Mobile Moment Monday: Under Thumb Blog

Mobile Awesomeness Logo courtesy of Mobile Awesomeness

I started looking at some other blogs focused on mobile design and came across a interesting website that shares some of the same ideas and concepts that I do called Mobile Awesomeness (MA). They take what I have been doing here on Mobile Moment Mondays a step further by dedicating their entire website to "ranking" mobile design and apps.

MA has invented their own rating system based on three categories: UI/UX, Design, and Concept.  You receive a numeric score in each category, in which 100% awesomeness is the goal to achieve.  A few of the things that they base your score on include easy of use, load time, innovation, user-flow, first impression, creativity, imagery, look and feel, content, complexity, problem solving, and application.

Screenshot of rankings from Mobile Awesomeness project rankings

The homepage is MA's Mobile Gallery, which is a gallery of links to mobile projects that they have critiqued and ranked.  They have a link that explains their rating system, an about section that explains their purpose (quite well I must add), and then their blog.

Screenshot of Mobile Awesomeness website goals.

Since I am in the blogging business, their blog is what I mostly wanted to reflect upon since they are kind of like my competition (in which I am more like their competition because they already have a well established website and been around for a while).  Their blog goes by another title called Under Thumb, with a catchy little blog description that simple states "Your source for all things mobile" (already impressed me).  What I like about this blog is how it is set-up a lot like my own.  In the right side column of the page there are category links, recent posts links, and then the archives.

Each post leads with a image, then the title, and then the date of the post at the bottom of the article.  The main blog page is actually a feed of all the blog articles and when you click on the blog title, or "Read more..." link, you are taken to the article page, which is styled with larger fonts and then the title is placed above the leading image.

Much like my own blog, their blog has "theme days," such as the Mobile Monday Roundup and Friday Link Dumps, and then they have regular posts of interest.  Thier blog started in August 2013. Most articles are titled wittily and a majority of the images catch the viewers attention.

What I do not like about the MA blog is that there is no real "About This Blog" section explaining the purpose, the writer, or anything.  There is a blog post back in August of 2013 that welcomes the user to Under Thumb, but there is no link to it.  There are no labels for SEO purposes or to benefit the viewer in finding key terms.

There is also nothing that tells me who the author is for all these articles. I searched through and read a lot of the articles and not once did I feel like the writer was interacting with his audience, in which it showed at the bottom of each article because not one person has wrote any comments. There are sharing options for each, but not many of the articles have been shared either. What surprises me about this is that their website shows up at the top of Google's search ranks, so I am assuming that they have an audience.

Of course my blog does not get a lot of commenters either (hint, hint).  This makes me think that the viewers of my blog, which could essentially be the viewers of the Under Thumb blog, are not that many by volume, or no one has any interest in reading about mobile design concepts. Let me know if I am wrong below! And check out the blog at Mobile Awesomeness, let me know what you think, and let me know how I can do to improve my own.  I am always up for content suggestions.  Thanks for reading again this week.

Mobile Moment Monday: The New Era of the Mobile Internet

I have said this already many times before, but the Internet is not what it used to by in the 1990's.  The first computer I bought was a Gateway back in 1997. It was top of the line, with about 512MB of memory and a 80GB hard drive, and a 17" CRT monitor.  America Online was the most popular Internet provider with their 56k dial-up connection.  How awesome was it to realize that you could search and look-up just about anything on your computer sitting in the comfort of your own home? No one even complained that it took 10 to 15 minutes to download one song on Napster; it was free, it was cool, and it couldn't get better than this, right?

Back then, "good" web design was done with HTML tables and small, compressed images, such as GIF's.  Then along came JavaScript, CSS, and server-side web programming languages, RSS feeds, and all sorts of different technologies were released to make webpages more interactive, dynamic, and entertaining.   Then social media; everyone had a MySpace page.  I thought it was funny the first time I heard MySpace, or Facebook referenced on television. I think it was Law and Order that I was watching.  You realize then just how big and important these things have become when you see it on television.

Now, everywhere I read they are saying, "If you are designing a website, design for mobile first."  Mobile webpages and mobile apps are the biggest thing since...well, Facebook.  Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and all the biggest names on the web are buying as many companies and stocks as they can that revolve around mobile marketing.  Check out this Pinterest page with about 82 different mobile design and smartphone infographics.  The above YouTube infographic video also has some unbelievable mobile facts and stats.  A Mobile Design Presentation, also on YouTube, explains why it so important for a business to have a mobile webpage today.

Whether you are an entrepreneurs who is trying to create the next best app, or just a small business owner trying to connect to your customers, you need to start thinking "mobile first." Once you have a mobile website ready, optimize it for the desktop so everything is seamless on all platforms.  The best way to do this: RESPONSIVE DESIGN.  I know I am preaching it, so you better just start believing it.

With all these facts being thrown around, I would like to find out for myself what my reader's preferences are for viewing the web.  If you look to the right of this post you will see a survey asking, "What device do you user most often to view the web?" It would good to see if these stats and facts are true. If you scroll down, you will also find that I have added links for your convenience to subscribe to my blog, or share it on your favorite social media platform.

If you can think of any other great videos or infographics, feel free to post a link. By the way, infographics are another form of media that is growing in popularity on the web also. Why? Because they display a lot of information quickly, are visually pleasing, and keep the viewer hooked until the end.  Many are also optimized to be viewed on mobile devices. I am definitely a strong supporter of infographics.

Mobile Moment Monday: Nissan's Genome Project

Screenprint of Nissan's Genome Project, courtesy of AWWWARDS

As I was scanning the web for some good responsive designs, I came across a website called AWWWARDS that posted an article titled Best Websites Examples Of Designs With Responsive Design. There are many great responsive design websites posted here, but I chose to showcase Nissan's Genome Project because of it's added simplicity and interactivity.

