The PenPoint tablet was ahead of its time and too expensive and heavy, but had gestural syntax and personal-productivity benefits that we can still learn from.
Responsive design teams create a single site to support many devices, but need to consider content, design and performance across devices to ensure usability.
Designing for all screen sizes must consider the human–device communication capacity, which depends on users’ memory, device portability, and screen size.
Two winning intranets—triptic and Abt Associates—use responsive design, prioritize their content, and employ elegant navigation to accommodate and optimize for multiple devices.
Demanding that users register or log in before they can use an app or see website information has high interaction cost and defies the reciprocity principle.
Testing phones, tablets, or other mobile devices with real users requires special consideration for recording equipment, room setup, and even the test users.
The Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch poses unique problems due to the tiny touchscreen. The use of gestures and streamlining content are reasonable solutions, but need to be implemented in a more usable manner.
Native and hybrid apps are installed in an app store, whereas web apps are mobile-optimized webpages that look like an app. Both hybrid and web apps render HTML web pages, but hybrid apps use app-embedded browsers to do that.
Supporting field staff and mission-critical apps are core reasons to take enterprise computing mobile, but users also value access to news and internal social networks.
Hidden features, reduced discoverability, cognitive overhead from dual environments, and reduced power from a single-window UI and low information density. Too bad.