The last five years have seen rapid growth in the adoption of mobile, and with it the responsive design movement championed by Ethan Marcotte. Reminiscent of Y2K, organizations everywhere have kicked off responsive Web projects. And that was a good move, as 2014 became the year that mobile Internet traffic exceeded desktop traffic. However, responsive design was just the first step in a number of rapidly evolving mobile movements. There was also the mobile first movement, championed by Luke Wroblewski in his book, aptly titled, “Mobile First.” This recognized that some experiences should be designed as though mobile was the predominant platform, and with a view to the specifics of that channel, rather than only adapting from a desktop view. Then we saw the mobile-only movement, which recognized that some users only exist in the mobile space. 2015 was the year that the mobile-only audience became larger than the desktop-only audience.

All of that thinking has evolved further into the idea of the mobile moment. That is, mobile usage is really a series of mobile moments, micro moments in an era of an expectation of anytime, anywhere, instantaneous information. It recognizes that it is distinctly different to how people use desktop, which is more focused on browsing, research, and working. Mobile moments are about the everyday questions we ask whenever we think of them: “What is that?” “What time are they open?” “Where can I get coffee?” “Which train do I get?” “I want to tweet this.” And the key is to design your mobile experiences for the mobile moments that make sense for your museum and for the point in the customer journey at which they occur.