Rachel Hinman on UX Hong Kong

In this conversation, Daniel Szuc talks with UX Hong Kong speaker Rachel Hinman, senior UX researcher at the Nokia Research Center in Santa Monica, California.

Rachel discusses designing for mobile including the need to keep focused on contextual experiences both within and outside the mobile device; the importance of acknowledging the increasing demands of all users to be able to seamlessly transfer data; and the necessity of balancing technical specifications with the reality that we are designing these devices for other human beings.

Quotes

We like to call mobile devices mobile phones but they’re really not phones anymore…a phone is not like a laptop computer…it’s extremely unpredictable…so you have to be conscience of what that means for the experience.

I think we what we should strive for, or move towards, is an experience that is more about knitting a person and their content…something that is developing a sense of an awareness of the surroundings as opposed to going into their space on their device.

How do we develop better “through lines” is a really interesting topic and trend because people want to be able to move things very easily from one device to another or have some sort of universal way of accessing all their files or information. What does that future start to look like?

Summary

Rachel describes the challenges and incredible opportunities in designing for the mobile experience including the convergence of all mobile devices and the ability to quickly and easily transfer information.

Rachel notes that people don’t really care about the “plumbing” of operating systems/features, though this has been the focus of most discussions when designers discuss the mobile experience with users because we use these terms and ideas.

Shifting the conversation to the contextual experience means we are able to look not just at the technical specifications but also the human elements that are necessary in the creation of any great design.

Show Notes

* Follow Rachel Hinman on Twitter.
* Rachel Hinman’s upcoming book by Rosenfeld Media The Mobile Frontier – A Guide for Designing Mobile Experiences
* Learn about others who will be presenting at the first annual UX Hong Kong conference.
* Watch videos on Flickr that Daniel Szuc put together in promotion of the conference.
* Daniel Szuc talks about UX Hong Kong in a recent Radio Johnny episode.

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