For a number of weeks now, Mobile Industry Review has been doing a series with Emporia Telecom, a company whose mobile offerings are designed around the needs of those persons who might be older or have needs for simpler and easier to undestand mobile devices. I hesitate to pigeon-hole their offerings into something just for an older audience, because everyone can do with better designed user interfaces, attention to detail/behavior, and such. But, their focus on this group is notable, specifically because it seems to follow along the lines of what we were getting at with our 4th resolution, intentional design decisions and UIs/UXs which follow mobile perspectives.
The Mobile Industry Review series has about six videos (at the time of writing) already published. I’d encourage you to take a look at them:
- Video 1: Introduction to Emporia Telecom
- Video 2: Emporia Handset Philosophy
- Video 3: Inclusive Design
- Video 4: Problems with Rapidly Evolving User Interface
- Video 5: Working w/University of Cambridge
- Video 6: Introduction of the Elegance Handset
While watching these videos, or after watching them, consider these points in view of what you are planning or doing in respect to mobile ministry:
- Does your application or service not just include smartphone and non-smartphone users, but the various ranges of age groups within each?
- How does your application or service scale to age groups where information is consumed and retained in a different bucket than a UI guide’s recommended “lines per screen?”
- How do you track or model healthier communication behaviors across age/demographic groups?
A step perhaps towards addressing that resolution by seeing the wisdom of designing for those who carry the most wisdom in many of our communities.