Communications of the ACM

Designing for the mobile device: experiences, challenges, and methods

For Mobile Applications, Branding Is Experience

By David B. Rondeau
Communications of the ACM, July 2005, Vol. 48 No. 7, Pages 61-66
10.1145/1070838.1070867
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Mobile technology is everywhere—with new types of mobile devices appearing regularly. While branding of the devices themselves can draw upon a long history of product branding, the branding of mobile applications presents new questions and challenges. I became aware of some of these challenges during InContext Enterprises' development of the mSports mobile sports application, which allows users to follow the play-by-play action of Major League Baseball on a variety of mobile phones. We gathered customer data to develop the concepts and designed application interfaces for a variety of devices. Focusing on baseball for mobile phones, we tested and iterated the design with users. The design was implemented and released in 2003 in partnership with Sports Illustrated.com under the ScoreCast brand.

For the initial release, the main challenge was that the mSports brand had to coexist on the device along with the brands of our partner, as well as the brands of the cell carrier and phone manufacturer. The larger concept designs highlighted even more challenges looming in the future: application interfaces to support a variety of sports on a variety of devices—mobile phones, PDAs, notebook and desktop computers, and interactive television—that would be used in a variety of settings—at home, while traveling, or at the sports stadium. Branded content, like merchandising and advertising, would also be integrated into the application, adding to the challenges.

Our experience raised many of questions about branding and mobile applications. This article will highlight some key challenges and potential branding strategies by examining the relationship between branding and the design of mobile applications.

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What is Branding?

In "A Model of Brand" [2], Hugh Dubberly describes a brand as a sign that is formed by words, sounds, or graphics that represent or signify the brand and perceptions of the brand as shaped by experience. These perceptions are created by the brand steward, who provides the product and marketing message, and also by the people that experience the brand.

As an example, Coca-Cola is a product brand, which is represented or signified by a name, a logo, a glass bottle, and a slogan, among other things. The perception of the Coca-Cola brand is created not only through our experience of drinking it (the unique taste and shape of the glass bottle), but also through our experience with television commercials and their messages. These perceptions are then remembered and reinforced each time we encounter things that represent Coca-Cola. This example also points out the two different types of experience that shape our perception of a brand: indirect experience and direct experience [3].

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The best way to establish a brand is to create a positive direct experience that can only be achieved through the design of the application.

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Indirect Experience

A brand is experienced indirectly when others tell us about the product or service. Usually this is a marketing message delivered through advertising, public relations, and other promotions, but it can also be a message delivered by friends, experts, or competitors who have something to say about the product [3]. Since the individual is passive in this experience, the message needs repeated exposure in order to affect brand perception [10].

Traditional advertising of a mobile application is of course, an option that can be considered. More pertinent to this discussion though, is the prospect of delivering marketing messages for other products via the mobile phone. But it's not clear how the device's screen limitations (small size, limited colors, and variable quality), combined with constantly changing contexts of use will affect marketing messages. Also unknown is how users will perceive advertising they receive on a device that is so personal or how they will feel about paying to download that advertising.

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Direct Experience

When individuals go to the store to look at a product, when they buy it, and when they use it, they have a direct experience that affects their perception of the brand. Since people attribute emotions directly from their experience, this has a greater affect on brand perception than indirect experience. For example, when using a mobile phone or shopping on a Web site, people have a direct experience with that product or service, which influences their feelings about it [10]. Therefore, a "good" experience translates to "good" brand perception. This idea is supported in a study conducted by Jared Spool, which shows that a more successful user experience is created when Web sites help users achieve their goals, which in turn translates into improved brand perception [9].

This direct experience can be subdivided into three parts: physical perception (visual, aural, tactile), actual use (usability), and value (usefulness).

Physical Perception: With mobile devices, the device itself is branded; the color, shape, sounds, and texture of the device all contribute to the direct experience. What receives less attention is the software interface. Since it is graphic in nature, it can obviously influence the direct experience through visual perception. Desktop and Web applications are already branded in just this way: SAP has written about user interface branding and the company's belief that the visual aspects of the interface are part of its communications strategy [4]. There is also research to suggest the aesthetic attractiveness of a software interface positively affects its perceived usability [6, 11].

Visual design elements such as color, line, shape, and font can be used not only to increase aesthetic attractiveness, but also to enhance usability. Visual elements can affect (either positively or negatively), both at the same time. Elements of sound (ring tones and alert sounds) and touch (vibrating) can also be used in the same way.

