“Somehow, cell phones have tapped into a part of consumer culture where users love to express individuality by customizing their phones,” says Watanabe. “And phone manufacturers and content providers have all rushed to fulfill this need through ringtones, customizable faceplates, phone straps and a variety of other fairly low-cost after-market add-ons.”
Although creating custom wallpaper sounds easy enough, doing it well involves technical challenges as well as artistic ones. TAT has developed its own proprietary technology to do the trick and also uses standards like SVG—though everything depends on a device’s specifications.
“Most of the time you have to design your images with the compression algorithms in mind,” says Staffan Lincoln of TAT. “This will become less of an issue in the future as phones become more powerful, but right now it’s what gives our work that extra glossy finish that phone manufacturers crave.”
When designing icons and other interface elements, the main obstacle lies in the small size of the images, which often doesn’t exceed five pixels across. As a result, TAT often uses 3-D software to create the objects and then carefully rotates them to find the views that are the most effective.
“To create an image that communicates at that size, you need to be very careful when choosing an angle and composing the image,” says Lincoln. “You also need to choose an object that’s recognizable to everyone. To do this and not get stuck in a cliché can be a very challenging task.” 
(Images this page courtesy TAT)
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Aside from device manufacturers, there are thousands of other companies that want to see their content go mobile. For this, they’ll need the Internet.
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So what is the “mobile Internet”? In fact, nothing new. Mobile devices access the same sites as desktop browsers. And theoretically, developing for them shouldn’t be difficult. If a developer adheres to strict standards, he or she should be able to produce one site for the desktop and then simply modify its style sheets to make it display properly on a handset. Currently that’s just a theory.
The reality is that few devices have implemented all the standards and carriers often modify sites before they send them over their networks. As a result, designers face a proliferation of capabilities that make the early Web look like a playground.
“[Current] differences in browsers have to do with different companies all having their own take on mobile space,” says George Williams of San Francisco’s Fujiiro. “It’s not like Microsoft vs. Netscape. And even though there are standards they all have to adhere to, what they support is really spotty.”
In practical terms, that means it’s nearly impossible to get a consistent appearance on different devices. Even in Japan, designers spend much of their time trying to adapt relatively simple layouts and images to the varying capabilities of phones and carriers.
“Developing a procedure/system for delivering across all the different carriers in Japan is something most developers here have to wrestle with,” says George Baptista of Omame. “We develop for all the carriers in Japan: CHTML for i-mode, optimized CHTML for Vodafone, HDML for old AU handsets, XHTML for new AU handsets.”
Luckily, no one expects the situation to continue forever. Most of the designers interviewed in this article judged the latest generation of phones and browsers to be “pretty good,” and since users upgrade devices often, it shouldn’t be too long before the chaos subsides.
(Images this page courtesy Omame) |
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When getting down to more detailed design issues, the most obvious problem with mobile devices is the size of their screens. Typically displays are little more than 100 pixels wide (and about equal in height).
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“The first thing people realize is, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize this would be off screen,’ or ‘There’s a lot of scrolling,’” says Williams. “Navigation and site architecture become critical in a way that they’re not on the desktop.”
The limitations are particularly acute with mobile sites. To cope with the crunch, designers often ignore imagery—sometimes eliminating it altogether through style sheets—and instead spend much of their time prioritizing and structuring information. For example, most Japanese mobile sites feature only one small image, a telling color, and then links that take users right to the heart of the matter.
“We keep the design as simple and clean as possible,” says Baptista. “Most pages are text based. We spend a higher proportion of time on interface and widget issues.”
(Images this page courtesy Omame) | |
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| If possible, type on mobile platforms is even more restrictive than imagery. The average device features only default fonts, which are often of a phone manufacturer’s own design.
“They really haven’t designed fonts for these screens,” says Williams. “Screens may have great resolution and power, but fonts are where it falls apart. Things look chunky, just not as finished as they ought to be.”
In the future typographic problems will probably ease, especially with the advance of vector technologies like SVG and Macromedia’s Flash Lite. But for now, type is something that designers are likely to ignore.
With color, the story improves slightly. Many phones not only support color but also present it well. However, unlike Web sites, which are viewed in rooms with similar amounts of light, mobile devices get toted everywhere, and sometimes the effects of different environments can cause trouble.
“Understanding color is critical, not so much in terms of wash-out but contrast ratios,” says Williams. “If a client says we have to use these colors because that’s our brand, we have to decide what colors go with them in different kinds of
lighting.”
(Images this page courtesy TAT) |
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As with all interactive design, usability testing plays a crucial role in mobile development. But unlike the Web, where designers can evaluate their sites by observing focus groups, mobile usability has to be done, quite literally, on the road.
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“It’s much more costly and time consuming than Web site development,” says Baptista. “And it’s impossible to cover all handsets from all carriers, so we work out with the client what the important models are, and focus on those.”
One reason for the extensive testing is that devices use different methods for activating links. Unlike the Web, where nearly all users have a mouse, mobile devices have toggles, keys, pens and touch screens. Until designers actually observe someone using each, it’s hard to know how well an interface work.
Another consideration is performance in different locations. Unlike computers with dial-up or broadband connections, mobile devices have an infinite sliding scale of bandwidth. The same phone may get a 50K connection in downtown Manhattan and 5K connection in parts of Brooklyn.
“You pretty much have to have people in different locations physically and observe them. You basically have to look for variations in signal strength,” says Williams.
(Images this page courtesy Fujiiro)
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Though it’s always dangerous to try to predict the future, the mobile design market will almost certainly boom in the next few years. And by the time it hits the average stateside interactive firm, designing for it should be a whole lot easier. By then, the only problem will be a welcome one: Satisfying a huge number of hungry clients. And for that, Lincoln gives designers a bit of advice that’s always worth repeating:
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“Quality, quality, quality,” he says. “There are so many mobile graphics designers who mass-produce content. To be able to stand out you need to have superior quality.” Return to Introduction
(Images this page courtesy zer01)
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