Mobile web design theory

Those who win the mobile race are most likely to be those who understand how to work with and even enhance the fluidity of context that mobile affords.

Long before the hype over social media, designers who best understood usability knew that web design was about relationships.

Fundamental aspects of relationships:

A classical philosophical understanding of relationships breaks them down into four fundamental properties or aspects.

Relationships are:

Semantic: they rely on word choice and tone in communication. We reify the world through words, agree most philosophers of language. In accordance, to some extent we are reified by the words of others or of words in our environment. (Think of advertising, of course, but stop signs and much more.) Search, arguably the most critical aspect of the web's development so far is focused on semantics.

Spatial: based on proximity or at least accessibility.

Social: we link with others through others and along with others.

Temporal: relationships take place in time. And they are finite in time.

We have relationships primarily with people, things and places.

The web is, as Hinman argues, good at semantic relationships (and at social). The web is good at people and things.

Mobile is good at relationships with places and it brings spatial and temporal aspects of relationships into any equation and highlights them. E.g. Your relationship with your partner gets better, on the occasion you are able to find the best restaurant near you.

4square is not possible without mobile. Searching based on location is going to be key for the future of search: through use of GPS and other technology.

Some apps and websites for mobile that are already becoming huge and will continue to do so will be technologies that help us understand place as well as temporal and spatial relationships.

If interested in learning more about our understanding of mobile and usability, find out about our mobile usability consulting services.