Bridging the Mobile Design Gap

Small screens, varying contexts, varying form factors -- challenging, inspiring, or both? Our perspective on how we view these many aspects of designing for mobile can usually be traced back to how and when we came to be working on the web.

For those of us who have been pushing pixels since the medium's infancy, mobile is just the latest, though most profound shift. Web standards and even, yes, the much maligned <table>, have served important roles in helping to push the web forward by highlighting its weaknesses, whether in the area of emotionally engaging design or findability of information.

In this session, we'll examine the history of design disruption on the web as a foreshadowing of the mobile web revolution. And we'll discuss the effects of those disruptions on those of us trying to trying to craft great experiences when we often have such different ideas about what the web is, or should be. Because it's only by understanding our shared history, and examining our assumptions and expectations dragged along from print, software or Flash-based design, that we can ultimately move the mobile web forward by simply creating a single, universally-accessible web.