Adaptive Path Blog

I’ll put it out there…. I think that this year we will see some terrific mobile interfaces. We’re just wrapping up CES and the second week of January and already there’s so much promise. After next week’s MacWorld expo and whatever announcements Apple has in store for the iPhone, I predict that we will be even more excited about mobile UX.

Google’s new Android operating system shows promise for bringing terrific experiences. Based on what Google has already shown us, the user experience was front and center during product design. Add to this the openness of the new platform allowing developers to build the best apps without restrictions.

Yahoo! released a new version of Go, a free download for your mobile that brings together all of the Y! services into one slick application. This app also allows developers to create widgets that plug-in to the Go framework. While the 3.0 version doesn’t yet work on my Windows Mobile device, I was really happy with it’s predecessor and this new one looks to fix my core issue: customizing functionality. Offering an application framework that will work on EVERY smartphone, instead of focusing on one carrier or device is a good move.

Microsoft is working on Windows Mobile 7. Screenshots and interaction models have been leaked, showing a bunch of great improvements. Of course, Microsoft is borrowing a bit from Apple and the iPhone with a touchscreen and accelerometer. I am a fan the WinMo operating system, having worked with HTC for a bit and used an 8525 for the last year. I think we’ll start to see some interesting multi-touch coming to mobile from the Surface UX team up in Redmond.

All three of the the big guys above are poised to bring some terrific innovations to users. What I am most excited about, however, is what smaller groups are doing right now. There’s the hackers who wanted more from their iPhone pushing Apple to release an SDK. There’s .NET, Java and Ajax developers building tons of great, small apps for their respective mobile platforms. And then there’s PointUI who said “we can create a better experience” and just did it. I have been using the PointUI Home interface replacement for Windows Mobile for a week and it’s awesome! Home is a thin app that sits on top of the standard OS interface. Many of the lessons learned from the iPhone, such as large hit targets gestures and simplicity have been incorporated. Check out this video or download the free software for yourself.

By no means do I think that the mobile space is going to be all roses. There will be the continued bickering between carriers, hand-held manufacturers, designers and users. There will still be attempts to woo customers with goofy features over tangible benefits. Nonetheless, after just a couple weeks into 2008, I think that we are in for one awesome year in mobile.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Development, Experience Design, Interaction Design, Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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