Tag Archives: ipad

Mobile access should not be an afterthought

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I’m a heavy user of mobile devices including an iPhone 4 and a first generation iPad. I am also a very heavy consumer of news and information. Most of that consumption these days is via one of these mobile devices. So a long overdue realization really hit me, finally, this morning as I sat on my couch, trying to pore through as much news coverage of the huge, multiple tragedies in Japan as I could. Why on earth should articles, media, and other online information content still be created for the desktop PC browser first, and mobile devices as a distant afterthought?

I know, I know. There are many good reasons why this is the case. but frankly, I don’t care. As a mobile device user, I am fed up with the poor user experience I am forced into when consuming information that is not created with mobile devices in mind. I think that content creators and providers should by now think FIRST about making their content friendly for mobile devices and THEN for desktop PC browsers, not the other way around.

Every recent technology trend or study about adoption of mobile vs. desktop devices supports this. Mobile devices, broadly defined, are the present as well as the future. We need a sea change NOW in terms of content creator/publisher thinking! It is crazy, from a user perspective, that we are building and distributing content, still, based upon what is quickly becoming the tip of the iceberg.

I’ve experimented with lots and lots of different methods that try to ameliorate this situation: apps like FlipBoard, Zite, Google’s Mobilizer service, Readability, and many others. Each one is clever, inventive, and useful, but each has its limitations and doesn’t present a complete solution. I believe that the real answer lies in building for mobile first and primarily. Only then will the user experience improve.

Like many others, I am quite used to dealing with a poor user experience when trying to consume information, news, etc. on my mobile devices. But increasingly I ask myself, why should I have to put up with it?

Some thoughts on e-books

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E-books are everywhere these days. I’ve tried just about every platform and delivery variation that exists, and there are a lot of them. I like the concept of them; it’s the delivery and packaging of them that I despise so much.

Last year was arguably the breakthrough year for e-books in the conscience of the general public. Millions of e-book readers were sold (think Kindle, Nook, iPad) and there were widespread reports that e-book readers were one of the most popular Christmas gifts. The most popular e-book provider for libraries to provide e-books for their patrons — Overdrive — reports that it is overwhelmed by demand as a result.

Overdrive, to me, is the poster child for what’s still very wrong about the packaging and delivery of e-books. In terms of criticism, where do I start? The incomprehensible user interface? The complicated process of figuring out what your local library has actually subscribed to? The horrible experience (which has only recently been improved a bit) of trying to check out and download an e-book on a mobile device like the iPhone 4 that I use? And here’s another criticism that is exacerbated by the huge increase in demand that I previously mentioned: the inability to limit one’s search/browse to just those e-books that are available for checkout. Last night as I lay in bed I used my iPad to try to find a new e-book to read on Overdrive. I limited my browsing to e-books available in ePub format. There were about 125 pages (each with about 20 results) of books to choose from. I spent half an hour painstakingly paging through the results to find an e-book — ANY e-book — that was avaiable to check out. I wasn’t even bothering to search/browse by subject or known author or anything sensible like that. I just wanted to first see what e-books were actually available and then see if any of those looked interesting to read. But could I do that? NO, of course not.

And then there is the issue of Adobe’s idiotic DRM that goes with checking out ePub format e-books on Overdrive. Users are required to create an Adobe ID before they can actually read an e-book they have checked out. I have a problem with that, first of all, because I resent having to created a superfluous account with Adobe and risk having to be on their registered list for marketing of other Adobe products that I couldn’t care less about. But it gets worse. I had an e-book that I was reading on my iPhone 4 and I had verified my Adobe ID. Unfortunately I had a problem with my iPhone 4 that required me to restore it to factory settings, wiping out everything on the device and starting over from scratch. I restored everything on my iPhone include the Overdrive app. The e-book I was reading was still checked out to me so I downloaded it again. However, in the meantime I had forgotten my Adobe ID password and had to reset it. When I tried to access the e-book and was asked to verify my Adobe ID, I was told that basically I couldn’t read the e-book because it was already assigned to a different user. Argh. Adobe’s DRM is apparently very stupid.

I don’t have a Kindle although I’ve used one a little bit. I don’t have a Nook but I’ve seen and held one for a little bit. As previously mentioned, I do have an iPhone 4 and an iPad. I think both devices easily and clearly trump Kindle and Nook in terms of e-book reader capability. I particularly despise Amazon’s proprietary Kindle e-book format; kudos to Barnes & Noble, Apple, and others for pushing the ePub format instead. I have to say that of all of the e-book reader software I’ve used, though, Amazon’s Kindle software is probably the best.

Lots of other important issues revolve around e-books, including what their popularity means for public libraries, which are still heavily tied to the print — or, as I like to call it, the “offline” — world. There is a big impact on booksellers too, especially independent booksellers. I was interested to read an online article about this very issue in today’s Daily Herald, which mentioned my all time favorite independent bookstore in St. Charles, IL: Town House Books. (Interestingly, the owner of this bookstore sees no noticeable impact.) Other complicated issues about e-books include copyright, DRM, etc. Overall I am happy about the rising popularity of e-books and I plan to continue to read them. But e-book providers — Overdrive in particular — have a long way to go to make the user experience palatable.

The mobile future

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One thing that having an iPhone and and iPad has taught me is that the future is mobile. Lots of recent studies and news items point in this direction.

I’ve been spending time thinking about this as part of a goal at my work. What I’ve read and seen show that our library services have to at least account for mobile access, if not focus primarily on that means of access instead of, say, access via a regular website or portal. This might seem like common sense and it is. But unfortunately we are far from where we should be in terms of being able to serve up valuable content in an easy-to-use mobile format to our users. I’ve learned that especially in our line of work — healthcare — there are quite a few applications and sites that are optimized for mobile, but there are also many others, especially those that are expensive to buy and serve up, that are either unfriendly to mobile altogether, or the provider expects us to pay a separate license for a mobile-friendly version. This is ridiculous.

Another hindrance is the fact that my company currently only supports mobile devices that are extremely limited in their functionality (Blackberries). This is changing but not quickly enough. This past week, for example, I was very happy to hear that a large part of our staff in international markets might begin using iPads. But the fact remains that it is hard to build a mobile strategy for content delivery based on devices that have limited functionality. This is complicated also because not every device functions the same way. We in the library do not have the luxury of limitless resources to devote to support for multiple mobile platforms in addition to all of the other work we do. We know that if we serve up mobile content, it has to be done in a compelling and user-friendly way, otherwise our users won’t bother to come back to us. To do this will take a lot of work.

Then there is the problem of getting our foot in the door with the people in our corporate IT group who support mobile devices to ensure that our content is made available on supported devices.

Another twist that I have a lot of personal interest in is the possibility for corporations to support or allow the use of personal mobile devices for business. For example, as I mentioned already, I have an iPhone as well as an iPad. I use these devices (especially the iPhone) for business use but it is my personal device and I am quite limited in what I have access to. Mainly I use the web version of our corporate email system to keep track of emails and calendar.  Although recognizing the risks and challenges for companies like mine, especially when they exist in a heavily regulated and risk-averse business like healthcare, I think support for personal mobile devices should be seriously considered.