Mobile email - chasing context

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Mobile email

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaffney/6168270379/

chasing context

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Desktop context

http://stylecampaign.com/contextimages.html

STYLECampaign http://stylecampaign.com/contextimages.html

Mobile context

STYLECampaign http://twitter.com/#!/Brendeezy123/status/47895677581271040

STYLECampaign Source: Knotice Mobile Email Opens Report, Q4 2010. 155.3 million emails

7am peak mobile email usage

11pm 2nd peak couch / bed

Mobile email opens by time of day

STYLECampaign http://twitter.com/#!/Brendeezy123/status/47895677581271040

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Who sleeps with their phone?

Source: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, April 29-May 30, 2010

65% of American adults have slept with their phones on or near their bed.

The no. rises to over 90% among ages 18-29.

STYLECampaign Alarm clock iPhone app by iHandySoft Inc.

Alarm clock emails

Child-proof design for blurry eyed adults:

. Targets you can hit swiping at the screen half asleep (left or right handed).

. Both targets as far apart as the screen will allow to avoid a mistap.

. No need to zoom or scroll with a body lacking co-ordination upon waking

. Works in either orientation (important when lying down as tends to flip)

. “Just enough” content, high contrast for low light & easy to take in at a glance.

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Nokia

BlackBerry

iPhone 3

Android

iPad

176px-768px

Kindle Fire 1024 x 600px

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Android OS - The first 100 devices

240 x 320px

320 x 480px

480 x 800px

480 x 854px

Different resolutions on Android

Android OS usage stats Jan 2011

Source: Percent Mobile & Android Developers Blog

STYLECampaign Source – Litmus 2011

Top mobile email clients

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Get to know usersLitmus / Pivotal Veracity/ Return Path (email analytics)

PercentMobile / admob / Bango (mobile web analytics)

Ask via survey or during sign up

% who click link to mobile version

Track mobile opt-ins

Website stats – e.g. Google

Look at the demographics of each platform

e.g. 73% of Android users are male vs. 57% of iPhone users.

STYLECampaign Try mobile web analytics with mobile version

Gap desktop & mobile identical, gathering mobile web stats?

STYLECampaign Source: Pivotal Veracity, an IBM company , Jan 1st – March 22nd 2011

Mobile email usage by day

Highest usage = Sunday Highest weekday usage = Wednesday Lowest usage = Saturday

STYLECampaign Mobile usage stats from a template that’s not mobile optimized vs. optimized 1 month later

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Preview tools Litmus

Pivotal Veracity

Return Path

PreviewMyEmail

EmailonAcid

DeviceAnywhere / perfectmobile

iBBDemo /iPhoneTester / TestiPhone/ iPhoney

Can’t beat a real device

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Summed up Mobile context precedes design but hard to nail

Helps to use target devices in same context as users

If in doubt: design for “at a glance” & partial attention

Get to know your users via multiple sources

Android & BlackBerry stats are understated

Peak mobile email usage is 7am

Sunday then Wednesday peak days of the week

Test on a real device

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Fixed vs. FluidStyle vs. accessibility?

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Fluid imagesNot fluid

Fluid

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IMG style="width:90%; max-width:550px; max-

height:237px"

176px320px320px1024px

Desktop

Fluid template - http://stylecampaign.com/fluid/

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Max-width capped at 550px

Gmail under Firefox

STYLECampaign Hotmail under IE 6

No max-width support goes as wide as the screen

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Obama 2012 campaign

mobile

desktop

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“ I just wanted a way for the text of the newsletter to be readable on smartphones without people having to zoom in. As far as I know, readers are happy with it! ” - Mark Hurst

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Full URL early BB

Fluid B2B mobile version

STYLECampaign 2 col fluid layout = narrow col of text on mobile

desktop

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320px400px460px480px520px520px650px

How wide for fixed width?

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580px wide

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Default zoom Min zoom Max zoom

Android 2.2, HTC Evo 4G (480px wide res)

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Hotmail via a browser Hotmail viewed natively

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320px template via browser

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480px wide

bg forces it wide

Pre-header container forces it zoomed out

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550px wide656px wide700px wide

wide scalable

STYLECampaign “Minimizing expense of using your content should be a design goal” - BB

677K worth of images

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The W3C advises mobile emails be under 20K

research into retail email image sizes

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> performance Serve appropriately sized mobile images

Use CSS3 for buttons, gradients ect.