Usability: Usability, or quality in use, is often the main focus for most design efforts. However, as Gilbert Cockton argues, usability is limited. It only assesses functions that have already been implemented and doesn't address functions that are missing. It also can't evaluate how well the system fits the context of use nor can it measure value [1]. This is not to imply that ease of use has no benefit; it certainly does.

Usefulness: Cockton proclaims, "The most important goal is to achieve value" [1]. Arguably, usefulness has a greater impact on direct experience and brand perception than usability. This is also supported by Moritz, who found that the ability to download television to a mobile phone is so compelling that people will put up with slow download speeds [5]. Problems with usability can be overlooked if a product is considered useful, but no amount of good usability can make up for a product that is seen as useless.

Using this information, we can propose some general strategies for branding:

• Provide a positive direct experience by creating an application that is first useful and then usable;
• Further enhance the experience by making the application aesthetically attractive; and
• Use visual brand signifiers to leverage an established brand or co-brand.

This is a first attempt at proposing strategies; it's not clear how well these strategies will actually apply to mobile applications. More questions also need to be answered: What is the impact of attractiveness, usability, and usefulness on mobile interfaces and how do they affect each other? How do design constraints—like screen size, competing brands, or type of device—influence the direct experience?

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Design Constraints

The best way to establish a brand is to create a positive direct experience that can only be achieved through the design of the application. Therefore, anything that complicates or constrains application design will also affect the direct experience. During the development of mSports, we encountered these key constraints:

Physical constraints: Due to their small size, mobile devices are constrained by small screen size and limited user input mechanisms. This alone severely limits what can be accomplished on a mobile application interface.

Platform and device variation: Interface screens vary in size, resolution, color depth, and quality. Buttons vary in number, type, and placement. Finally, operating systems use different navigation paradigms and fonts. Each variation that needs to be supported adds complexity to the design and the direct experience.

Number of primary uses: Each additional primary use (for example: a phone with a camera) increases the complexity of the interface design. If the device and platform aren't flexible enough to equally support them, the user experience will suffer.

Brand competition: Many players compete for brand awareness: the device, wireless carrier, data service provider, delivery network, content providers, device platform, third-party software provider, and third-party software creator. Each contributes to the experience of using the device, but which does the user attribute their experience to? The fight for control of the user and brand experience has already begun between device manufacturers and carriers.

Support for third-party software: The potential number and type of primary purposes that a device may support increases and the amount of brand competition also increases.

Based on these design constraints, we can sort mobile devices into separate categories, and then propose branding strategies relevant to each category, instead of for each device (see the table here).

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Single-Purpose Devices

With only one primary use and no third-party applications, the interface only needs to support a limited set of functions that are all closely related. Combined with minimal device variation, this means the designer has greater control of the interface. The lack of third-party applications results in little or no brand competition and the limited input mechanisms (only a small number of keys or click-wheel), are not much of a constraint because they support only one primary use.

Branding Strategy. With these types of devices, the manufacturer has total control over the design of the device and the software interface, as well as control of all or most of the branding. This results in total control of the direct experience and the brand message.

Since the whole product embodies the brand, visual branding can be kept to a minimum in the application interface. A good example of this is Apple's digital music player, the iPod (see Figure 1). Apple has successfully branded the iPod to become the number-one selling digital music player. This is not only because it looks "cool," but arguably because it is useful and easy to use. Notice that branding is concentrated on the device itself, not on the interface screen. The texture, size, color, and appearance of the device are all part of the branding and the physical perceptions of the direct experience. Branding on the screen consists only of a simple Apple logo, displayed at startup and the word "iPod" on the main menu screen.

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Brand competition is also prevalent on these devices, with the device, wireless carrier, data provider, third-party software creator, and many others trying to gain brand presence in an already complicated interface.

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Multipurpose Device

These devices support third-party applications and multiple primary uses. They have an operating system and software interface that are robust and flexible. The input mechanisms support complex designs with a full keyboard, a stylus, or both. There are few platforms: PDAs and smart phones use Palm, Windows, or Symbian, while the Blackberry has its own platform. Platforms often have hardware specifications, which reduce the amount of variation across devices and simplifies the interface design.

The direct experience of these devices is controlled by multiple parties. Platform developers, device manufacturers, and software developers are each responsible for their part, which introduces brand competition. It's not clear how a positive or negative experience with one will affect brand perception of the others.

The increased number of uses and functions supported also increases the complexity of the user interface, but this is offset by the amount of control provided by the robust platforms and the lack of variation across devices.

Branding Strategy. Support for third-party applications creates a great deal of competition on these devices, so differentiating one brand from another becomes more important. Usefulness is likely to be the best way to do this. If an application is not useful, it won't get used—if it doesn't get used, it will eventually be deleted from the device to make room for a more useful application. This probably does not result in the brand perception that marketing was trying to create for the application.

