The document discusses the concept of activity-centered design for mobile apps. Successful mobile apps focus on supporting a single, well-defined user activity like photo sharing on Instagram, maintaining social connections on Facebook, or sharing status updates on Twitter. Early social networks and apps like Burbn and iTunes Ping tried to support many different activities but were replaced by apps that focus on one core activity. The document advocates that mobile app design should center on supporting one specific user activity extremely well rather than trying to be good at many things.

1. Activity-Centered
Design
Successful mobile apps focus on a single,
purposeful activity.
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2. Activity: any purposeful
human endeavor
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3. Facebook:
Keeping up with
friends & family
!
AKA:
Maintaining Social Ties
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4. Instagram
Photo Sharing
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5. Twitter
Sharing Status
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6. Mobile-Social
The end of social networks and
the rise of activity-centered
social apps
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7. Twitter v1: sharing status
“A system where you can SMS
message to one phone number and
broadcast to all of your friends”
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8. $TWTR today: sharing status
“Find out what’s happening, right
now, with the people and
organizations you care about.”
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9. +
Sharing
Status
≠
Listening to
Music
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Music
Discovery

10. I'm not going to follow artists if it
adds them to my regular Twitter …
Not interested in seeing artist's
updates in my regular feed.
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11. Pointless. You can't listen to whole
songs, only 30 second clips unless
you have a Spotify account.
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12. iTunes Ping
2010 – 2012
!
Replaced by Facebook and
Twitter integrations
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13. Burbn tried to
be too many
things.
•
Check in to locations
!
•
Make plans (future check-ins)
!
•
Earn points for hanging out with
friends
!
•
Share photos
!
•
and much more!
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14. Focus on
being really
good at one
thing.
“We decided that if we were
going to build a company,
we wanted to focus on
being really good at one
thing. We saw mobile photos
as an awesome opportunity
to try out some new ideas”—
Mike Krieger
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15. 1 Product
1 Activity
Focus on being really good
at one thing.
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16. Human Activity System
Thinking in Systems
Deepen your understanding about the interactions
between people and their environments.
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17. Evolve Your Understanding
“Get out of the building”
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18. Lead with Questions
•
How might we encourage more casual carpooling?
•
What outcome do we expect from this design?
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19. Learn through Making
Gather concrete evidence through rapid Build, Measure,
Learn feedback loops.
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20. Thank you!
(^_^)
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