Two contexts here. The night before writing this, I was at a Bible study where we went over the story of Zaccehaeus in Luke 12. My notes were… different. Then there was this post from our friends at Church Tech Today talking about apps which you can use on your smartphone for Bible studies. Good stuff right? Well, let’s just push this a bit. Let’s actually study the text and speak towards those with different types of learning styles at the same time – with mobile and tablets in the midst of the solution.
Things started when we got the assignment beforehand to read Luke 19:1-12 and have something ready to talk about during the study. Had the thought to draw the text, not just write notes. So, that’s what I did:
All Books is the Bible reader that I’m using these days on my Nokia N8. Having that open, I drew three of the four scenes happening in that section of the Gospel on my iPad. Once I was finished drawing, I imported the image into Penultimate. I then started scribbling notes about the text in subsequent pages on a Penultimate notebook dedicated to just this study.
Thing was, I started thinking and writing a ton. I needed more than just the notes from the NET Bible that I was using. So, I fired up the web browser and went to Wikipedia. Learning more about the text meant that I needed to learn more about Jericho. That’s where I went next.
My notes became more and more about the sketch and scribbles. But, there was also the study to be had. How does such this approach with a mobile, tablet, sketches, a browser, and a collection of info into a ink-based notebook work out once I get into a group setting?
Pretty well actually. Because I had this nice mix of linear facts and scribbles, I was able to keep with the various points of the discussion, and even added a few more pages to the Penultimate notebook noting some additional facts, comments, and questions stated throughout. As I listened and scribbled, I noticed something, one of the younger participants in the study was more interested in my scribbling than in what was being talked about. It seemed (later confirmed) that she understood the pictures moreso than the amount of words we were spouting out. That got me thinking about mobiles and learning styles.
You see. We are really used to sprinting towards some aspect of literacy and comprehension. Don’t sell this point short, our sermons, lectures, and studies all start from the point that people want to read and have the capacity to understand the text and the resulting discussions. But, what I saw in that small exchange with that younger study participant was something different. She was enamored with the fact that I was doing more than listening, I was drawing what I understood.
Remember the statistic about literacy we quoted from the Orality Network some time back. 60% of the world is or chooses to be non-verbal. We do a great job in making sure that people can read a Bible, or even share the textual understandings we get. But, with mobile we can do more. Reimagine the Scriptures by taking account of what mobile environments can do. Go beyond linking text resources to text resources. Heck, go beyond just reading.
No, everyone isn’t an artist. Some people might take this and run with creating video snippets using their mobile and want to learn how to stitch those together. Some folks just might need smaller snippets of text. I’ve got this statement that’s been sticking around for a number of weeks now:
Shouldn’t biblical literacy also mean that we can build our own bibles
Not just building your own bibles. Understanding and being able to teach that wisdom to someone else. Going mobile with your Bible studies, lectures, and sermons can go further than just lookups, collections, and reading plans. That’s not to say these aren’t good enough, but that we can do more. This is how I’m pressing the pedal. Do you push things the same in your communities, or, are you just getting around to the apps that do things the same way you’ve always done them?
It probably doesn’t need to be stated because its often felt. But, I do think that in the race to use this technology 
One of the kinks that you tend to run into when you have a Sunday schedule like ours (i.e., visiting many churches/fellowships per month), is that of the holiday season. You have some groups which do a great job of trying to center their communities on the “holy” part of the holidays. Then, you have others who seem like they are doing everything they can to get rid of that materialistic mentality all-to-common for this time of year. IMO, if every church simply observed Advent, that might not be so hard to do.
When I speak with people about MMM, some people ask about Bible and religious-based applications. What’s always neat is when after offering their opinion about what it is they are/aren’t using, I ask them what would be their ideal application. Interestingly enough, the answer to this always sounds like some aspect of faith digitally applied rather than faith-knkowledge retreived from somewhere (the paradigm of Bible apps).
A few years back, 
Saw this 
When I am at a coffeeshop, I usually have my mobile to the side of me and my iPad in front of me -occasionally with my wireless keyboard. At times, at least when I’m typing on the keyboard, I’m stopped to ask if I like my iPad, or how I get along with the keyboard. On one particular day, a woman asked me my opinions on the iPad as she was considering one. It just so happened that less than an hour before she asked me that, Amazon announced its new slate of 
Continuing on Resolution #4: Raising the Bar on Mobile UX Standards
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012With that starting point, we want to highlight a bit more about Mobile (UX) Standards and in referencing that All Books Project, and some of the items to keep in mind whiile moving forward in your mobile initiatives this year and beyond.
Mobile UX Standards
It is assumed that the idea of what makes for a great mobile user experience is pretty easy – just grab yourself an Apple iPhone and use it for a week or two, then switch to another platform for the same amount of time and note how often you frown, toss the device, or find yourself limited in some fashion. And while we can agree that Apple’s iOS platform does make for some suitable claims towards what makes a good mobile experience (consistency, quality, variety of applications, etc.), its not the only mobile experience, nor does it answer every question anyone developing, selling, or using mobility will ask towards.
Over at UX Mag, an excellent article talking about mobile standards beyond the styleguides, frameworks, and guidelines that would usually reference as we develop apps makes an excellent point:
*List formattting added
Beyond simply saying “we want to go mobile” or “let’s use this or that to go mobile,” you really have to ask core questions about the interaction and steer adamantly towards those goals. What happens when you don’t steer specifically towards the goal, understanding these kinds of questions throughout, is that you end up with a glut of features, conflicting brand messages, dis-engaged users, and missed opportunities to deliever the depth of the Gospel that you/your group intends that application or service to portray.
Start With A Picture, Ask Until the Ink Dries
With the All Books Project, I started with an idea in my head (more efficient Bible reading on my personal mobile device that wasn’t limited to closed-licensed texts), and started scraping together what was needed and what wasn’t in order to make that happen. I boiled things down to two features: reading and searching. And then I took to one of my favorite apps on my iPad (Tactilis) to sketch some reasonable ideas towards how I would get there.
This UX flow document is my gage of whether I’m meeting my goals. If I am, then the lines here continue to make sense. If not, then I go back to this document towards what I (originally or later modified) thought and ask whether my thinking should continue down the path I’m or, or get back on course to what was drawn.
One of the pieces of interaction that I’m aiming for with All Books is a sliding popup for when I click on those verses with footnotes. The feature is harder to implement than its drawn. But, because I’m clear towards what I want to do when the popup is envoked, how its interacted with, and how it is dismissed, I can keep my programming focused and timelines (generally) well kept.
A Good Mobile UX Is Also Your Feedback Loop’s Process
In designing an effective mobile user experience (UX), you also need to take into account the development/design of your support infrastructure. As we talked about once before when developing mobile web apps, you need to have in place the resources not just to build the app, but to support, maintain, and maybe even update it.
Build, Get It Out There
After I was able to figure out my issue relating to displaying content within All Books, I needed to start using it. It didn’t matter that there was (noted) performance issues or the inability to see the footnotes as I’d like. Getting it into my normal use allows me to catch things that I’d not considered in my initial development and design, and then adjust on the fly without effecting other pieces of the project. For example, I realized that for all the work I did with makng this a spatially-orienting design, I still felt lost when navigating. The insertion of colored indicators on the section that I was within helped this considerably, and it was a few lines of code to add to do this (1 CSS class and 1 JS statement).
With that: do you have your mobile UX resolution refined now. Its the middle of January, don’t let too much longer go by.
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