Winning Content by Leen Jones

Mobile technology has amazing potential as a persuasive medium for business, public health, and more. B.J. Fogg astutely predicted that mobile technology would be THE medium to get information to people at the right time and place.  Mobile technology takes kairos, or the opportune moment, to new levels. I recently talked with friend and colleague Nick Sabadosh, who has written a chapter in Fogg’s soon-to-be released book Texting4Health.  Nick is a User Experience Specialist with Danya International working under contract at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tell us about Mobile Persuasion and Texting4Health.

Well, Mobile Persuasion and Texting4Health are conferences sponsored by the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab and the brainchild of its director, Dr. B.J. Fogg. He and his team are focused on understanding how technology can be used to change behavior. Because so many people have a mobile phone—the latest estimate is that 1 in two people in the world have one—and because they have so much computing power today, they may be the best technology platform for affecting what people do. The purpose of the 2007 Mobile Persuasion conference was to provide a forum for leaders in various industries and disciplines to share their perspectives and projects in the space.

They had an interesting format for the one-day event. Each of the 30 speakers was limited to a 10-minute talk, followed by audience Q&A. The time limit forced speakers to create high-octane, very concise presentations that really cut to the heart of the issues. It was pretty intense, and at the end of the day I felt I’d been immersed in all these great ideas, both from the speakers and from the enthusiastic crowd—more than 200 people at Mobile Persuasion. It was really inspiring

OK, so that was the first conference, and I think it was a huge success. But, as I understand the history, B.J. came away from it feeling like maybe there was something missing. Yes, we covered a lot of topics, but maybe it was too many, too broad? We learned a lot, but there were also some loose ends, and I think specifically he felt that some people need something more practical. He is really focused on figuring out what can we do now, today, that will have an impact. For someone not really familiar with the mobile space, it may have been hard to figure out where to start. Some talks were about blue-sky prototype technologies, others relied on proprietary software systems or only worked with specific carriers. Anyone familiar with the mobile space knows that it is just amazingly complex – all the different carriers with their “walled gardens”, the countless handset models each with their idiosyncratic user interfaces, features and capabilities. I think B.J. and team felt a conference like this could do more to inspire people to go off and create stuff, to make something happen.

So they knew they were on to something good and wanted to keep the momentum going, but now the goal was to focus.  So first, to address the problem of all those competing technologies, they narrowed it down to one mobile channel, which was SMS, short message service, or as most of us know it, “texting.”  If you want the most pervasive, lowest-common-denominator platform to reach phones around the world, texting is it.  Then they wanted to pair texting with a really compelling topic area, something where it was obvious how persuasion could have an impact and get people energized. The natural choice was health. And so the Texting4Health conference came to be.

The format was similar to Mobile Persuasion, with a couple of twists. They offered a pre-conference SMS training class, for people who wanted to learn how to send and receive texts. And then at the end, representatives from four organizations gave overviews of different SMS systems, to teach people about different ways to build their own SMS project or service, either on their own or with a vendor.

I think the conference did achieve the goal of giving people some practical, actionable ideas and inspiration for how to go off and start their own texting services.

You have a chapter in Texting4Health called “Usability Testing for Text Messaging”  Could you give us a sneak preview?

After each of these conferences, B.J. and team assemble a companion book and invite each of the speakers to contribute a chapter.  I had a few discussions with B.J. and his co-editor, Richard Adler from Institute for the Future, and we decided a chapter on usability techniques would be a good complement to the other topics. My goal with the chapter was to expose readers to the benefits of taking a user-centered approach to their SMS projects, to give them a quick overview of the key elements of usability testing, and to encourage them to incorporate usability into their overall design and development process.

People may have great ideas and content for a health SMS application, but as with any product, the sooner you get user feedback, the more likely your chances for success. In the chapter I cover topics such as selecting appropriate tasks to test, choosing test participants, and a few techniques for low-fidelity prototyping. I close the chapter with references to books and web sites that pick up where I left off. It’s really just a primer, something to whet readers’ appetites and get them hooked on the concept of usability. I hope people find it useful!

How did you become interested in designing for mobile?

It probably started at my first job with MAYA Design Group, a product design and development consultancy in Pittsburgh. I worked on a variety of projects, and at some point I realized that designing consumer products, and especially physical products, had a strong appeal to me. Crafting that one-on-one experience in the hope that the user actually enjoys what you’ve created…it’s kind of like orchestrating a piece of music for the enjoyment of one person. There’s this sense of intimacy about it that makes it particularly satisfying when you get it right. And the blending of physical, tactile elements and virtual interfaces adds to the richness of the experience—and to the challenge of the design.

So, when it came time to leave MAYA, I was looking for two things: a company that was as similar to MAYA as possible and one that was designing portable products. I couldn’t believe my luck when I discovered Ratio DesignLab. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that they were creating some of the most innovative mobile solutions in the country in the late 90’s. Motorola used them as a kind of external skunk works to realize next-generation mobile products. To meet the needs of clients like Moto, Ratio developed their own custom tools for developing rich user experiences on handheld devices. That tool eventually morphed into an application suite, and Ratio morphed into AppForge to sell those tools. After AppForge, I stayed in the mobile space and spent 3-plus years at Cingular Wireless. Now I’m a contractor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and many around the agency are keenly interested in mobile. The Obama Administration seems committed to pushing innovative uses of technology in government, so I expect to find more opportunities to work on mobile in my current position, as well.

What elements do you think are key for a “winning” mobile experience?

Honestly, I think the most important thing is having a deep understanding of your target users. What kind of phone or device do they have? What’s going to motivate them to use your offering? How does it fit into their lives, their daily routines? And as more and more offerings appear in the mobile space, how are you going to distinguish your product from your competitors’?

The mobile space is the new Wild West. Some people may think, hey, we have a Web site, let’s just push that onto a mobile device. Yes, maybe an iPhone or Blackberry is capable of displaying a standard web page, but I think users will demand more. They expect a mobile experience, not a desktop experience, something that is crafted to take advantage of the mobile platform—small, portable, personal, always on. Winning mobile experiences will leverage those attributes and fit seamlessly with the very personal way that people interact with mobile devices.

If you could give a UX professional only one tip for mobile design, what would it be?

I think it’s the same tip I’d give anyone who is designing any technology experience, regardless of the channel or platform: Test it! Early and often. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. From day 1, be thinking about how to determine whether you’re getting the user experience right.

And I offer a corollary to that: Don’t get hung up on testing the technology. Focus on what your users want to accomplish. Users want to keep in touch; they want to learn and stay informed; they want to have fun. Content, labeling, mental models—those will be the crucial things. The buttons, the clicks, the chrome—those are just means to an end. Keep a disciplined eye on your users’ goals, and the rest will follow.

To connect with Nick, check out his LinkedIn profile.