Design for Every Screen

Ever since mobile became really, really cool when the iPhone came out and every designer could happily show off their mobile credentials by having the latest one, there has been an influx of great new ideas accompanied by pithy little catchphrases. I've been somewhere between suspicious and dismissive of many of them, sometimes fairly publicly.

For all the good it does. Here I am mentioned being perceived as agreeing with Mobile First alongside Luke Wroblewski and Scott Jenson, up on stage no less. I never really did.

But lately I've been presenting a bit, and otherwise talking to folks all over the place, and therefore thinking more about many of these topics. First is that I promise I've never just been deliberately contrary, but none of my specific arguments ever stuck that well. And second you should know that I do not just make assumptions, but try to get to root meanings in order to act on information and do my job better. Just check out my work or how long the book is for proof. You can't shut me up when I get on a topic.

I also get tangential. Back on topic, I think that I'm suspicious and not embracing of a lot of these catchprases largely because I have gotten into this field differently than some others. I did art and graphic design from the time I could pick up a pencil, but was engineering-focused from Jr. High onward. I did grant-funded aerospace research in High School. I was the first researcher in the water tunnel at Wichita State University. But when I got to college I sucked at statics & dynamics, and some of the math, so eventually had to leave the program and fell back to art. Learned a lot of good stuff about competitiveness, criticism and understanding design reasoning there, so it was good in the end. I did graphic design work before I even graduated, which immediately (1995) was followed by "can we make a website also" requests from clients. Over a couple jobs I moved from my previous understanding of holistic design to true interaction, human factors, HCI and the emerging fields of UX. I formed teams and we taught ourselves how to be good designers of interactive systems.

So, despite pretty much getting into mobile from the web design side, it always involved data being fed from old systems, terminals for customer care reps, or email, or mailers or magazines. Or often, several of these.

I've been designing for multiple devices forever, since at least the late 1990s. The same stuff in print, CD, TV, web. Envelopes to put the brochure into. Etc. For another currently-cool example, I've been doing little hacks to dynamically resize and reflow content to different browser windows for years – so much so I keep forgetting that it's now called "responsive design."

If you think any one screen, size or channel solves your problems, think again. Netflix has to have a TV UI, sure. But have you noticed the Wii has a browser? Or what if Google TV stops being terrible, or Apple does break into TV in a big way after all? You'll need a 10-foot UI version of your website, and it's no longer just a real big PC monitor; just Monday, a report that console games are the #1 way to get online content to the TV. You might need a TV UI version today. Or yet another app for yet another audience. Technology isn't done growing, and sticking to any one technology is as bad as any other.

I've started calling this – at first somewhat by accident – "design for every screen." As you read on you'll notice it's not quite true, so I admit it's my own clever phrase. But it's closer than a lot of others, so I'll stick with it.

Devices and Channels

Another one of those marketable bits of phrasing from the past year or so was deciding that mobile context is no longer interesting. So I'll admit right off we're closing in on what I always called context. But "mobile context" has itself become saddled with improper assumptions of its meaning. Instead of throwing it away, I think we need to resurrect it.

Partly, because I cannot think of a better word. But also because I've been using the phrase for at least a decade. I went and looked a few weeks ago, and indeed have design documents from 2001 talking about the context of use. These were about the difference between consumers, several types of account managers, and call center employees, each of which had different levels of knowledge, training, etc. For a desktop web interfaces. And some had different use contexts, on the road, in an office, on specific hardware we knew about.

Mobile just added one more context when (around this same timeframe) I started tacking on mobile interfaces to the account management portals. But the then it added dozens. Doctors are not financial analysts, even if they both live by SMS and BBM. The growing variability in use of mobiles made them just like the desktop web. Meaning, lots of them.

Sure, there are some special contexts, because you use them wherever you are, instead of at a workstation of any sort.

And, the variability is bigger than you think. How many touchpoints do you have with a typical service, or company? Paper and ebills, other mailers, websites, and that's all supporting, before I get to the actual service which might be on the web or an app or a set top box. And more all the time: I watch TV on the website for my satellite provider more (when traveling at least) than through the set-top DVR.

