popular ways to do that in America this time of year is to watch freakishly conditioned men play an alternately violent and graceful game that can make time seem to stand still. (No, that was not a dig at video reviews or TV timeouts. Well, I guess it is now.) I'm talking, of course, about the NFL playoffs.
Even though you're supposed to be checked out, to help you with your own performance, to help you beat your own daily clock, save that first fridge run for after the national anthem.
If you're watching Ravens perennial anthem singer Mishael Miller, at least, you'll absorb three qualities worth emulating. These won't make you a rock star. But they will get you gigs.
He has missed only a couple of games in 15 years, once due to a missed plane when he was overseas. Even when he has stepped aside on rare occasions for guest performers, such as country singer Martina McBride, he has been ready to help out if needed.
The 41-year-old gospel singer and former public school teacher is modest. Despite his insider status, he hasn't hounded Ravens players for autographs, or, for that matter, even met any of them. Meanwhile, his reputation for delivering a classy rendition of the anthem has attracted other clients.
The classically trained baritone is flexible. Over the years, he's adjusted his singing style to team management's preferences. Each game, he's prepared to speed things up or slow things down to stay on the carefully calibrated pre-game schedule.
If there is any delay getting everyone in place for the anthem, Miller will be told "to do the 55-second version, and he can do that properly," Byrne added. "If we have the time, he can do the minute-and-a-half version. He's very coach-able. There are so many pluses with Mishael. But beyond anything else, he can really sing."
Whatever your craft, when you check back in after Sunday's games, you'll move closer to the top by mimicking Miller.
If you're hungover – emotionally or otherwise – after your team's big win or loss – or a more consequential victory or defeat – show up to work or school anyway. When you get ahead, don't slow yourself down patting yourself on the back. When you fall behind, don't let perfect become the enemy of the good – instead, pivot to your "55-second version."
