03.01.11
March 2011 Mobile Webinar Q&A
This post is a forum to field questions from today’s presentation of our mobile webinar, co-hosted by Susan Evans and Tiffany Broadbent of the Office of Creative Services at the College of William and Mary.
Click here to download the presentation (PDF), and feel free to post your questions or comments about the mobile webinar below. Responses will come from members of the mStoner team and members of the William and Mary team.
If you are interested in signing up for the mobile workshop being hosted in Chicago on Friday, March 18, 2010 you can get more information and register here.
How are you adapting your images and icons to newer devices that have higher resolution displays such as the HTC EVO and iPhone 4 (retina display)?
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Mike
Thank you all for the presentation this morning. If you were near the beginning of the re.web process today, would you still develop http://www.wm.edu and m.wm.edu, or would you focus on one design for http://www.wm.edu that was optimized for mobile users?
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Monika
Thank you for an excellent presentation!
My university (NCA&T) is in the beginning stages of a website redesign project. The current priority is likely to be focused on the public site, but I’d like to get some ideas about considerations to make as we develop a longer term mobile strategy. Other than observing W3C standards and studying our analytics, what actions would you recommend that we take now so that we build an infrastructure that can be extended to the mobile environment (both a mobile site and mobile apps) in the future?
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Robin Howard
@Mike: We haven’t adapted our images for one device or another right now. Using the viewport meta tag i mentioned during the presentation, we just make sure the devices see the page and its images as full screen and that provides a nice, and relatively consistent, user experience.
@Robin Howard: I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is the portability of your content. Whether it be by offering RSS feeds of your content, or via a CMS that you can use to build both regular and mobile sites as Doug mentioned, having a way to access the content of your site from other avenues needs to be a key part of your site’s infrastructure.
Another point would be to determine who you want your audience to be for your mobile site or app. Do you need to look into integration with Blackboard or other pieces of software your students and faculty/staff use? or are you focusing on prospective students and alumni?
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Tiffany Broadbent
@Mike: honestly we are more focused on the basics of elastic / em-based sizes / viewport use to suit a wide variety of devices than we are about designing for the most advanced platforms. Good thing to flag though; I think that is where design is headed. Your are a forward-thinker.
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Doug Gapinski
@Monika Thank you for attending! I don’t think there is great way to create a single design that works optimally on both a regular site and on smart phones yet. There are fluid CSS frameworks that adjust for devices such as http://cssgrid.net/ that will look “good” on a mobile platform versus a main site,but they don’t necessarily address the way users like to consume content. A smaller amount of content is needed on a mobile site and it has to be addressed in a static way or within the CMS.
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Doug Gapinski
@Monika I think what you are referring to is known as Responsive Web Design. However, your mobile website should complement your existing site - not copy it. You also should think of the context of your users. Most users are on the go and want to find information quickly and intuitively.
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Mike
@Robin: thank you for attending and it was nice to meet you last week. Here are the issues I can think of that would influence a sustainable infrastructure:
• Determine whether you are doing a standalone site or want it to be set up as multiple publishing targets
• If standalone, choose code source (from scratch, MIT, Mobile OSP, other)
• Assign responsibility for mobile site (content contributors, RSS feeds, etc.) and hours for maintenance
• Determine what utilities you would like to offer current audiences
• Determine a maintenance plan for mobile content
• Determine a plan for analytics / focus groups moving forward and decide what changes to make (should be looked at monthly or bi-monthly initially)
This is not a comprehensive view of a mobile launch, but I think you’re asking specifically about sustainability issues. Let me know if you’d like more detail than what I provided above.
Posted on March 1, 2011 by Doug Gapinski