In her Thomson Reuters Innovation Theater session, “WestlawNext Goes Where You Go,” Senior User Experience Specialist Shannon O’Brien talked about the development approach that led to WestlawNext Mobile.
“We wanted to make WestlawNext available to all mobile users,” O’Brien said. “Rather than creating an app for every device, we made a compelling version of WestlawNext available to all mobile devices from a single URL: next.westlaw.com.”
The mobile URL is available to all WestlawNext customers and is already very popular. O’Brien said that customers use mobile to view the contents of their folders, KeyCite a document and run searches.
After her presentation, an attendee asked O’Brien if she and her team considered developing apps for specific devices. She said that they look at each device and ask if it is unique enough to warrant a specific app.
“Most smart phone users access WestlawNext Mobile to view document in a folder, write a note on a document or KeyCite a citation,” she said. “Because the screens are smaller, customers usually use their Blackberry, iPhone or other mobile devices to continue their research. The iPad offers more flexibility – it’s more an extension of their desktop experience, and that is why we are developing an iPad app.”
iPad users can use an optimized version of WestlawNext now on their devices; a WestlawNext app will be available later this summer.
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[...] not so much uncertainty but that they are trying to be careful to tailor their resources. As this post says, Westlaw is trying to make its content available to all mobile devices, via the [...]