Now, the important thing about mobile UX design is that it's *very visual*. It's important to have really good visuals. Of course, they need *task support* as well; they're very, very interlocked together: looks good, looks helpful, looks usable and actually *is* helpful, usable and good – worth keeping and leaving installed. But visualizations can aid in *comprehension*.
So, they can help you *make sense of stuff quickly*. An example from a field study we did with users. And it's a VPN, and what users said is they like this example. It's a very big On and Off button. So, you want to know when the VPN is on; like you turn it on, you know, the context is I need to get online; for example, when you go to China, the first thing they do is have you install a VPN at the airport. There's like a little stand. But they give you a new VPN that usually doesn't work, so your first 5-10 minutes in China
or first, I should say, couple of hours, you're checking out many many VPNs. I think I tried five or six and had a tip from somebody and it really worked. But, yeah, just a *big affordance*, big *tappable*, and also the visual of *is it on?* Is it even on? It's surprising how many VPN users in our study actually really, really enjoyed this from certain apps, and then other apps, in the case of our client's app, didn't have such a strong affordance.
There's a lot of room for improvement in many apps and basic things like alarm clock, are they half-asleep friendly? You know, we talk about interruptible, playful, visual. For me, I'd have to put my glasses on to see the thing. And can I do that with low vision – with my contact lenses or my glasses off? Can I do it while I'm half asleep, and so forth and so on? And so, that's the key. So, I introduce a watch or – it's an Apple Watch-type of concept because Apple Watches in particular and other fitness trackers
interact with the app and the device, and that's actually just a realistic setting that your mobile experience might not live alone. The other thing I like about the watch is it makes an even smaller canvas for focus, for task-first, mobile-first. If you look at the visualization, say, in the Nike Fuel versus the Apple Watch, they're using a visualization – you know – like a complete on Nike Fuel.
The Apple Watch uses a conceptual model or a visualization, a concept about closing your loops, your rings. They actually advertise the product with this 'close your rings' idea. So, Apple has that very elegant way of pre-advertising, pre-teaching to you before you buy it and then the model carries through the use. It's like a meta-nudge – a big nudge to say, "Hey, have I closed my loops yet? Oh, I'd better close my loops."
And that's how users interact with it, so it's highly effective.