Mobile Performance for a Great User Experience

edUi 2012 speaker and Emerging Technologies Librarian Eric Phetteplace talks with Jeff Parks on the Radio Johnny Podcast.

Today on Radio Johnny Jeff Parks talks with Eric Phetteplace, Emerging Technologies Librarian at Chesapeake College in rural Maryland, who will be presenting at the upcoming edUi conference about the importance of performance when designing for mobile. Eric argues that performance cannot be an afterthought but should be a distinct development concern in every project. He describes the most important improvements to make, shares tools that can automate performance improvements, as well as the specific problems libraries and educational institutions typically encounter.

Quotes

“…we think about the design, we think about the content – what the message is – but really you have to consider how is this going to perform…Writing a performant website is the baseline that needs to be a consideration on everything you work with… reducing the amount of data being sent and the number of HTTP requests…”

“…users expect sites to load faster on their smartphones than they do on their desktop computers which are a lot more high powered, and most are on better Internet connections. Not only that; the trend is getting worse! The first study [by Gomez] was done in 2009 and then again in 2011. The first time around, the number was about 60% of people thought things should be faster on their smartphones… the next time around it was something like 80%”

“As the web becomes a mature development platform, new things are constantly coming out that make our lives easier – that make us not have to deal with the nitty-gritty details. [See Notes below for examples]“

Like what you heard? Then consider subscribing to Radio Johnny or come see Eric in person at edUi, a conference for web professionals serving institutions of learning.

Notes

• Follow Eric on Twitter
• The .htaccess
• Filament Group’s South Street
• Browser Stack
• MobiTest
• Web Page Test
• Yeoman
• jQuery Mobile Download Builder
• Steve Souders
• Stoyan Stefanov
• Jason Grigsby

Jeff Parks

Jeff is the co-founder of DIGIA UX Inc. and actively collaborates with industry professionals from around the world through his involvement with Boxes and Arrows and Johnny Holland. Jeff is also leading workshops on Information Architecture and User Experience Design over at Follow the UX Leader, in addition to volunteering his time as a Mentor and Member of the Board of Directors for the Information Architecture Institute.

Eric Phettelplace

Eric holds a Bachelor of Arts and Science in English and mathematics from Stanford University and an Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois. As an emerging technologies librarian, he has implemented chat and SMS reference, a mobile library website, and an open source statistics tracking web app, and written a few JavaScript bookmarklets. His interests include web development in academic libraries, data-driven decision-making, and next generation library services.