These design considerations are very interesting, and something I had not considered until reading this article by Adobe. It appears that small detail is easily missed on a mobile phone screen due to varying lighting factors and the movement of the screen while using it. It had also occurred to me while using my phone to play an online game of brick breaker, that focusing on such vibrant colours on a small screen that is moving constantly in and out of focus is very bad for your eyes. Could it be that mobile phone companies or M-Commerce businesses could be accused of damaging the health of their customers? In America anything is possible!
“Users most likely will not even notice subtle smooth colour transitions, unless they just can't tell anymore what they are looking at. Pump up the contrast. Even if that bothers your colour-sensitive eyes, your users will thank you for it.”
If users require high contrast to view websites and imagery effectively then this may conflict with artists and designers who feel that their work is been misinterpreted by the restrictions of the mobile phone screen. It think the user needs to realise that the internet on mobile phones is useful for informational based things like the weather or downloads of music etc, but as a platform for browsing it constrains the mediums that’s may be presented on it to a high degree, this may have implications when browsing sites such as Amazon and eBay with purchasing in mind.
“For animations, focus on close-ups, while avoiding panoramic views and pans (see Figure 3). A lot of detail will be lost on the small screen, and as great as your animation may look on your desktop computer, if it can't be seen on the mobile phone the user will not appreciate it.”
Figure 3: Close-ups immerse you in the content.
It seems from comments like this that simplicity and bold colours are the what designers must use to translate visual content to the audience effectively in varying conditions of mobile phone use.
“Slick motion graphics in Flash often require high frame rates to look smooth. You can see people using 30, 60, or even 100 frames per second (fps) to achieve the appearance of smooth motion with tweens. Try that on a mobile phone, and chances are you will only see something stuttering across the screen, which is anything but a pleasant experience.”
This demonstrates another restriction of mobile phones in displaying a media type that is now prevalent to the web and will be featured on numerous sites that users may navigate using their phones. Mobile phones may also have restricted memory or connection speeds, because at the end of the day they have nothing on the processing power of even the most average PC or Mac. So this means that special consideration should be taken by designers when considering the use of large files such as video or graphical elemnts, are they necesary to convey the content?
“At this point you may wonder, "Is it really worth all the trouble?" The answer is a resounding "Yes." If you're not trying to squeeze a two-minute-long animation onto a phone, you'll probably not even face half the troubles that we went through. For us, it was a challenge we couldn't refuse, and we succeeded. And I hope that what we learned will save you some headaches and trouble as well.”
It seems that this designer relished the challenge of producing for a new media platform, and on the basis of succeeding they feel it was worth the effort, however when you think of what has actually been produced and could look so much better then you have to ask the question, are the restrictions this media platform poses to designers work really worth it? In todays market, the resounding answer has to be yes, imagine from a business perspective the advantages of been able to push media out to users on different platforms, at any time of the day, in any place.
No comments:
Post a Comment