Researcher terms mobile usability an "oxymoron"

bealtine

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/43309/145/

Researcher terms mobile usability an "oxymoron"

Mobility
By Aharon Etengoff
Monday, July 20, 2009 13:00

San Francisco (CA) - A recently published report has concluded that browsing the web on mobile devices is "neither easy nor pleasant."

"The phrase 'mobile usability' is pretty much an oxymoron," explained usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group. "Observing users suffer during our user sessions reminded us of the very first usability studies we did with traditional websites in 1994. It was that bad."

According to Nielsen, NN/g researchers found that the average success rate for users (in the US and UK) completing tasks on the mobile Internet was 59 percent compared to an average success rate of 80 percent for websites accessed on a regular PC.

Researchers also identified four primary obstacles that mobile users faced:

* Small screens - All interactions became harder to do when users identified fewer options at any given time.
* Awkward input - Text entry was particularly slow and error prone - even on phones with mini-keyboards. In addition, Operating GUI widgets without a mouse was difficult.
* Download delays - Moving to the next screen took "forever," often longer than it would on a dial-up connection.
* Mis-designed websites - Sites are optimized for usability under desktop conditions, meaning they don't follow guidelines for mobile access and create additional obstacles for mobile users.

"The first two problems are inherent to mobile devices, and as for connectivity, it's going to take many years before mobile connections are as fast as even a modest cable modem," noted NN/g user experience specialist Raluca Budiu. "The key opportunity for improving the mobile user experience lies in websites being designed specifically for better mobile usability."

watty

And on using Mobile for your laptop

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/21/mobile_broadband/

As Broadband Genie puts it:

"The public perception of mobile broadband is often of a service that is comparable in speed and stability to fixed-line broadband, which simply isn't the case – and won't be for the foreseeable future."

Hard to argue with that. Though next-generation technologies make great promises, it is not clear who will pay for them, or how, so we're probably stuck with the current infrastructure for a while.

Also interesting:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/21/vodafone_t_mobile_again/

Blaster99

watty, do you have to bring this up in every thread? There's another thread discussing this, why not use it?

That research seems a bit out of date, but then it's originating from the US. There are various technologies available to improve matters on mobile devices. Of course there are limitations with the mobile network and the size of the devices, but that doesn't mean it's useless. I wouldn't book a flight on a phone, for instance.

watty

bealtine wrote: »

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/43309/145/

...
and as for connectivity, it's going to take many years before mobile connections are as fast as even a modest cable modem," noted NN/g user experience specialist Raluca Budiu. "The key opportunity for improving the mobile user experience lies in websites being designed specifically for better mobile usability."

bealtine had highlighted the speed. His is the OP, not mine. It's from an article yesterday.

I had just read the two articles today, 3 minutes earlier.
Article dates
21st July 2009 10:27 GMT
21st July 2009 09:41 GMT

Not old articles.

They have not been posted elsewhere by me.

I have confidence that if I post in the wrong thread or totally off topic that the Moderators esp. the active cgarvey can easily move or delete my erroneous post, if that's the case. You can click on the icon beside my post too. I don't mind.

In that one is about Speed and the Other Connectivity, they seemed to complement what Bealtine highlighted.

I'm sure that was the important bit of the OP, as we are not too concerned with Mobile Gadget usability here. There is a Mobile/PDA forum.

We are concerned about Mobile being peddled as Fixed Broadband Solution. That IMO is pushing back Broadband availability, not helping it. As I outlined on another thread.


On the separate issue of Usability (which I'm sure is NOT why Bealtine posted it) I have a E65 with 240x320 Web Browser and Archos with 800x 480 Web Browser. I've also designed GUIs for small screens and even built a VOIP PDA with PCMCIA slot and a WAN modem card two years ago. (320x240 touch screen). I'm also a long time subscriber to http://www.useit.com/ Jakob Nielsen. But all that is irrelevant to Ireland Offline.

bealtine

Blaster99 wrote: »

That research seems a bit out of date, but then it's originating from the US. There are various technologies available to improve matters on mobile devices. Of course there are limitations with the mobile network and the size of the devices, but that doesn't mean it's useless. I wouldn't book a flight on a phone, for instance.

How have you reached the conclusion that the research is out of date?

I'm not sure what you are arguing against or for.
Is mobile midband the "final solution" or is it not, what are you saying here?

This is a very important discussion for the future of broadband here in Ireland, are we to be limited to yet more third world solutions, or do we rollout real broadband? The point in the research was that "it's going to take many years before mobile connections are as fast as even a modest cable modem" and this is a very important point and needs to be teased out and people need to be constantly reminded of that point.

This point has been alluded to on a number of threads here and it is that the limitations of mobile midband are glossed over in the advertisements and this verges on the dishonest and is conveniently ignored by most others, including the Minister, this is imho the real problem. The technical details are already well covered and obviously accepted by all the relevant parties (by default).

Then we have Minister Ryan waffling on about every inch of Ireland being covered for broadband. The big lie that led to the final solution...I suppose if you repeat the same lie again and again somebody, somewhere will believe it.
And that's before 3 Ireland even finish their rollout...

Blaster99

The research refers to the difficulty of delivering web applications on small devices over mobile networks. This difficulty is old news (to me at least) and there are various solutions to improve on this and obvious limitations with the form factor that one can only really partly alleviate using various techniques. This has very little to do with laptops and 3G dongles so I thought that for some reason this distinct problem domain was of interest to IOFFL.

Those articles on the Register are a lot more relevant to your concerns about speeds etc.

thebman

In fairness both are relevant as they both use mobile networks for Internet access and the general conclusion is that it is not optimal for use on Pc's by using a modem or on the phone itself speedwise.

If it isn't even good enough for a phone for mobile web pages then how can it ever hope to be subsititue for fixed line broadband and why is it being advertised as such?

If this is the conclusion then where is our advertising authority and why aren't they restricting the language mobile operators use to describe their "broadband" networks.

Its ridiculous and Ireland just comes across as the wild west of Telecommunications where anything goes and there are no rules. What hope have consumers or the media or anybody in tackling the problems we have when they are so abundant you can't even highlight one before there is another problem affecting users and consumers.