Guiding principles behind Android Apps: mobile net surfers are either Repetitive, Bored or Urgent

Google gave a realistic assessment of what people want from apps at a conference in New York last weekend. At “Google Presents User Experience & Mobile Apps,” user experience designer Leland Rechis laid out what matters to mobile internet users. And no, it wasn’t virtual pint applications.

In their schema, mobile internet users fall into one of three categories:

Repetitive users: these are people checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.

Bored now: these people have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don’t offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.

Urgent: this is when users request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries.

Sound familiar? Yes it does. Apps, the Google designer reasoned, need to satisfy one of these three categories of people, or ideally all three if they want to be successful.

Apps are hot huge growth territory, so it’s interesting to get an assesment from the people behind the Android app store.

[from informationweek, via kottke]