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Bates Mobile
Proposal – Initiated September 2009
[Note: this initiative is on hold, dependent on the availability of open public data.]
Bates Mobile Mission Statement by Joseph Kibe (9/28/09)
Motivation
The adoption of smartphones — such as the Apple iPhone and RIM BlackBerry — has grown considerably in the last three years, especially among college students and young, well-educated professionals. As such, many people now expect institutions like Bates to provide a unique “mobile experience” for their iPhone, BlackBerry or other smartphone. This project aims to deliver just that: a Bates online experience tailored to mobile devices.
In this paper, we will first explore the key differences between the “desktop” Web — the experience of browsing the Web on a desktop or laptop computer — and the “mobile” Web, as experienced on devices like the Apple iPhone. From there, we will discuss proposed key features of the Bates mobile experience, and how those features best respond to the unique goals and constraints faced by mobile users.
Differentiating the Mobile Environment
Unique Goals
In the broadest terms possible, most outings onto the World Wide Web can be split into two categories. First, we have focused “goal-seekers.” These are the sort of people who check the weather after dinner, or open a browser session to check movie times on a Saturday afternoon. The goal-seeker (1) knows almost exactly what she’s looking for, and (2) wants to find “it” quickly and easily. On the other end of the spectrum we have the “curious explorers.” These people might have a broadly defined goal — as in, “I want to read some world news” or “I want to find out what’s happening this weekend” — or they may intend to use the Web to answer a more open-ended question like, “Which movie should I see this weekend?”
On the desktop, most websites must (and do) cater to both groups. As an example, The New York Times’ website (nytimes.com), has a tremendous amount of information for both goal-seekers and curious explorers. A goal-seeker with a financial bent might want to know the current share price of Google. Another more convivial goal-seeker might be looking for a review of a restaurant in Paris. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a curious explorer might be interested in just reading about the healthcare debate, or deciding where to take her next vacation.
By contrast, users on mobile platforms are almost exclusively goal-seekers. This is largely due to circumstance: most people browsing the mobile web do so in the context of some other activity. They may be at the dinner table wondering, “Where is the longest bridge on earth?” or about to step outside, asking, “Do I need an umbrella or not?” Thus, it makes sense to optimize the mobile experience for the kind of goal-seeking people who use the mobile web, even if that comes at the expense of making content suited to curious browsers less visible.
Device Constraints
We must also consider physical and technical differences between the desktop Web and mobile Web in designing and implementing a mobile Bates experience; for while many of today’s smartphones deliver rich near-desktop-class Web experiences, they are still constrained by their physical characteristics, hardware features and bandwidth limitations.
To begin, the small size of these mobile devices make it impossible to display as much information simultaneously as on a standard desktop or laptop display. For instance, iPhone’s display measures just 320 pixels by 480 pixels. Many modern laptops, on the other hand, offer a displays that measure 1440 pixels by 900 pixels. Additionally, these devices depend on miniaturized input devices (e.g., the BlackBerry trackball) or input methods unique to mobile devices (e.g., multi-touch on iPhone). These factors must be taken into consideration in the design of a mobile experience, in terms of structuring the navigation, developing an information architecture and designing the interface.
Mobile devices also lack the computing power and high-quality broadband that makes rendering complex webpages possible (or tolerably fast) on the desktop. As such, providing a “lighter” online experience can make using a mobile website far less frustrating, or, in some cases, even possible.
Features & Content
With those goals and considerations in mind, we propose the following features of a mobile Bates experience, which we’ve divided here into design and technical features, and content areas.
Design Features
First and foremost, the Bates mobile experience will be a much “lighter” environment, designed with the computing power, bandwidth and physical characteristics of mobile devices in mind. Speaking abstractly, this means that, for instance, the interface of the Bates mobile site will be much more oriented to single actions than trying to showcase a multitude of different content on each page. It will also feature larger user-interface targets (i.e., bigger “finger-friendly” buttons) and relatively large text that’s easy to read at arm’s length, even on a relatively small smartphone display.
The Bates mobile experience will also feature an information architecture that omits much of the content unlikely to be relevant to users with well-defined, directed goals (e.g., links to full 30-page research articles) to make finding content easier.
Further, the site will incorporate statistical methods for surfacing content likely to be of interest to the kinds of goal-seeking users on the Bates mobile site. For instance, using a weighted popularity metric to generate a list of “Interesting Events” in the next two weeks.
Content Areas
Specifically, we propose to offer — at least in the long run — seven key content areas through the mobile site: (1) search, (2) events, (3) dining information, (4) Bates news, (5) campus maps, (6) class information, and (7) emergency information. These are areas we feel students will access frequently on-the-go, and that serve the kinds of goal-seeking users likely to visit the mobile site. Bear in mind, of course, that users on more advanced smartphone like iPhone or BlackBerry, will always have the option of visiting the full “desktop” Bates website as well.
Conclusions
As more and more consumers move away from traditional “feature phones” to more advanced devices, such as Apple’s iPhone or RIM’s BlackBerry, more and more users both expect and would make use of a mobile Bates experience. And, while these devices do have the power to visit the “full” Bates website, most users would prefer an experience tailored to the constraints of mobile devices and their unique goals when browsing the mobile web. We believe that offering a Bates mobile experience with a mobile-oriented design, information architecture and subset of content will help improve campus life.
Draft content architecture
Jay Collier (9/30/09)
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Types of content