Let me get back to some specifics, so we can talk about real products instead pure philosophical arguments. In the mid-2000s, I spent a long time doing a series of billing and account management projects, basically centered around some web portals. But only centered there; lots of other access points existed:

• Desktop consumer web
• Mobile web
• Mobile app
• Store terminals
• Call center terminals
• Call center logging
• Call center voice communication to the customer (scripts, etc.)
• Kiosks
• Printed bills
• Bill inserts
• Envelope printing
• Emails
• SMS
• IVR
• And probably a couple more I forgot.

When I look back at my project files, it turns out most projects I work on are multi-channel, even if not multi-device. If you are just making an app, it's hard to not have a website, optimized for both desktop and mobile. And you better think of how it will look in app store, and how it installs. And... so on.

Design for Every Input

How about design for every input? I spend a lot of time reminding everyone that it's not just touchscreen, but also scroll & select; even lots of touch devices have keyboards and the very large category of messagephones are just 10-key scroll-and-select devices when folded. If you pretend everything is touch only, then your app looks stupid when it won't work right with the keyboard out.

But did you remember other inputs? Take a video sharing service (like some I have worked on). Why make users go to the desktop web or download an app, just to upload? We added MMS and Email services. Send to a specific address, and it goes into your account. And, this worked great. These are popular services. Do I need to remind everyone that Twitter is an SMS-based service? How can you leverage other channels to allow user input?

If you are not following my logic here, it's just an extension of the previous thoughts that everything is slightly more complex than it appears at first. Even if you stick to the desktop, web is just one input/output channel. You send customers emails, and then they can respond. They can call you. They send back bills in paper, no matter how much you wish they wouldn't. This is all part of the experience and you better address it all at the same time.

Design for Every Screen

Generally, when I talk about these principles, everyone agrees. I come away from client meetings with a task to show some multi-channel scenarios, or permission to architect the system with device agnosticism, so we can discover the right channels organically. And that works fine.

But like a lot of my processes, it doesn't work so well when I task others to do the same thing in my stead. I'll even make those basic deliverables, and then move on to another project while just supervising further design development. And it still falls down. So, we need to come up with some methods by which design for every screen can be carried out.

Well, not really. Because they already exist. Pretty much every design methodology will work just fine. Process I have published work fine, but let's go more generic. How about some basic tenents of UCD. If you can find a definition that doesn't get all hung up on a channel (really, Usability.gov only websites need to be designed?) you will find some of the same principles I've been talking about:

• Audience – Personas, and anything else you can use to determine
• Purpose – Use scenarios and use cases to understand how the product will be used, what tasks and goals exist, and what features will be helpful to get there.
• Context – Yup, we're back to contexts of use again. And, you'll see again that context is a fundamental to understanding the use of using any system, not just mobile.

The difference between a lot of practice with these processes, and what I want you to do is two-fold:

1. All answers are valid – Do not set constraints, or make false assumptions. Let the process lead you to audiences, purposes and contexts you might not have thought of.
2. Actually follow a design process – This is key. No one does a design process anymore. Even people who gather at monthly meetings to talk about how great process is, read books and chat about it, end up just sketching ideas immediately. And the sketches are in their domain; if you are a web designer you make a desktop website, if you are a mobile designer, you make an iPhone app. Always.

To reiterate: cut it out. Pop open books if you need to, but gather information, answer your basic questions and develop whatever else will help you. Even if quick and dirty I say you should always be putting problem statements, principles of design and personas up on the wall. At the least. And you can do this in about two hours if you need to. It's not something that has to take six weeks, or six months.

Design for Target Experiences:

There's a third facet you'll need to stick to also, but it's less about principles than communicating to clients, so I didn't include it in the list. You may have already figured it out, and are sneering at my rainbows-and-unicorns world where everything we want gets built. In reality, of course, there are time/people/money budgets, and only a few things get built. So, you are still only getting a website

At first. You, as the designer, need to keep saying "the first release will..." and then keep putting up IA diagrams of the target experience. This is a great phrase. Unlike "problem statement" or some other things that cause grief and need euphemisms, "target experience" goes over great for all levels of IT and business folks. We want to be here, but we also know that pragmatically, we can only go this far... today. Keep saying it like that. Be and act realistic about the whole thing and you'll be surprised how much you get snuck in.

And not in an evil sneaky way. "Sneak in" would be one of those phrases you do not use in front of the clients. What I mean is, go back and look at some of those inputs and channels above. Your product will have email, SMS, printed bills, customer care. Or at least a few of these. Nothing is a pure website. So when you design for every screen, you are not surprised by a sudden request to make the email messages not terrible, 3 months after launch. You designed that, along with all the right error messages, and an easy upload scheme, right from the start. If it's getting built anyway (like outbound email), then your design goes in on the first phase.

