Pre-conference workshop - 28th October 2008

Mobile Design and Development Platforms

This workshop will span six hours of presentations and discussions, intended to bring product marketers up to speed on the available technologies, with frank round table talks about implementation strategies, challenges, and opportunities. Four sessions will be presented, informing delegates deeper and deeper into the product panoply that exists in mobile, with recommendations for rapid and cost efficient launch into a new handsets season.

Session One: High Level Technology Overview

Today’s mobile phone has a large set of included technologies and interdependencies. The radio and screen are only the beginning, as the operating system, UI layer, input technologies, and more come together. In this 90-minute session, the following areas will be covered:

Processors & Radios

Operating Systems

Browsers & Rendering Engines

Session Two: Input Hardware

Keypads, touch pads, touch screens, joysticks, haptics, and trackballs will be described, from the technical to the user experience.

Session Three: User Experience Layer

While the OS was discussed earlier in the day, we did not cover the user experience layer. At the high level there are OpenWave’s MIDAS, Widsets, Alltel’s Celltop, TAT, and Qualcomm’s UI One, in-between there is Opera and Flash Lite, and at the low level there is J2ME, JavaFX, and SVGt 1.2. What do these layers mean and how can they contribute to a better—or worse user experience?

Session Four: Applications and Web Sites

Bringing the day to a close will be how these technologies come together to enable application and mobile web site design and development. The strategies and technologies required will be explored, along with ways to ease the developer’s burden. Tools and solutions will be presented, as well as infrastructure, such as the WURFL. DotMobi will also be described, and how it has affected the mobile industry

Scott Weiss is the Executive Director for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, working from Human Factors International’s London  office. Currently, he leads projects that span desktop, mobile, medical, consumer electronics, and enterprise business needs with regard to design, research, and usability institutionalisation. Prior to joining HFI, he led teams of researchers and designers for eleven years as the Principal of Usable Products Company, which he formed in New York in 1996. While running Usable Products Company, Scott led usability and design projects for Dun & Bradstreet, GlaxoSmithKline, Intel, JP Morgan Chase, Samsung, Sprint, and Vodafone, among many other well-known global companies. Scott's team produced annual benchmarks of mobile user interface technologies, including Media Downloads, Music & Video, and Mobile Search. Scott's book, "Handheld Usability," was the pioneering design, prototyping, and usability text for the mobile industry. Prior to forming Usable Products Company, Scott held career roles at Apple, Microsoft, Sybase, and Autodesk. He speaks frequently and globally on the topic of usability, with special interests in mobile design and quantitative usability benchmarking.