Here at Media 1, we’ve been looking at mobile for quite a few years now, and my personal experience experimenting with mobile goes back to the Palm® Pilot days. The trick with mobile has always been overcoming the hurdles associated with varying platforms, sufficient bandwidth, LMS connectivity, and being able to produce compelling content. While all of those challenges to mobile are still present, the general sense is that mobile is truly becoming more accessible.

Several viable authoring systems are now available that allow you to develop once and deliver to the vast majority of platforms, while the mobile devices themselves have larger screens and better connectivity. Many LMS now have mobile-specific connectivity, leading us to the remaining challenge of creating compelling content. Having Adobe® Flash available on almost every platform (with the exception of the iPhone) certainly helps, but much of the content I’ve seen still lacks an engagement factor. The mobile content that appears to be most successful is different in two ways:

  1. It is framed as performance support, not training.
  2. It is focused on messaging, not use of media.

When it comes to performance support, one of the best applications I’ve seen was a product-related reference guide from Sephora and JC Penney. Delivered via iPad, the content provided both product fact and application techniques for beauty products in a manner that was both educational for the consultant and shareable with the customer. While it wasn’t executed on a phone-based mobile device, I think it’s indicative of the types of mobile content that can be deployed successfully.

Absent the larger format of the iPad or Flash-based content, other successful mobile performance applications display an awareness of good writing and storytelling. People read books all the time. Books don’t have animations and rarely have pictures, yet publishing remains a multibillion dollar industry. Text is easily displayed across almost all devices. It’s logical that we re-frame our concept of what engaging mobile content is to include writing that is compelling and not just a collection of fragmented bullet points from a slide deck. Think back to the text-based discovery games of the early 90’s and how maybe some of those principles could be applied to writing for mobile.

There is also huge upside to performance support delivered via e-reader devices. Both Kindle and Nook now have educational text branches of their business focused on the education market. But for corporate practitioners, what’s not to like? Big Screens, non-fatiguing text, wireless connectivity, and falling prices for hardware make this segment one to watch.

While good writing for text-based content is critical, the untapped potential for all mobile devices is in how they can be leveraged for around-the-clock access to Social Learning communities behind the corporate firewall. Take a look at how much activity on Facebook and Twitter is now originating from mobile devices. Now imagine how much more use your corporate community could get if it was accessible from phone-based mobile devices.

I believe that eventually we will see compelling content on phone-based devices, but I also believe that tablets and e-readers represent a significant opportunity. They serve as an excellent stepping stone that can help us define and produce good mobile content without some of the constraints of the smartphone. As mobile moves forward, we also have to figure out realistic ways to allow mobile devices access to content behind the corporate firewall.

For more perspectives on mobile, check out Chris Willis’ prior post “Mobile Learning – Are You Ready?”