That is because this also works very well with a lot of product development and software development processes. They like plans. Agile, for example, actually has a backlog of features. You can simply fill up the next 18 months with features, immediately. You are not perceived as annoying and overbearing, but as a go-getter, trying to make the product as good as it can be. The first person to show up with a list of functional requirements (or Stories, or Features, or whatever) has more influence over the final output than is immediately obvious.

Design for Change

Of course, you will learn as you go along. And you will learn you were wrong. User tests, analytics, customer-satisfaction scores, close rates, will all tell the real picture. Your second phase will become less important, and something else pops up, for example. But you will look okay, as you've got a target experience. Which is just a target, you must be willing to shift to the data, and say that out loud.

And, you will not be surprised by this – at least not entirely. Because your multi-channel, IA-based target experience looked at everything. You've at least got a sketch and a set of bullet points. When research comes back with a recommendation that you are years behind the times, and you better do something better than Usable.net for your mobile site, you can pull that out and be helpful and speedy.

As long as you are not "told you" and all arrogant about that. There's a limit to how much you can trust my client-relationship advice.

Implement for Every Screen:

A key gap to getting a good, holistic experience still exists: the gulf of execution. No, not Don Norman’s gap between stimulus and understanding, but the difference between what you give design and what comes out of the development team. I'll come up with a good phrase to replace that, someday.

I know some of you develop their own code, already has a terrific relationship with their developers, or believes your process solves all. I’ve been there and say: Some day it won’t. Even if everything is wonderful, can it be better? Usually. Even if not enough to mess with, find out why it works so you can fix your next company.

For everyone else, there's hope. And not the passive hope that this next development process or corporate reorg fixes everything. They will embrace your principles, which for this stage we can define as:

• Design holistically – Systems, not pages, not widgets, not buttons. Just like I've been saying, design extensible, system-agnostic architectures, and end-to-end experiences.
• Develop good objectives – Tie to the enterprise, and the product owner, but develop objectives for the team to embrace, and which can be achieved by them, and by the product you are building today, and tomorrow.
• Own your design – You can't just put a target design on the wall. You have to believe in what you give to them (without changing your mind halfway through the release), and you have to keep reminding everyone to implement the existing plan with each future release.
• Get everyone to buy into it – You can't do it alone. Even if it means adjusting or even collaborating get a plan and design everyone can get behind. Not just live with, but actually believe in.

I've developed a few tactics over the years to help with this. Actually, a lot more than this, but these are the key ones. And they aren't a trick or a stretch. The design process I've been talking about, the process you have worked through to get the the implementation stage is very much in line with good software development. All this makes sense to implementation teams.

• Don’t walk away – Always stick with the project through development, at least making yourself available for questions, rework, changes and testing. Ideally, become integrated into the team, and attend daily meetings, test planning, and so on. Plan on this from the start so your schedule and budget accounts for it.
• Set goals for everyone – Those business and user goals you should have developed at the beginning of the project must be translated into actual, measurable metrics. Then, try to make sure they get measured. Push for these to be the project level measure of success for the whole organization, instead of cost savings, efficiency of developers, or other internal measures.
• Make object-oriented designs – Sometimes this is just called “modular re-use,” or other things, as “object oriented” is a larger set of principles (it all originated in development) and might confuse development. But I like the sound of it. The core concept is the same: Instead of designing every detail for every state, and building by state or building hundreds of items to bolt together, a few dozen modules are built and re-used over and over in common templates. Easier on you, and easier on development if they work that way.
• Practice polymorphism – Sorry, it's another of my troublesome words; this time, not bad, just meaningless to many people. But developers tend to love it. Essentially, variations of objects are still the same object. If there are several variations of an on-screen module you design, make sure you express them as variations of each other so these are clear. This is a polymorphic item. Of course, if there is only one variant (omnimorphism) then that should be explicitly stated as well. Always keep in mind efficiency and re-use.
• One IA for all – As discussed at great length above, a single IA diagram will give everyone a single, simple concept to hang onto. Enough, that developers will stick it on the wall of their cube. This is the best you can hope for; most developers won't put design objectives or personas on the wall, but this isn't bad.