Screenshot of website with
reduced resolution.

The website is actually an interactive medium that links to a user's Facebook account.  Once you give Nissan permission to access your Facebook account, it will ask you to select one of your profile pictures.  The website does the rest, analyses your account, and brings you an interactive experience that visually shows you how your likes and activity on Facebook links you to your friends and family.  Beyond seeing your own "genome," it also connects all your likes and information with anyone else that has signed into the genome project, so you can see information linking people all over the world, see what you have in common and many other things. It really has nothing to do with Nissan, except for the unobtrusive link at the bottom of the webpage.

What is impressive about this website is the page source.  When looking at the page source, it is clean, short and loads fast.  There is no indication as to what type of code they are actually using to create this website, which means that most of it is probably server based. It acts like flash, but there is no flash involved in the code. There is a little bit of JavaScript, but for the most part, all the power is under the hood.  This is definitely a well built professional website, which can only be expected from a company like Nissan.

The website adjusts to the size of your browser, and not to the size of your device.  It fits the definition of responsive to the T. The only con I found was that it takes a while for things to load sometimes and I had to refresh the page to get things going again.

I invite you to check it yourself and become part of Nissan's genome project and post your experience here.  Or check out some of the other responsive designs on AWWWARDS and tell me why you would choose them as good examples of responsive design.

Think Before You DIY

If you are a entrepreneur, or small business owner, you probably have already thought about how a website could help your business succeed.  Now days, unless your business is a small mom and pops grocery store on the corner, a web presence goes hand-in-hand with starting a business.   

Screenshot of Ingenfeld, a German website

The image above is a German website that I found on Datadial, a blog post titled, Website FAIL – 30 Web Designs That Will Hurt Your Eyes.  While this image IS NOT visual appealing, it does represent more than just a bad web design.

When the Internet was first growing in the 90's and web design was first starting off websites typically looked something like this.  The excitement that tech savvy newbie web designers felt at the time got a little overwhelming when they realized that they could place images and text anywhere on a webpage.  Before CSS, table designs and primitive image editing applications gave webdesigns these awful appearances, but since the Internet and web design was new to all of us, webpages like this got more noticed and acclaimed as Internet art.

Disturbing image from the same website,
Ingenfeld.  The image is even more disturbing
 on the website because the eyes move.

The fact is web design has come a long way. In a new world where Photoshop'ed images are the norm, and JavaScript, SASS, CSS, and jQuery are used faithfully, nothing this horrendous should even be online. Yet there are so many DIY's out there that now the web is just a scrambled mess of pourly designed sites just like this.  If not, check out the other 29 fails, or just do your own search.

Now you might be wondering what the point is that I am trying to make. The fact is, there are a slew of DIY web-based applications out there for anyone that wants to build their own website.  Google Sites, WIX, Webflow, and SquareSpace are just a few.  What people don't understand about many of these automated web design platforms is that they do not produce good code, or code that even meets the W3C web standards. While it is easier than learning code yourself, and faster, you are actually never really gonna know what you get behind the curtains when it comes down to the code. There is no guarantee that your website is going to work in all browsers and there are no professional grade tools for image editing, or SEO. 

Also, there are only so many combinations of free web templates and layouts that are available on each website.  That means, eventually, there is going to be multiple people out there that will have a website almost identical to yours. And if you need help with something that you just do not understand, or you cannot place something right in their WYSIWYG application, then you are going to have to get additional support that comes at a cost anyway.  

Some might wonder why web designers charge so much when you have all these options to DIY on the web.  But what many people do not take into account is what a web designer really does for your business which is most important; branding.  When you use a reputable web designer you get a website that is original, which is usually optimized for search engines.  They also usually handle all the copyrighting, or higher a freelancer to do it.  It takes years to learn all the in-and-outs of good web design, in which a DIY web application does not support. But finding a good web designer is probably the most important marketing decision you could ever make for your business.

Now that mobile designs have become almost essential for anyone that is looking to make a business prosper online, having your website work on all platforms is a must, which is also not guaranteed when you us a DIY solution.  Just because mobile designs may not be as fluent as a desktop website, it does not mean that a mobile site is any easier to design, or less important.

As mentioned above, a "reputable" web designer is important. A good blog article that touches base on this is 20 Signs Your Web Designer is Terrible.  How Much Should a Web Design Cost is also a good basic explanation as to why a website costs so much, and why it is worth it. 

Feel free to let me know what your opinion is about this, or if you just want to post more links to awful web designs you have found out there on the web.  

This Blog: Revisited

Image courtesy of Cloud Four Blog

It has been a while since my last post, so I wanted to let my readers know that I am back!

My agenda is the same ~ I am scanning the web for anything to do with mobile web design, whether it is tips, tricks, things to avoid, or whatever revolves around modern web design.  

A blog that I recently found that I have started to read faithfully is at Cloud Four. Cloud Four is a another web design business that specializes in mobile web design, and I find their website alone very inspirational.  Their website is also responsive, and their blog is very informational.  You can definitely tell they are a professional group of people.

Not only do I want this blog to be informational for you, my readers, I also use it as a source of my own documentation as I move forward in the field of web design.  

Since I am a student at Indiana University, I am still really new to the field of web design.  When I graduate in May of this year I would like to enter the work force with as much knowledge as I can that will help me get my foot in the door in this very demanding field.  As I continue to research standards and move forward with my own freelancing I will post my findings here.  

I also would like any feedback in reference to my posts, and if you have any tips and tricks of your own, feel free to leave me a comment.  Stay tuned for more design tips in the future.