You can’t miss the chatter about mobile these days, and the realization that we may need to provide content in different ways to serve users in a mobile context. As DUX begins to take a renewed good look at our strategy (and armed with our spiffy new mission statement), we are re-evaluating what it means to provide services “where the users are” – for example, it no longer makes sense to build one website for desktop workstations, a completely different one for mobile devices, and yet another separately maintained application to provide services within Oncourse. Instead, we need to have a mobile strategy to repurpose our content and create – as Lorcan Dempsey says in this blog post – distributed experiences for multiple connection points. And it makes more sense now to think about the contexts within which our users are working, rather than to focus on the specific device or technology they may be using.
Dempsey’s post linked above is worth a read, as he nicely summarizes a lot of the issues around the current state of mobile information environments. In particular, do take a few minutes to view the slideshare presentation on “Beyond the Mobile Web” that’s embedded within the post; it nicely describes how the context (important keyword there) in which we use the Web has changed because of new mobile technologies.
Has the context of information seeking changed for our users, and is that due at least in part to the proliferation of the mobile web? If you have one or more mobile devices, have you changed your information-seeking habits? (I know I have! Even at home, I often grab my smartphone first – if I’m just checking email, looking up a dictionary definition, tweeting, or even reading a newspaper article, the phone is faster, more convenient, and let’s face it, more fun than firing up my aging, creaky old laptop.) What do you think?
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