As I said, there are other tactics and facets to remember, but they start getting pretty detailed again, so are almost a side conversation. Don't forget branding, and to communicate in a single voice. Good design will automatically be accessible, multi-platform and easier to manage and implement. And so on. I suspect if you have a design/implementation tactic, I believe in it also, and just say: don't forget to add it to your checklist, and start thinking about it as early as possible.

I have used a lot of my own experiences above. But those, and the long time I have been in mobile (or doing these other things) is not even important. I have worked with others who had their first mobile experience while I watched, well into the everything-is-a-smartphone era. And if they have a similarly technical background, or a systems-thinking approach, they do just fine approaching the design not as mobile first, but appropriately, bottom-up, and with every interface and interaction the end user needs.

Anyone can, and should be designing for every screen, every input, every device, and every context.

Stop that desktop thinking

Since all my employers are east coast, about six months ago I stopped changing my watch every time the plane landed (or took off... I never could decide which) and just leave it on Eastern Time. And I am comfortable with this. I just have a part of me always out there, and then adjust the time in my brain. Not a big deal, really, as I do lots of stuff on 24 hour clocks and am adjusting the readout in my brain anyway.

I also asked a friend who was formerly Air Force special operations, and he said when flying about the world, you just leave your watch to UTC, and know where you are. But that's a watch. It's deliberately an old, mechanical item. Mine is specifically one of those that winds itself as you move about, so as cool as an iPod Shuffle watch would be, I don't have to worry about it failing to synch, running out of batteries, etc.

Okay, now, tell me why my laptop is always set to Eastern Time. Better, why should I have to change it myself through a control panel? Why, if I do change it, do a series of applications yell at me to find out if I want to change the time zone within themselves, separately? I think it's because of something I think I'll declare Desktop Thinking. Desktops are dumb. They are shiny and "easy to use" but are just a few generations from terminals, used to access the unfriendly mainframe, and there's still this same mentality. The user will perform operations, the machine will respond when it feels like it. The user requests information, or to begin a process, and the machine starts doing it. But not a moment beforehand.

Embracing mobile, on the other hand, means you think about information the user needs, you don't ask for information you already have, and you don't throw away anything the customer entered or might need later on (within the constraints of privacy). Google Calendar is one of those tools that (at least on the website) incredulously asks if you want to change the time zone. Apparently, they are of the mindset that changing time zones only accompanies selling your house and moving across the country. Whereas even this typical desktop website, just for one example, takes a stab at determining my position, and defaults the information to that region.

Which brings up, believe it or not, some thoughts on location I touch on in Designing Mobile Interfaces. How do I set my watch, or make sure that my laptop is in the right time zone (or that it's set right with Daylight Saving changes)? More often than not, I consult the clock on my mobile handset, of course. Location only needs to be as accurate as it needs to be. If you want a weather report – or to know what time your meeting starts – there's no reason to turn on the GPS to find out where you are. Very rough location, often just to within a few dozen miles, is just fine. But it needs to be there. Don't disable functions in favor of only offering the highest precision. If an approximation is good enough, or faster, use that.

This is some of the stuff I am talking about when I say that context matters. And when I say that it's not the same as user intent, or user goals, the physical environment, or whatever else you might want to use to replace the notion of "context." I mean that the device should be intelligent. And as much as I like – say – Siri's way of being aware what you just did so the next task is more useful, I want it to do more. Something as simple as knowing what time zone I am in, and reacting appropriately to that is what you might call pre-emptively contextual. And now that I write it, that sounds great. Mobile tends to do this. Sure. But only at the most surface level still.

I think a lot of apps do this just because they get the time from the handset. But I still see Desktop Thinking during web and app development, even on mobile. The user will sign on. The user will pick a link. Even just: once the user clicks our icon and launches the app. And often I ask, why? Why can't we make a widget, or a notification that lets them launch the app when we tell them something neat has happened, or... anything that predicts and offers information at a glance, or helps the user when they didn't even know they needed it? Think about not just your assigned silo, but how your user can get real benefit from the information, intelligence and processing you have available.

