piannaf’s avatarpiannaf’s Twitter Archive—№ 1,494

                                                                      1. Found this Google Research paper very interesting and useful for the stuff we work on @TouchlabHQ "Understanding the Challenges of Designing and Developing Multi-Device Experiences" Choice quotes in thread 👇 ai.google/research/pubs/pub45453
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                                                                      @TouchlabHQ Many users are now engaging with multiple devices in parallel everyday
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                                                                    @TouchlabHQ the three most critical challenges they discussed: 1. The difficulty in designing interactions between devices
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                                                                  @TouchlabHQ 2. The complexity of adapting user interfaces to different platform UI standards
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                                                                @TouchlabHQ 3. The lack of tools and methods for testing multi-device user experiences
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                                                              @TouchlabHQ Multichanneled services allow the user to access the same service via different kinds of devices and platforms
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                                                            @TouchlabHQ Crossmedia services split functionality across different devices according to those devices’ strengths and affordances
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                                                          @TouchlabHQ In this case, each type of device is used for its strength, and functionality is largely non-overlapping between them
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                                                        @TouchlabHQ For multichanneled services, inter-device consistency is the most fundamental principle
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                                                      @TouchlabHQ Knowledge continuity allows the user to apply her existing knowledge about a service learned from using a previous device to a new one, while task continuity allows the user to easily resume the task he previously worked on when he switches devices
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                                                    @TouchlabHQ specializing different devices within the system with different functionalities to reduce the complexity of individual components of the system
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                                                  @TouchlabHQ such distribution of functionality must match the structure of the target activity and maintain a certain degree of flexibility and feature redundancy
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                                                @TouchlabHQ making sure different devices play to their individual strengths and complement one another for simultaneous use.
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                                              @TouchlabHQ an ideal multi-device experience should have “locally optimized consistent UI & globally unified coherent UX.”
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                                            @TouchlabHQ maintaining UI consistency across devices, especially the consistency of menu order, terminology, and colors and graphics. Furthermore, Lin noted the lack of design tools specialized for handling multiple devices and the scarcity of cross-device design patterns
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                                          @TouchlabHQ design tools inadequately supporting communications between different design roles, designers lacking knowledge about the capabilities and constraints of new hardware,
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                                        @TouchlabHQ targeting multiple platforms/devices was complicated because of the tension between the assumed need for a unified look-and-feel across devices and the inherent differences in the capabilities and user interaction metaphors of each device.
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                                      @TouchlabHQ We found this challenge was complicated by the additional tension between following native UI standards imposed by platform vendors (e.g., Google’s Material Design2 and Apple’s Flat Design3) and maintaining consistency of design across platforms.
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                                    @TouchlabHQ Functional testing, compatibility testing, and GUI testing are challenging for multi-device developers and represent an important barrier to development.
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                                  @TouchlabHQ maintaining consistent information architecture is critical to help users achieve task continuity and knowledge continuity when they switch to a different device that might have a distinct form factor or different input and output constraints
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                                @TouchlabHQ some of the most familiar building blocks of information architecture start losing their meanings in a multi-device world
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                              @TouchlabHQ All apps embody business logic in that they take users through a flow, but in a crossmedia experience, business logic also specifies how and when a device should respond to another.
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                            @TouchlabHQ It turned out to be quite difficult for designers to understand, inspect, and communicate how multiple devices would work together under different circumstances.
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                          @TouchlabHQ the first issue was the inability to determine the user’s intention when they get disconnected from one of the devices involved in the experience
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                        @TouchlabHQ The native guidelines need to be respected, but there is still a lot of room for freedom and creativity within your specific product.”
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                      @TouchlabHQ this approach is also loaded with risky assumptions about how users may cross ecosystem boundaries.
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                    @TouchlabHQ Though none of the designers we interviewed believed that every aspect of UI design should or can be consistent between platforms, some of their business stakeholders apparently did
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                  @TouchlabHQ consistency across platforms should apply to the differentiating factors in your product.
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                @TouchlabHQ the team believed that Android users would leave negative reviews if they saw a non-standard font. However, he was never sure whether that was the right decision
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              @TouchlabHQ designers often find themselves managing a delicate balance between respecting platform UI standards and maintaining the identity and coherence of the product across platforms.
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            @TouchlabHQ Their practice is complicated and undermined by the lack of information and methods to assess tradeoffs between different kinds of consistency.
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          @TouchlabHQ because different devices often implement radio technologies differently. His team could not simply test their system on emulators
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        @TouchlabHQ they are often not helpful for testing direct device-to-device communications, which are highly dependent on the compatibility and performance of the hardware.
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      @TouchlabHQ - How often do users cross platform boundaries? - Will users tolerate a design that deviates from the platform conventions in order to optimize for cross- platform consistency? - What aspects of cross-platform consistency are users like to find most important?
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    @TouchlabHQ Paradoxically, the device ecosystems appear to be undergoing both diversification and standardization at the same time. As a result, multi-device designers and developers are caught between these two parallel processes.
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      @TouchlabHQ it is likely to become harder to design experiences that are not only cross-device but also cross-ecosystem, since standardization within ecosystems often means diversification between them.
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        @TouchlabHQ When do users cross platform boundaries, especially within the same task? How their experiences might be affected by the differences between platform UI standards?
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          @TouchlabHQ Support for multi-device interactions has fallen behind users’ increasing desire to leverage the diverse capabilities of the devices that surround them.