A few months ago I was approached by the Boston based social network Going.com, asking if I might be interested in helping to design and develop their first mobile application. Going.com is focused on letting users find interesting places and events, and connect with other users based on who is going where, and when. Since their core mechanic involves pushing users away from their computers, branching into the mobile world was their logical next step.
Let me start out by disclaiming that I had never designed anything for mobile. Ever. The closest that I had come to mobile was doing web interface design for the mobile start up Zingku a few years ago, back in the SMS days… before any graphical user interface was realistic for mobile devices.
So I had to sell myself to this potential client as honestly as possible. I know user experience design, I know graphical user interface design, and of course, I have used a mobile device plenty. Maybe it was my charm, more likely it was my ‘lower-than-normal-I’m-learning-this-as-we-go’ price quote, but they decided to let me take a crack at it.