This is what I sound like griping about pixels vs. boxes

For those few who have forgotten to remove me from your feed list, the absence has been totally worth it. Writing (half of) a 460 page book on mobile design was very interesting, and hopefully will be something important and helpful to you all. Buy a copy when it comes out, presumably in a few months. Last year I was on a panel with, among other people, Luke Wroblewski. He was "defending" his then-new concept of mobile first. I was supposed to be the naysayer. But it takes me a while to warm up to people and be abrasive, harsh and disagreeable, so I ended up looking like I agreed with him. Everyone else did, so it was a rather boring panel. We're sorry it wasn't exciting. I did agree with the principles – which I'll get to eventually – but I didn't fully understand how much, or even really why I disagreed with the practice at the time. At the time, I thought I had a nice cynicism baked in, but in fact I'd worked in or with organizations that more or less bought into the concept of UX practitioners and let us do our jobs. Some encouraged it. Since then, I've had to leave that job, and as it turns out that whole world. Not the design world, but the happy design world. Before I go further, I should mention to anyone who works with me, you may or may not know what I am talking about. I have a day job which is separate from my freelance clients, who don't know each other. Though it probably decreases my ability to network and sell, I respect client wishes and do not generally even imply who I am working for. I also have friends, and keep track of former co-workers, and talk to others about their new jobs. And with the writing I have been very much keeping up on the world of mobile (and other interactive) design. So if this sounds like you, and you are offended, there's probably someone worse, or at least it's a composite. Don't get in a huff about it.

It's like I never left

I'll hope we can all agree that the end goal is good, useful design for the end-user, and the way they work. But from there it all falls apart. Let's get right to the heart of the matter. A lot of people use this as the basic unit of design, for all interactive work: I see it used by those who distribute involved raster PSD templates for designing on a specific device, or write up long explanations of how to use Fireworks for mobile design, or who push or promulgate pithy catchphrases like "mobile first," (or "CLI first") really. They often routinely conflate interaction and interface design, or just call themselves "designers" without distinction. Many work at companies who hire designer/developers, or cannot fathom what a designer does if not also writing code, or at least prototyping everything, as soon as possible. Yes, I am enough of a taxonomist to know that generalizing results in generalizations. I don't much care about individual cases. But if you want to talk specifics, I have seen at least three well-meaning, otherwise mostly-useful repositories of information refer to 44 px as the right touch target size this year. If you are not horrified by that, turn in your HCI credentials. You may have noticed that people cannot be measured in pixels. So it was dumb a couple years ago when there were too many Apple fanboi designers. But now even iOS has multiple resolutions. Saying "44 px" without caveat, in 2011, should be tried in the International Criminal Courts at the Hague. It all reminds me of 1999. That's when I started seriously – in front of clients – rejecting the concept of the "page fold" in web design. By way back then even the desktop was becoming too fluid or fragmented to pick a screen size for everyone that was the same. Anyone who starts with a single resolution for mobile is fooling themselves, and wasting opportunities. Without over-emphasizing the point, designing in pixels is dumb. Anything that reinforces or just trys to improve designing in pixels is also dumb. Note that I didn't say we don't need Photoshop. It's open alongside InDesign all day, every day. And I in no way said we don't need visual or graphic designers; I have an art degree, and have won awards for digital art and illustration, but it's not my day job today, and I need that sort of designer to collaborate with. I said "designing in pixels" is bad. Don't over-reach and miss the point.

So, what's your point?

My basic element of design is this: I like words also. If I can get them, well-formatted bullet lists are nice, but if I have to just boxes and words will do nicely. Two pixels together are two pixels. But two boxes together are nested. or adjacent, or overlapping. They interact. They can move. One can conditionally disappear. Don't even get me started on the possibilities offer up by three boxes. The mind boggles. What size are they? It doesn't matter. Or: it depends. On rules we don't just assume, or constrain by declaring a resolution, but by determining some what size and what items stay on each page in which position as the design progresses into addressing different platforms, different devices, and different aspect ratios. This is all based on every other type of design or drawing or illustration I have done or learned. You start with basics and move into details. You start with sketches and settle on aspect ratios, orientations and sizes. Details get filled in as it evolves. So few artists start their work at full detail in one corner that it's generally studied as a condition. Whereas I have seen an awful lot of interface designers start by laying down a gradient bar at the top of the page, pick the color and type the title in, then proceed from there.

What catchy phrase can I use to remember this?