Use less white to preserve LED battery life – WP7

Use solid colors instead of gradients in images

Go metro – typography as a design element

If hiding content via @media, ask do you need it at all?

Don’t be sloppy with animated Gifs

Adapt FPS and resolution to connection speed

Embrace coded pixel art (ok that’s just me)…

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Fixed to FluidUsing @media to bypass max-width

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mobile = 100%

desktop = 640px

Redesign = 3x lift in click-to-open rate

12% of those who opened email on mobile clicked / 6% of those who opened on non-mobile clicked

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@media = layoutfixed to fluid container

two column to one column

600px - 300px fixed

change font properties

line-height

hide images or containers

swap images

change alignment

rework navigation

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“Mobile versions” with no viewport defined

980px

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<meta name = “viewport” content = “width = 500″>

Default – 980px viewport width = device-width width = 500

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400px 700px 836px

Native email on iOS – with no viewport defined

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Optimize for 1st screen

320x280px or 480x142px

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12%600x600px layout

530px visible on 1st screen

Optimize for 1st screen

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12%530px visible on 1st screen

Navi & branding above content

mistap waiting to happen

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elevate content

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subject lines as primary content

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No logo but from name always visible

Teaser content visible

Swipe path

Lazy fingers = easier to use with links on same line

STYLECampaign Design for newbie and lazy fingers

W pattern too much thought

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WP7 Panorama view

Source: UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7

with bg

solid bg

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2415px wide horizontal layout

View horizontal email

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dead space

View horizontal email

scaled to height

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320px device width

View horizontal email

works in browser

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< footer more contenthigh footer stack

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Summed up Define viewport to avoid zoomed out creative on web

Fluid layouts thumb their noses at new devices

320px width for Android / webmail via browser

If too skinny go to 480px-520px

Do what you can to increase performance

Use @media to transition from fixed to fluid

Optimize the first screen

Reduce footer text with horizontal layouts

Design for newbie & lazy fingers

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Design emailfor touch

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“The comfortable minimum size of tappable UI elements is 44 x 44 points” – p.13 iOS Human Interface Guidelines

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add padding mistap or zoom?

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Weather - gloves?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/istolethetv/5089765928/

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pttrns.com androidpatterns.com mobile-patterns.com

Mobile design patterns

STYLECampaign www.mobilexweb.com/blog/ui-guidelines-mobile-tablet-design

UI Guidelines

iPhone Android

Windows 7

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text hints

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6 tabs with small text and little horizontal spacing

4 tabs, > spacing but text is still hard to read

5 finger-sized links which are easy to read

Gap redesigns navigation for touch

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Over-sized

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Ignore navi 1st screen = navi Skip to content

STYLECampaign Navi positioning

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STYLECampaign Performance: 109KB vs. 38KB

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Can’t miss buttons

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CTA button?

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SHOP NOW >>

CTA graphicCTA URL

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tappable sixpack

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finger-sized grids

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3D

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Notifications

Keyword ads

focusedUI clutter

Multitasking

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Simplify…

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hard workfor mobile & desktop users

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BIG FONTS(OR WE’LL CHANGE IT FOR YOU!)

style=”-webkit-text-size-adjust:none”

STYLECampaign broken navi’s on iPad due to auto-scaling

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Edit…push the contrast

STYLECampaign Webmail on Kindle = B&W Webkit

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Summed up Check out UI guidelines and mobile patterns

Rethink your layout for ergonomics

Navi is a bottleneck but there are solutions

Increase the size of your CTA’s

Big fonts – Apple recommends 17-22px

Finger-sized product grids in place of buttons

3D = tactile and tappable

Do a grayscale test

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What’s next?“In two years or so we are planning for a shift, where we will segment not by device anymore but by behavioral context. Is it at home, is it on the go…”

Paul Gelb of Razorfish at Mobile Insider Summit

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DIStime location device browser connection

APIs / RSS

format, resolution, fps, compression

sessions

3D content

server-side “Photoshop”

openStyleCampaign’ Dynamic Image Server (DIS)

image, animated gif, video

STYLECampaign Geo-location = reactive

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Lord of the rings video

3D character

live video textured onto polygon

dynamic text

Logo overlays video frame

File format, FPS, compression & resolution vary depending on the connection speed or device.

Source: StyleCampaign’ DIS video

live video mashup

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Anna Yeaman

Co-founder

www.stylecampaign.com

anna@stylecampaign.com

@stylecampaign

Thanks!