Acording to a study by Nielsen Norman Group browsing the web from a mobile phone today is as bad as it was to browse the web from a desktop 15 years ago.

The users had difficulties doing everyday tasks on their mobile phones, like finding information about a specific wine or finding arrival info for a plane.

Some of the hurdles they found was:

• The screens are to small (users using phones with bigger screens had a higher succeed rate)
• It’s hard to type on the small keyboards on mobile phones
• The mobile Internet connections are to slow
• Sites designed for mobile phones did better than the desktop version, but it can be really hard to find the mobile version.

These findings are exactly what a colleague and I found in our master thesis – “The User Experience of the Internet on Mobile Phones” (4,8 mb PDF in danish)- which is from 2008. Here is a very boiled down section from the abstract:

Screens and keyboards are factors that feel like a hurdle and therefore reduce usage. Also, the speed or lack of it, when loading pages seems to be a hurdle.

Nielsen Norman Group found that users did better in solving their tasks on websites designed for mobile phones and they do suggest, like we did, that servers should auto-sense users’ devices and auto-forward mobile users to the mobile site. I simply don’t understand why companies use money on getting a mobile website designed and then don’t do this simple operation.

Nielsen Normans Group used three usability methods. My colleague and I made our master thesis on basis of interviews, focus groups and surveys. But the results are pretty much the same.

When participating in a online survey the other day I got a flash back to Steve Krugs 8 years old phrase “Don’t make me think“. The survey did indeed made me think. The highlighted text in the picture below says “Your answer is sent to Megafon when you click next”

The problem is there is not a button called “Next”. There is only arrows. Of course it’s obvious what you have to do to continue, but i was actually for a millisecond looking for a “Next” button. The balloon over my head indeed had a question mark in it.

The problem is that the visual design and the text are talking against each other. Either the text should state “Click the right arrow” or there should be a button labeled “Next”.

But i actually think there is a bigger problem. Since this is the last screen in the survey and since clicking the right arrow will send the result and finish the survey I think there should be a button with a label like “Finish survey” or “Send result” or something similar indicating what is going to happen when clicking the button.

And why should I care?

RSS is in my opinion one of the most usefull inventions on the net. It saves me alot of time using RSS instead of hunting for new stories on every news site and blog I read.

But even though I have used RSS for several years I have newer tried to figure out how i works. I’m not interested in the technology behind but in the goals it helps me to accomplish; to notify me every time a site has new material.

Since changing to Firefox 3 I have been kind of puzzled when I want to subscribe to a new RSS-feed. I often have to chooce between several kinds of feeds. (Don’t know if this was the case in FF 2 as well because I didn’t use FF 2)

Firefox is asking me to choose between RSS 2.0, RSS .92 and Atom 0.3. I don’t have a clue what the difference is. But I expect there is a difference since there is a choice. My mental model tells me that the difference might be in the amount of text that will be displayed in the RSS-reader. One will give me the first paragraph and another will give me everything. But I have no idea if this is true.

This is a great example of presenting choices to the user, that the user may not know how to act upon. If there is a difference in what I will get in my RSS-reader depending on what format I choose, describe the difference in words understandable by “average” user like myself. Not in technological terms. If there is no difference at all, don’t give me the choice in the first place.

Screens on mobile phones is getting bigger. That is good because Jakob Nielsen says bigger screens leads to better usability. One reason mobile phones is getting bigger screens is that mobile phones just isn’t mobile phones anymore. They have become cameras, mp3-players and internet devices as well. All this new functionality requires a bigger screen compared to what is necessary for just making phone calls.

But even though i do agree with Jakob Nielsen that bigger screens leads to better usability, the usability is of course also depended of the design presented on the screen. As Buchanan et. al. state it in Improving Mobile Internet Usability one problem is that the design isn’t tailored to the screen size. Designers try to fill a sheet of paper even though what they are designing for is a Post-it.

The article The Myth of a Big Screen, Treating the symptoms rather than the cause state it this way:

“Making the screen bigger is just the current fashionable red herring to distract you from the plain and simple fact that the vendors can’t get the design right.”

These articles are from 2000 and 2001 and therefore im surprised to witness the new Samsung Instinct and specially the design of the browser on the Instinct.

But let’s first have a look on how Apple designed Safari on their iPhone. Both the iPhone and the Instinct have big screens. But they still have small screens for web surfing. To give the user the best experience it may be logic to use every possible pixel on the screen for content.

When scrolling in Safari on the iPhone the URL text field will disapear as you scroll down the page giving more space for content. But still there is 20 pixels used for the Status bar in the top and 44 pixels being used in the Button bar in the bottom.

I think it’s a good decision made by the Safari designers to let the URL text field disapear because on such a small device every single pixel used for content counts.