My mantra would be something like "do your job first." Yeah. I am not that great at catchphrases. But I still believe in it. Don't jump to final designs, and don't jump to even wireframing of any one platform and resolution. Let the process unfold. Analyze existing products. Ask clients and customers, then build goals and objectives. Put Post-Its on the wall, then start drawing. With whiteboard markers, and sharpies. Eventually you get to make boxes and they evolve, and branch to the needed interfaces. Doing it all like this might even help you identify which devices and modes in which it should operate. And remember to design for people first. I once was in a meeting at a Fortune 50, who had hired a respected and well-known design firm to do some interactive design. They brought some "mood boards." That's what they called them, but they were single images just ripped from magazines and blown up. Starting your design by copying the last thing you did, the standard OS template, or the coolest new thing, locks you into that first pretty picture in the same way, and everything will be a variant of it, instead of your own design. Let IAs do IA, let Information Designers design the information, let IxDs design the interaction, and yes let the VizDs do everything they do to assure it's all tied together as a cohesive interface. Respect all the jobs, and don't fall for shortcuts, but do your job first, last, and always.

I wish we had a manifesto

If this strikes you as totally the opposite of the way you work, rest assured I am not just some nutjob screaming in the wilderness. I've worked with or for plenty of others who believe in this. There are whole, large, respected organizations who work like this. Ones you've heard of, and who are too cool to hire me. But we all spend more time doing our work, or arguing with each other to get together and realize our similarities and write up a public, non-proprietary process to get noticed. You, no matter who you are, probably believe at some level also. Ever done a whole design session with just sharpies and Post-Its? Ha! I caught you. Try that for a few more layers of design and see what happens.

You probably shouldn't listen to me

I mentioned up front that I can be abrasive and disagreeable. If you don't think so now, you haven't been reading closely enough. I get along with a lot of people well, but (I have been recently told) not always, not with everyone. Don Draper (and his ilk on every TV show) gets away with a lot more than I can, or you probably can either when selling to the client/patient/judge/etc. The right idea doesn't always win out in the real world, so even if you are ready to join the revolution and start that manifesto, you need your day job still. Be ready to lie to keep the clients. I do this all the time. They want to see the home page, so we make one up, with gradients and icons and banner ads that are better integrated than they'll ever be in reality. Then we ignore it (rarely does anyone keep them around) and get back to developing the design the right way. I am sure some people are bugged by the morality of this, but I certainly think the end user and the end deliverable is still more important than a short-term deliverable. I am willing to stretch the truth a little bit. It's in everyone's best interest.

My Mobile Mantra: People First

Mobile is not iPhone or iPad or N8. It's not Bada or Symbian or WebOS. Mobile is not Opera Mini, or Skyfire or Netfront. Mobile is not sliders or clamshells, QWERTY or 12-key. Mobile is not touch, or multi-touch. Mobile is not Foursquare, or Facebook, or MySpace. Mobile is not Twitter. Mobile is not MMS, or BBM, or SMS. Mobile is not resolution or GPS, or front-facing-cameras. Mobile is not CDMA or GMRS, WiMax or LTE.

Mobile is not successful due to amazing marketing, or great pricing, or because it's fashionable. It's not even successful because it offers new capabilities to everyone, although it also does that.

Mobile is an unspeakable success because it lets people be people. As obvious as it seems, we're no longer tethered to wireline phones, or movie theaters and TVs, or pinball arcades, or typewriters, photocopiers and desktop computers.

Mobile works because it lets people work the way they want to, and the way they always have. Mobile lets people be mobile, and read what they want, and watch what they want, and take photos of their vacation, and share their thoughts with their friends, their family or no one in particular.

Designing for mobile – and I say now designing for anything – is an exercise in designing for people. Sure, it's always been a great idea to consider users; but not just how they interact with a machine, or a website. If you step back and look at the way people really work, and want to work (or play, or share, or create...) then you are on the right track.

Whether the product that comes out of this is (or works on) a large chunk of iron, a wheeled vehicle, a desktop computer, a website or a mobile handset – or many of the above all at once, is of no particular significance. When you consider people, and their context, and address it right, that is what I consider designing with a mobile mindset.

Certainly do not get locked in and decide before anything else to design a desktop website, but also don't design for mobile first. Design for people first.

I think this will be my position at 5pm on 21 September when I talk about "Why and when to design for mobile first" with Scott Jenson, Barbara Ballard, Luke Wroblewski, and Alan Tifford at Design for Mobile 2010. Come see us and join in.