Storytelling and designing for Mobile

A friend of mine was recently telling me how he was envious of his peers at design school, because they had large posters and books to work on, and he was stuck with working on a small mobile screen.
He did a great job with it anyway, but what he said got me thinking.

The argument was that there was so much more room when designing for print, and designing for mobile was much more constrained.
I agree that mobile UI design does come with a few constraints, but I think these can actually be used to our advantage, as designers.

1. Depth.

Print usually only exists in two dimensions. If you stack up sheets of paper together and make a book, you get a third dimension. But a book can only have a limited number of pages, and each page can only have a fixed size.

When it comes to digital design, we have infinite depth. We can choose any point in an interface, and really dive deep using links, using as many screens as we need to get our point across.
And it's not just depth. With it, also comes infinite length and breadth. We can scroll down each page to our heart's content, and use swipes to navigate from left to right.
A mobile screen is a window into infinite space that we can shape as we wish.

2. Story telling.

Every design tells a story.
With print, you have to map your whole story onto a single poster. Or you could split it into many smaller sections and put it in a book. But at the end of the day, you still need to rely solely on visuals to get your point across.

With a mobile screen, you can craft your story as you please - use as many screens as you need, and move forward, backward, left, right, in and out. You can use animation, sounds, videos, and even vibration to bring your story to life. And the best part is the interactivity! If you work in the range of sensors that phones have today, the person with the phone is not just reading your story, he is experiencing it. He can interact with it, talk to the characters, explore a map by moving around in the physical world, share his favorite parts with his friends, and even change the story as he goes through it. The possibilities are unlimited.
A mobile device helps us transform our story into a rich, vibrant and lively experience.

3. Focus.

While a good designer knows how effectively guide his audience through her story even in a 2 dimensional medium, it can be very challenging to draw attention to specific sections at specific times.

With story telling using a mobile interface, drawing focus to a specific section is as easy as creating a separate screen for it. This way, the designer has much greater control of how her story unfolds, which parts she wants her audience to focus on, and the level of detail she wants them to see.
A mobile device acts as magnifying glass using which our audience can focus on the details of our story.

To wrap it up, yes, the mobile screen is small. I think that's not really a constraint, but makes it even more powerful.