• by Rally Pagulayan , August 13, 2014

With nearly 1.76 billion people expected to own a smartphone by the end of 2014, there is no denying that mobile devices are becoming a significant, if not primary way in which people interact with each other and with brands. Mobile allows you to be everywhere the user is with instant accessibility. It’s no wonder companies are starting to think “mobile-first” when developing products and campaigns.

However, while mobile devices may be useful to just about everyone, there are cases where designing a product for mobile isn’t the right fit — at least as a primary medium.

Using a mobile-first filter can often have designers miss what their audience really wants or needs. Mobile is a channel, admittedly an important one, but still just one channel. It’s rare that mobile is the only way users are going to interact with a product. It can be part of the experience you create, but it’s not theexperience.

Understanding your user, starts with understanding their environments, their problems, their constraints and then using that information to develop the best product, campaign or service. This could be mobile only, but more likely than not, it’s going to be a combination of devices and environments. As interconnectivity begins to surpass the business-drive for mobile first, it’s clear that optimizing only one component of a system is usually not the right way to do things.

Let’s look at a failed mobile photo app, Color. This app was designed to connect users through photos, location and social interactions. The entire strategy behind this app was to create a social experience that’s native to mobile rather than transferring a web-based experience to the phone — a mobile-first approach.

Color created a large amount of hype in 2011 when they received $41 million in funding, but ultimately failed because it never looked into its users’ needs. By thinking mobile-first, Color created an app focused on location-based functionality without considering if that was a function users actually wanted.

In order to have a successful app, product or service, designers need to identify a real need or problem. By designing for the user needs instead of the latest trends, Color could’ve made a successful run.

DoctorBase is another example of a company that allowed the mobile-first ideology to take them down the wrong path. The patient-doctor communications service started as a mobile-only application, but after learning more about their users and their habits, they realized that instead of a mobile application, a dual desktop-mobile platform would be better and more convenient for them.

DoctorBase’s customers were only using their service to message their doctor three to four times a year; so downloading an app that they rarely used didn’t make sense. In the end, a combination of mobile and desktop led to an increase in users.

With all of this said, there are still some cases when a single-channeled service or campaign does make sense. Cue Uber. The company’s on-demand car service that takes the pain out of hailing cabs and dealing with payments is a great example of when “mobile-first” works. Understanding the environment and key interactions its users would have (mainly on the go) is the perfect fit for not only mobile-first, but mobile-only.

Before committing yourself to a mobile-first approach you must take your audience and their needs into consideration. In order to determine if it’s right for your product, service or campaign ask yourself a few questions:

• Where will people be when they interact with this?
• How much time will they spend with it?
• What do you want them to take away from it?
• Are there big data visualization needs that larger displays are better suited for? 
• Is there a need for multiple touch points?

ln the end, avoid the hype and focus on people that will be using your product or service. In order for your company to be successful, you need people to be happy with the experience you are giving them. And, that means meeting and understanding their needs.