Mobile Web and SaaS App Users Need Device Switching Flexibility

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As I noted in a previous blog “Smartphones in the IT Ecosystem”, smartphones are a part of the IT ecosystem and have to co-exist with other important players in the ecosystem such as laptops, desktops and mainframes. By working together and in harmony with these other devices and systems, smartphones can become far more powerful and valuable than what they are in isolation on their own.  In this blog I discuss the need for smartphones to seamlessly work together with laptops and desktops. Read more →

Making Mobile Web Apps Suitable for Discontinuous Working Patterns

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Mobile users, by definition, are on the move. That is why they need a mobile device instead of being content with their desktops and telephones which can do far more than a smartphone. Mobile users are often interrupted. They can lose connections, get a phone call, or need to focus on some other pressing issue. Unlike users at home and or in the office, mobile users generally do not have a lot of time to focus on completing a task. Even the time that they have for any given task is unpredictable because they often cannot foresee when they will be interrupted. To cope with this, mobile users must be able to work in small, discontinuous chunks of time. The typical work pattern is that they start a task, change focus to something else when interrupted, and then come back to the task at some later time. So the task gets done in small chunks spread over of time. This is one reason why Chat/Instant Messaging, which is ideally suited for working in small, discontinuous chunks of time, is by far the most popular smartphone application. Read more →