The Impact of Mobile Technologies
Mobile technology has grown and developed exponentially over the past 20 years to a stage now where everything that you could possibly need is accessible at your fingertips, anywhere in the world and at any time. The ability to gain access in such a simple, user friendly and convenient manner also means that people can now work and play all from a single device. Gone are the days where individuals separated their digital work and life balance.
In direct response to the capabilities of mobile phones, web developers have made mobile and tablet friendly sites and apps, therefore allowing organisations to integrate seamlessly across the devices and therefore ensuring readily available access to their social media platforms.
Exploring Mobile Functionality
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Mobile Experience
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Facebook |
eBay |
Firefly Learning
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Mobile Positives
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- User interface easy to navigate
- Encourages communication with friends and has new features such as FB Rooms for group chats
- Story feature located at the top of the page so that it is easy to see what your friends and pages you are following have been up to
- Ability to manage more than one account and page through single sign in options on the phone
- Easy ability to like, comment and send messages to each person who posts
- FB mobile resizes to compliment the mobile experience. In many ways it is more user friendly through the mobile app than through the full website
- Ability to integrate emojis and gifs easily
- Suggests public figures to follow
- Mobile alerts for any messages or activity on FB can be turned on/off as user determines
- Good integration between other apps such as Instagram
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- Listing for recently viewed and currently watched items at the top of the ebay mobile app, allowing for easy access
- Camera integration to allow for easy upload of images to sell
- Simple search engine to find items for sale
- Feedback and messaging capabilities to connect you directly with the seller/buyer
- Purchase memory, allowing easy re-purchasing for repeat items
- Auction and bidding site and capabilities
- Reviews and recommendations easy to see and navigate
- Integrated mobile alerts for messages and activity
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- Provides different apps for parents and students
- Replicates the web version of the Firefly LMS
- Images and videos come across from the website to the mobile app seamlessly
- Ability to edit and manipulate the site with administrator privileges
- Ability to message users and send alerts from mobile phone
- Carries embedded documents such as pdf, Word Docs, You Tube videos and Power Point presentations and can be opened in the mobile app
- Integrated mobile alerts for messages and announcements
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Areas for Improvement
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- Less advertisements throughout videos
- Increased ability to mute messages and alerts during certain hours of the day
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- Clearer ability to compare items based on user reviews or ratings
- Improved navigation for contacting a seller or buyer
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- Navigating the pages is clunky and not user intuitive
- The app does not seem to adjust from the web version to the mobile version seamlessly and therefore there are a lot of clicks to get to where you want to go
- The app could be improved by changing the layout of lists of pages to be mobile friendly
- Adjusting of pages to fit the mobile screen would enhance user experience
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References
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