Improving Mobile Internet Usability

Mobile internet technologies, such as WAP, are important for pervasive, anytime, anywhere computing. Although much progress has been made in terms of technological innovation,many of the mobile internet systems are difficult to use, lack flexibility and lack robustness. They, therefore, give a poor user experience.

Evaluation and theoretical analysis of usability combined with innovative design can achieve significant improvements in user performance and satisfaction. Using such multidisciplinary methods explains the negative reactions to WAP, and — more constructively — suggest ways of developing more effective and efficient devices and services.

... Read full paper, or for those in a hurry here are some design guidelines for WAP usability:

From our analysis of the perceived WAP problems, user views and our case-study work both with commercial and our own user interfaces, we have identified a set of development principles for WAP service providers:

• Develop phone based WAP services that provide direct, simple access to focused valuable content. Usable and useful WAP services on phones will be ones the give the user key, summarised information with very few keystrokes or text entry. WAP developers that try to simply convert their conventional Web material to the phone platform will fail.
• Trim the page to page navigation down to a minimum; use simple hierarchies which are similar to the phone menus that users are already familiar with.
• Reduce the amount of vertical scrolling by simplifying the text you wish to display (avoid wordy messages; go for action oriented keywords).
• Reduce the number of keystrokes you expect the user to do. You can do this by simplifying navigation and by replacing text input with other types of interaction method (e.g., list selection).
• Combine theoretical and empirical evaluation to provide further insights.

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