Making Digital Work: Mobile

Mobile is essential. Audiences have moved there and supporting mobile devices cannot be optional if any organisation wants to survive in the present and thrive in the future. Following their consumers, high-growth startups and established companies are bypassing desktop computing and prioritising phones and tablets because they are now the primary way in which digital services and experiences are accessed. The emergence of wearables, such as Apple Watch and Android Wear, only accelerates this trend. We live in a mobile-first world.

The phenomenal adoption of mobile technologies has led to an always-on, always-available society. Content, services and information have never been more abundant or readily accessible. The mobile-first world represents challenges and opportunities for the cultural sector. In a world where attention has never been so fiercely fought for, what can the arts do to engage audiences and grow their businesses?

Mobile is one of the major learning themes from the Digital R&D Fund for the Arts. If we ignore mobile then the public will leave us far behind. Whether it's marketing, selling tickets, providing specialised services, making content accessible, or presenting work, planning and optimising your mobile offer is one of the most important aspects not only of making digital work but making your organisation relevant and work for your audiences.

In this guide you will find five articles which each explore a key principle in making mobile work.

Mobile 'First'

The meteoric rise of the smartphone is having a profound effect on any institution that produces content.

If you don't respond to this, you risk becoming unused by your visitors, unseen by people who search for your subjects and unheard in the conversations that deeply influence consuption. To not be mobile in the digital world is fast becoming simply to not be.

For something so tiny the mobile or smartphone is having seismic effects on the way that people interact with the world. While the net makes our sum knowledge available, smartphones make it accessible, omnipresent and ready to enhance, augment, distract or inform any content a person finds. Once a person gets, carries, and becomes habitualised to their smartphone it becomes, in a very real way, a new sense: a way to perceive, parse and make sense of the world. But unlike our other senses, the smartphone gives us access to hidden worlds - the digital, the knowledge-based and the abstract. The smartphone has become the centre of our digital lives. What some call 'mobile first' is in truth already 'mobile majority'.

Download the guide to read on:
Making Digital Work: Mobile (PDF)