Therefore i was kind of puzzled when i saw the design of the browser on the Instinct. The Instinct as well as the iPhone has a URL text field in the top. Instead of a Button bar in the bottom, the Instinct designers have chosen to use space on both the left and the right side of the screen for buttons. This gives very little space for the content.

Luckily the designers have made it possible to enter a Full Screen View by touching an icon. The strange thing is, that a Full Screen View on an Instinct isn’t what i would expect from a Full Screen View. The only thing that disapears when you touch the icon is the URL text field leaving all buttons in on the left side of the screen.

The best aproach i have seen so far on designing a browser for mobile phones is Firefox. Though Firefox for mobile phones isn’t released yet a video shows how the Firefox mobile phone team have aproached the design challenge and have understood that on a small screen every single pixel used for content counts. All pixels are used for content which i think will lead to a better user experience than on both Safari on the iPhone and especially the browser on the Samsung Instinct.

To reach the navigation buttons on Firefox you have to scroll your finger to the right which reveals navigation bottons on the left side of the viewpoint. This aproach is very clever. Firefox use every single pixel for content which is what users are interested in when they read/scan pages.

It seems odd to me that the Firefox browser and the Samsung Instinct browser are designet the same year. The Safari browser does a deasent job but could learn from Firefox. But the Instinct seems to be designet before 2000 where the article mentionet at the top stated

“Making the screen bigger is just the current fashionable red herring to distract you from the plain and simple fact that the vendors can’t get the design right.”

It’s great mobile phones now have bigger screens which makes it easier to surf the internet on mobile phones. But to what use is the bigger screens when designers just don’t understand that we are not interested in their design but content?

Design For Mobile will be the first North American mobile user experience conference. This will be a two-day conference focused on strategy and tactics for user research, product definition, interaction and other design, and usability testing. A day of workshops and training will preceed the conference sessions.

One among many usability rules Steve Krug is famous for is something like, “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.”

I think thats right most of the time. But on the iPhone i have found one of exeption. I enable or disable WiFi whether i need it or not to conserve battery life. And from day one as an iPhone owner i have wondered why it takes so many clicks to do just that. (4 to be exact. Settings – WiFi – enable/disable – Home button. And thats only if you connect to a WiFi you have used before. Otherwise it’s at least 5.)

Am i the only person in the world who don’t want to waste unnecessary juice and who think that 4 clicks to enable/disable WiFi is way to many clicks even though “each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice”?

No i’m not. Luckily there exist an application called WiFiToggle to solve just that “problem”. Additional to a hacked iPhone you need to add “http://repo.ispazio.net” as a source in the Installer. After that you can find WiFiToggle in the Utilities folder. From now on enabling or disabling WiFi is down to 2 clicks. And that really does matter.

Russel Beattie, udvikleren af den mobile tjeneste Mowser som er en søgemaskine, der tilpasser websider så de kan læses på små skærme, anser det mobile internet for dødt. Med det mobile internet mener Russel Beattie websider der er 100% tilpasset til mobiltelefoner og som ikke har synlige fællestræk med det internet vi kender fra vores desktopcomputere.

Argumentet for det mobile internet, siger Russel Beattie, var, at der rundt regnet er 3 milliarder mobiltelefoner og når de kommer på internettet vil de langt overgå antallet af computere og derfor vælte trafikken mod mobiltelefonen som den primære enhed til at tilgå internettet. Det vil bare ikke ske, før der kommer bedre mobiltelefoner og “rigtige” browsere.

The problem is that these billions of users *haven’t* gotten on the Internet, and they won’t until the experience is better and access to the web is barrier-free – and that means better devices and “full browsers”. Let’s face it, you really aren’t going to spend any real time or effort browsing the web on your mobile phone unless you’re using Opera Mini, or have a smart phone with a decent browser – as any other option is a waste of time, effort and money. Users recognize this, and have made it very clear they won’t be using the “Mobile Web” as a substitute for better browsers, rather they’ll just stay away completely.

Som argument henviser han til tal fra M-Metrics der viser, at i USA går 85% af iPhoneejere på nettet fra deres mobiltelefon mod 58% smartphoneejere og kun 13% af det samlede mobilmarked. Om de tal så siger noget som helst om, om det er iPhonen i sig selv, der er skyld i det høje tal, eller om det er fordi der automatisk følger fri internet med iPhonen, når man husker at aktivere det “obligatoriske” AT&T-abonnement er en helt anden diskussion.

Jeg tror ikke, at det er én faktor, der er afgørende for, om folk tilgår internettet fra deres mobiltelefon, men at det bestemmes af en række faktorer, som alle er med til at bestemme brugernes samlede user experience af det mobile internet og dermed deres adoption af det. Det kunne blandt andet være faktorer som skærmens størrelse, at man selv skal installere en ordentlig browser, opsætningen af teleudbyderens internetindstillinger på telefonen, tastaturet, uigennemskuelige priser (afregning pr. mb), hastigheden, generel usability på telefonen og så videre.

