A slideshow about how to make your digital media projects compatible with mobile devices. Produced by Dr. Michael Gallagher from the University of Glasgow, for Young Digital, a project about digital media in research with children and young people: http://www.youngdigital.net/

1. Going mobile
Five steps to making research
compatible with mobile devices
www.youngdigital.net

2. 1. Is it important
that your research
works with mobile
devices?

3. This depends on how much your
target groups use mobile devices.
- Do your research participants
have access to mobile devices?
-If so, which devices, and what do
they use them for?
- If you have other target audiences,
do they use mobile devices?

4. I mainly use my My iPhone is too
Blackberry for slow for web
messaging friends. browsing.
At home we have an
iPad, I use it for
internet and games.
I use my phone for
everything! I use my PC for web
browsing, and my
Blackberry for
My Windows phone is
Twitter and emails.
great for music and
videos.
I take lots of
I have an Android
photos and videos
phone but I can’t
with my phone.
afford to use it much.

5. 2. Avoid using
technologies that
rely on Adobe Flash.

6. Adobe Flash is used for
animations, video and audio.
At the time of writing (2012),
Flash is not supported on many
mobile devices (e.g. iPhone, iPad,
Android phones).
Adobe have stopped investing in
Flash for mobiles, so this trend
looks set to continue.

7. But which
websites use If we listed all the
Flash? websites and services
that use Flash, by the
time you read this, the
information would
probably be out of
OK...so what am I date.
supposed to do?
A web search for ‘does
X use Adobe Flash?’
can be helpful.
You could also look at FAQs,
help files and tech blogs.

8. 3. Use products that
have been designed
for mobiles.

9. Some examples…
- Mobile application software (‘apps’)
- Mobile website building services, e.g.
Zinadoo, Jaemobi, MoFuse
- Mobile plugins for blogs (e.g.
Wordpress.org has mobile plugins)
- Most of the ‘big name’ social media
sites are optimised for mobile web
browsers. Many also have apps that
add extra functions.

10. Social media apps add extra features
(e.g. uploading media), but users must
be willing to download the app. Also,
some apps are slow or badly designed.
Do you want to use such apps? Is it
realistic to expect your users to
download them? Are there some
apps they already use and like? Or do
you want to avoid using apps?

11. 4. Design your
media to work in a
small format.

12. - Keep things short
- Use bold, simple designs
- Avoid unnecessary features
- Use tight, close-up framing in
photos and videos
- Avoid requiring users to
download files as this can be
slow – embed media instead

13. 5. Test your
project for
mobile
compatibility

14. - Test using some mobile devices.
- Pay attention to load times - the
faster the better.
- If you don’t have a full range of
devices, there are simulators, e.g.
http://iphone4simulator.com
- mobiReady is a free service that
checks the mobile compatibility of
any website: http://mobiready.com

15. mobiReady

16. It’s best to test early in the
development process.
Make a quick, rough version, e.g. a
survey with 2-3 fake questions, a
30 second video, a blog with a few
random words/images.
Now test this for mobile devices - with
your users if possible. If there are
problems, it’ll be easier to address
them at this early stage.

17. This slideshow was created by
Dr. Michael Gallagher, University of
Glasgow, for Young Digital
www.youngdigital.net
Image credits: pierocksmysocks, via
deviantART