Visual branding of the direct experience also becomes desirable because of brand competition. Color, line, shapes, and font can be used to help differentiate the product from competitors but the visual elements can't adversely affect usability. Small brand signifiers might be used on all screens or a larger brand signifier can appear on the loading screen.

As an example, let's use a comparison of two wine tracking applications for a PalmOS PDA (see Figure 2). Both applications support the same use, display the same amount of information, and have similar functions.

The application on the left (Winemate 4.10) uses color for visual branding and information design. To distinguish it from other applications, red text and lines on a light yellow background are used instead of traditional black on a white background. Different text colors also indicate the type of wine, even though that is already displayed. Visually, the interface looks jumbled and busy, and though it was probably not intentional, this is how the brand may be perceived. Usability may also suffer, as the multicolored text is more difficult to scan and read, which may have a negative effect on brand perception.

In contrast, the application on the right (Wine Enthusiast Guide 2004) uses color for the same purpose, but also adds a graphic for visual branding. The small graphic of a wine glass is a brand signifier, which also distinguishes it from other applications. The graphic, along with restrained colors and a clean, simple layout, gives the perception that this is a clean, elegant, and simple to use application.

Although here I am offering an untested analysis that usability testing must validate, this side-by-side comparison shows the brand challenges software developers face when designing for these platforms.

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Enhanced Mobile Phone

An enhanced mobile phone is capable of running third-party software, which means it supports multiple primary uses. Unfortunately, it still doesn't fit into the multipurpose category, because the device was designed initially to support only one primary purpose—that of a phone. It wasn't intended to support multiple purposes.

As long as the first priority is to be a phone, creating an interaction design for other uses will be difficult; any design must conform to the limited interaction paradigm of the phone. As we discovered in the development of mSports, this constraint makes the cell phone the most difficult type of mobile device on which to design a good user experience.

Beyond the typical constraints of small devices—very small screen, limited number of keys, and lack of keyboard or other input mechanism—variation between phones complicates matters even further. Platforms have different navigation paradigms, and devices have navigation keys that vary in number, type, placement, and size. Smaller screen sizes also force removal of content and function on some phones that can be included on others. There are even different limits for maximum application size, again resulting in the removal of content and function. All of this makes it impossible to use the exact same interface design on all phones. Depending on the trade-offs made, user experiences can vary widely on different phones.

Brand competition is also prevalent on these devices, with the device, wireless carrier, data provider, third-party software creator, and many others trying to gain brand presence in an already complicated interface.

Branding Strategy. Because of the numerous design constraints, it is extremely difficult to create applications that are useful and usable. The best approach may be to strike a balance between maximizing the usefulness that will fit on the phone and minimizing the usability problems inherent in this type of device. The effect of the user experience on brand perception is also critical because of the intense brand competition.

One way to minimize usability problems, which we chose for mSports, is to keep the user interface as simple as possible: Focus the software interface on supporting use of the application and keep visual branding to an absolute minimum. Color and design elements can be used minimally and only to make the application easier to use. Branding elements can be restricted to only small brand signifiers on screens and larger elements on the loading screen. The visual branding can be tested with users to ensure it doesn't interfere with usability and that it communicates the right brand message.

Usefulness may override negative experiences for a time—if users' expectations for applications on these devices are low. As expectations rise, however, the whole concept of usefulness will need more exploration. Most applications available today are games and various productivity or information management applications, which don't provide value around the "mobile-ness" of the device. Exploiting the "mobile-ness" of the device would create new value by allowing people to do things they never could before. Some key areas to explore are location-based services, time-based services [8], integration with interactive television [7], and services that support social interactions.

In the mSports screen example shown in Figure 3, visual branding is kept to a minimum. Development of the design focused almost entirely on usefulness and usability and the design uses only a small logo and a blue color in the top bar, to represent SI.com, our branding partner. All other visual design is restricted to supporting the usability of the application. We intentionally left mSports branding off the main screens, so that the design would not conflict with any potential branding partners.

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Conclusion

This article has described a framework and outlined potential branding strategies to consider when designing applications for mobile devices. More importantly, I hope it may be the first step toward a larger discussion about the complexities of branding on mobile devices and lead to answers for some of the questions that remain: How much influence do various brand competitors have on brand perception? Which has greater effect on brand perception: product design, visual design, usability, or usefulness? Should branding strategies change for different situations and contexts of use? How these questions are addressed will determine the degree of success of future branding initiatives.

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The Digital Library is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2005 ACM, Inc.

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