How to Build an SMS Service
ISBN: 789742233
EAN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2007
Pages: 52
Pages: 52
SMS Interaction Design Considerations > Short message length
Many of the same principles that apply to designing a software application apply to designing an SMS service: keep it simple, interface text should be meaningful and understandable to the user, always give the user a means to solve a problem that arises, etc. However, the unique qualities of SMS introduce some unique challenges and pitfalls, as well.
The most obvious constraint on designing an SMS service is the maximum size of the message: in English, the best case, you get 160 characters to get your message across to your user. To put that into perspective, this sentence is 84 characters (including the period).
There are a several strategies you can consider as a service author:
Aggressive editing: After you think you've pared down your message as short as it can go, take off another 10 characters. Try dropping nouns, verbs, and prepositions and see if the message still makes sense. Ask yourself if you need all the information and context you are providing in the message. Brevity is the soul of wit and the heart of SMS.
Text speak:It may compromise the professional air of your service, but, if used properly, it could win you street cred. U can m8k yr msg shrtr! (Used inappropriately, this will win you ridicule.)
Multiple messages: This should be your last resort, but you can send a single "message" as multiple SMSs. If you attempt to send a message longer than 160 characters, the carrier will typically break the message up into multiple messages for you, but the breaks may not be where and when you want. Avoid orphaned words or forcing users to click between messages to complete a thought by breaking a message at logical stop points (e.g., the end of a sentence).
When you send multiple messages, it is standard practice to number messages and include the total number of messages in the communication, as they may not be delivered in the order sent (or may not be delivered at all). For example "1/2: Lorem Ipsum" would indicate the first message of 2. An ellipsis (...) at the end of the first message is another cue to your user that another message is on its way.
NOTE
Many phones and carriers support segmented or concatenated SMS. A segmented SMS message is a long message broken into multiple standard-size messages with a header containing segmentation information. The receiving phone uses the header information to re-assemble the multiple messages into the single message.
An advantage of segmented SMS is that it is backward compatible. If the receiving phone does not support segmented SMS, it will simply display each segment as an individual message.