User Experience (UX) perhaps took a back seat to functionality in the smartphone world, up until the iPhone brought Apple usability to the mobile industry.  In a Mobilize panel this afternoon, several industry professionals discussed the evolution of the UX and how in fact delivering a polished degree of interaction with a device can sell not only the device itself but sell software and encourage increased data use.

In this video, the panel discuss how good UX is more than physical hardware and attractive graphics, but “design for context”.  They discuss Peek, for instance, and explore how a device that does a single task but does it particualrly well can lead to a better UX than a multifunction tool which delivers only passable results across its capabilities.

“You have to develop for mobile as an art form in itself. The other opportunity we see is to take the web and your community and map that into a three-dimensional context. Also, rather than building new consumer behaviors, let’s build into places they already go, like address books” Jeff Taylor, Hutchison Whampoa  

One thing I’m not sure of is whether I’d describe receiving a Twitter as “a little gift”, as Adaptive Path’s Rachel Hinman does.  Personally I can’t help but see Twitter as another form of ego-driven self-promotion, but as I said that’s my own view of it.  Think differently?  Let me know in the comments.

There’s more video at the Qik channel: http://qik.com/android and you can find our previous Mobilize content by clicking the tag.