When we design for mobile analytics solutions, we are not just building a report or a dashboard. We’re designing to deliver a superior mobile user experience each and every time. This means we need to consider all facets of user interactions and take a holistic approach when dealing with all aspects of the “mobile analytics user life cycle”. This life cycle starts before installation and does not end after the mobile analytics asset is downloaded and consumed.

In this new series, I will be covering many aspects of the mobile analytics design from installation to user interface (UI), from functionality to performance. I consider these best practices as a framework for innovation that are applicable to all mobile analytics solutions regardless of our organization’s size, industry or business model.

As anyone who designs professionally can tell you (whether interior designer, technology consultant, or product specialist), design is both art and science. Building the end-product is the science part. How we go about it? That’s completely art. It requires both ingenuity and critical thinking, since not all components of design come with hard-and-fast rules that we can rely on.

You can’t design for mobile like you do for a PC

In order to design an effective solution, we need to first get a sense of what mobile analytics represents. Although your perception of mobile analytics will be influenced primarily by your understanding of enterprise analytics or business intelligence, there are fundamental differences between mobile design and traditional, PC-based analytics design. Some of these changes may be obvious and others are more subtle.

Understanding these distinctions is critical and must come before we write a single line of code. So I’ll explore some of these contrasts in this series, and include examples to illustrate different design concepts for the benefit of both the layman and tech savvy.

Great mobile design requires the right mindset

As mobile architects and designers, we must embrace a certain mobile design philosophy that will be unique to each of us and the environments we work in. This is important because that philosophy will be our guiding light when best practices alone may not be enough to help us navigate in uncharted waters.

To me, mobile design requires a mindset that embodies human ingenuity in order to generate excitement for new ideas that can lead to mobile solutions to address unmet needs. Therefore, I always argue that mobile analytics must draw its strength from a desire to go beyond the basic capabilities of a mobile device to deliver actionable insight for faster, better-informed decisions.

In this context, I view mobile analytics neither as a fad nor another project that we charge to a cost center. Instead I think of it as a critical driver for growth and profitability. That’s the very essence of a mobile mindset!

Stay tuned for the next installment of the Mobile Analytics Design Series!

[line]

This series was adopted from the Mobile BI Design Framework series, which was originally published on turnali.com in 2013. It also appeared on the SAP Analytics blog.