Mobile Ministry Magazine

One of the new aspects of play that I have had with mobile devices lately has come through the Nokia N95 and a piece of hardware/software called the accelerometer. The Accelerometer is basically a sensor within the device that senses when it has changed positions on the X, Y, and Z-axis and then orients the screen accordingly.

Those of you with the iPhone will know this feature as being the same thing as when you hold the device in its normal portrait mode, but then tilt to landscape for web or email viewing. The N95 also has this feature, and its something that when I unlocked it with a few applications, it got me thinking again about mobile Bible readers.

One of the common issues I hear with mobile bible readers is the screen resolution. For many people, the text is too small to read, but just right to look up a phone number (go figure). For some others, the buttons are designed for quick presses and therefore are uncomfortable for a reading mode.

Some browsers have seen this issue and have adopted a pan and zoom feature. For example, Opera Mini, Nokia's S60 Web Browser and Apple's Safari Mobile have this feature where you can view the whole of a web page as it would look on a desktop, but then zoom in to a section that you'd like to read.

The benefits of this is that you get some of the feel of the large page, but the compactness of the content fitting the screen that you are looking at. Now, what if that same idea, plus the accelerometer were applied to a mobile bible reader.

Let's give a usage case and then hear some thoughts from you:
- Open the Bible Reader and you are presented with two panes: last read verses and recent bookmarks
- Clicking on Last Read Verses you are taken to a zoomed out page with the focus square (the area that you can zoom into) on the verse that you chose
- The view is a nearly traditional four column, 42-line view (mimicing the page view that many are familiar with)
- Zoom in and the content is reflowed to fit the mobile screen for that specific verse with a line from the previous verse and a line from the next verse if the screen permits
- To scroll one tilts the device up or down, moving the Bible a verse up or down (an optional setting to allow it to move an entire screen, multiple verses, or off)
- For added fun, tapping the camera will indicate that a bookmark is to be made for that verse and a new screen pops up with that specific dialogue

Again, this is just a thought after having played with the programs FlipSlient and RockNScroll on my N95. What do you think of immersing the electronic bible reading experience with a few subtle actions such as described above?

Post created with alpha version of WordPy for Internet Tablets (please excuse any formatting issues)

Labels: Bible, iPhone, iPod Touch, N95, seminary, software, UI

Hope that most of you are having a good weekend and summer. I want to continue a bit on the subject of creating an ideal Bible reader by taking a look at a concept user interface (UI) that I created some days ago.

What you see here is a wireframe design of a UI for a touchscreen (PDA or Internet Tablet) or large screen (think laptop/desktop) computer. The the basic premise is that most of the time, we just want to read. But there are levels of interaction with the content that we'd like to explore, and thankfully, many in the Bible software and open source software communities have made available. This is just a more functional (and given some graphics, prettier) UI than what anything else offers that I've seen personally.

I got the idea of this from watching part two of Adaptive Path's series on the Aurora Concept. The Aurora Concept is a vision of UI and user experience (UX) web design that's projected for 5-7 years out. This takes into consideration only that the web is more ingrained into our lives, and that software works together with the live world around us to offer more compelling interactions with content and with one another. Simply speaking, I saw the video and it clicked.

My reasons are putting it out here (meaning the Internet) are many-fold. For one, I'd like to get some feedback for this kind of interface for a Bible reader. Many of you who read MMM are publishers, developers, and content creators/editors in the Christian space and therefore your input towards what might be missing or not clearly stated in these wireframes is very important.

To those of you who are academics, pastor-teachers, or just laypersons who like to read and study the Word electronically; this is an opportunity for your opinions to be heard given this skeleton of a mock up.

It is my hope that this can encourage us as a Body to start looking at the greater impact that the Internet has and will continue to have in the lives of those who utilize a much more connected and mobile paradigm of living than what humanity has had before. Yes, we can preach moderation and appropriate use, but we can also model usability that doesn't take away the older concepts of living, listening, and enjoying those quiet moments when we just need God and His Word.

Its not explicitly my hope for this to turn into an application. However, I have presented this to a few people and the response has been quiet encouraging that this is in line with what people are looking for. Having not the time to learn how to develop this, I'd probably be looking to the developer communities of various device operating systems to see if this can be turned into something that makes possible what I last spoke on - a common user experience framework, but designed within the scope of the system and the device.

The last thing that I'd like to state is this: this is by no means a project that a commerical entity should not be interested in. The feedback given on this Bible Reader Concept should be a help towards developing a more fluid system of reading and studying the Word given publisher and device constraints. After all, we are in this to help people read the Word more and see Christ interlaced into their lives. Demonstrating this literally in mobile software would be an excellent witness, wouldn't you agree?

Labels: Bible, community, Hardware, internet tablet, mobility, open source, reading, software, teaching, UI, UX