The Mobile First Design Approach—Soon to be Watch First?
Mobile first or web first? While some say “Po-tay-to. Po-tah-to.”, others take a more pious view when it comes to their design approach. With new emerging technologies, it is nearly impossible to narrow down the design process to one singular method. Released just seven months ago, the Apple Watch has taken the world by storm, already opening up several new doors to the way we look at design. Think big, they said. It turns out our devices and screens are growing smaller and smaller.
Let’s start with the ongoing debate between mobile first versus web first. I attended InVision’s webinar titled “Mobile First: A Future-Friendly Approach to UX Design” several months ago, luring me in the direction of mobile first. I thought: Right, choosing your most basic components and moving up from there is the way to go. I mean, isn’t it better to add more components as you scale up instead of deleting content as you scale down? I included a couple of their slides below; this particular bullet caught my attention: “Since you’ve already synthesized your product to it’s most vital elements, you get to decide how to make it even more robust, instead of deciding what to cut or water down”.
As I continued to synthesize these points, the more and more it made sense. “I get it!” I thought. Having a minimalistic approach isn’t just a trend, but a way of simplifying the complexity of technology in a way that allows the user to understand.
Sticking with this mindset, I approached many design problems that included a mobile platform with this idea of mobile first. As I happily continued on my path, I received an e-mail notification titled “Mobile First is a Hoax”, an article posted in the Interaction Design Association LinkedIn group. After thinking How dare they!, I calmly read the article.
I failed to remember some critical points about web first. People tend to save the important tasks for completing on their desktop. In fact, it’s often easier to carry out many tasks when a larger screen is available. If I had to choose between writing an e-mail to my boss’s boss’s boss on my phone or on my desktop with tactile-responsive qwerty keys, I’d definitely choose the desktop. A sudden finger swipe can do a lot of harm these days!
So that was that. I was thrown off and didn’t know what family to belong to anymore. I became an orphan, wandering the silks of the world wide web. Until—the shiny new Apple Watch made an appearance. It was a watch. And a computer. With a small screen. And it could do so much! All these new GUI kits came out, with fabulous mockups raining over me as I tinkered with the possibilities. That was when I began thinking: Are we moving towards an era of a watch first design approach?
The abundance of watches on the market seemed to speak for itself: Moto 360, Pebble Steel, ASUS ZenWatch, Sony SmartWatch 3, etc. The potential was there, and it tickled my fancy. The challenge intrigued me, and I wanted watch first to be the big, new, sweeping movement the way mobile first was.
There was so much to explore. Unlike the mobile device, the watch was meant to be attached to the person as a wearable, opening up entirely new doors the same way the mobile device did in comparison to the desktop. There was fitness tracking to be done, minimal alerts, painless communication, and so much more. So many new businesses are now entirely mobile (Uber, for example), and utilize wearables like these to optimize their business model. It was then to my disappointment to hear about the decline of watch sales (for Apple, anyway).
I wasn’t sure if the design community did not want to tackle this challenge, or if this technology was simply too innovative to welcome. I thought long and hard, trying to decide where the future of user interface design would lie.
It was not long before I realized that the answer was lying right in front of me, at the very crux of the designer’s mission. As designers, we are called to give the user the best experience possible, delighting the user at every touch point throughout their journey with the product or service. Some users may prefer their laptops and large monitors, while others enjoy smaller devices. Some might enjoy tracking their every movement and thus need a mobile-friendly device that can be in their carry on-the-go, while others don’t need technological involvement in their lives to that extent.
In short, my epiphany was: It’s all contextual.
If a company has 90% of their user base using their phones, taking a mobile first approach is probably a smart move. On the flip side, if a startup caters their products to large corporations that require constant interaction with large screens, it would probably be optimal to begin designing with larger screens first. Even so, the designer’s job is never done once they start—it’s simply a starting point. Designing from the mobile or watch or desktop first standpoint doesn’t ignore the other user base. Their needs will still be carefully considered.
The emergence of smart watches has simply proven technology to be so versatile, giving designers more and more platforms to utilize. Can the screen size become even smaller one day? Who knows. But who’s to say it won’t become giant? Perhaps the sizing is no longer important. We’re seeing the rise of the No-Interface Interface (i.e. Ghost Interface, Invisible Interface). Taking that in to consideration, the concept remains the same. It’s all contextual. The challenge is greater, but so is the fun.