Men det er en helt tredje diskussion, som jeg forhåbentlig ved meget mere om, når jeg afleverer mit speciale 1 august, som netop handler om brugeroplevelsen af det mobile internet.

Efter min mening er iPhonen med dens qwerty-tastatur langt bedre at skrive på end min gamle telefons 9-taster keyboard. Dog er jeg ikke tilfreds med telefonens autocorrection-funktion, der automatisk foreslår nye ord fra telefonens ordbog hvis den ikke kender det ord man taster.

Autocorrection står i vejen for at jeg kan taste hurtigt. Min konsentration skal fordeles mellem at ramme tasterne og at holde øje med om telefonen foreslår et forkert ord.

Foreslår telefonen et forkert ord er jeg nødt til at fjerne fingrene fra tasterne og føre dem til tekstfeltet i stedet for at fjerne forslaget.

Idéen er jo god og minder om T9 ordbogen på min gamle telefon. Jeg tror forskellen er, at hvor min gamle telefon havde fysiske knapper med der tilhørende taktilt feedback. Det tillader, at jeg ikke kigger på skærmen mens jeg taster. iPhonen har ikke nogen form for taktilt eller “følt” feedback og jeg er derfor nødt til at se på tasterne når jeg skriver.

En lille del af forklaringen er sikkert også om iPhonen foreslår mange rigtige rettelser eller mange forkerte rettelser. Da man skal udføre en handling for at omgå rettelsen giver det meget ekstra arbejde hvis telefonen tit foreslår noget forkert. For mit vedkommende ville det være bedre hvis jeg skulle gøre noget aktivt for at acceptere rettelsen, men då er det jo ikke autocorrection mere, men nærmere en suggest correction i stedet.

Jeg forstår slet ikke at Apple ikke har tilføjet muligheden for at kunne fjerne denne funktion. Så vidt jeg kan læse mig frem til er funktionen til stede i softwaren, men skjult. Heldigvis er der en venlig sjæl der har skrevet et hack, som bringer funktionen frem i indstillingsmenuen og derved gør det muligt at slå autocorrection til og fra i iPhonen, og en anden venlig sjæl, har skrevet en letforståelig guide om, hvordan man indstallerer hacket der giver mulighed for at slå autocorrection fra i iphonen.

JupiterResearch Finds Creating Better Browser Alternatives Would Stimulate Mobile Internet Adoption
Overall, 63 percent of cell phone owners are not using cell phones to access such Internet services as search engines or to gather such information as the daily news, which are both popular activities on computers. However, the fact that 37 percent of cell phone owners are accessing some kind of information or services on their cell phone is a clear indicator of demand from cell phone users for more than voice services.

Usability test: Does iPhone match the hype?
Let’s cut to the bottom line: In terms of usability, iPhone blew away its two competitors. Its overall score in the usability tests was 4.6 out of 5. The HTC Touch was a distant second at 3.4, and the Nokia N95 scored 3.2.

“Testers were [typically] about twice as fast doing specific tasks on the iPhone, which is pretty remarkable,” Thornton said.

Phone revolution makes Africa upwardly mobile
“This phone has become my office,” he added, smiling as he held up a Nokia registering a full bar of signal. Mr Gakungi and others like him are helping to drive a wireless revolution that has made Africa the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone market. At the start of 2000, there were eight million subscribers in Africa. According to a report by Informa, a telecoms analyst, there are now more than 100 million mobiles in use on the continent — one for every nine Africans.

35% of U.S. Tweens Own a Mobile Phone, According to Nielsen
According to Nielsen, 5% of tweens access the Internet over their phone each month. While 41% of tween mobile Internet users say they do so while commuting or traveling (to school, for example), mobile content such as the Internet is also a social medium for this audience: 26% of tween mobile Internet users say they access the web while at a friend’s house and 17% say they do so at social events.

The impact of the mobile phone
What was first considered a luxury item is now a necessity in our everyday lives. The mobile phone ranks right up there with the wallet, as items that I can’t leave home without. And if I did, well, I would feel something amiss and it would completely throw my day off.

The mobile phone also lets me do a lot more than make phone calls, play games and take photos. For example, OCBC Bank in Singapore has turned the mobile phone into a two-factor authentication device for Internet banking transactions. Newer mobile phones are also starting to incorporate GPS navigation, and wireless payment is emerging.

Mobile Manufacturers – Obsessed by cool?
I have the dubious pleasure of sitting in on a lot of focus groups with mobile users and I am always surprised at how many users want and need a phone that is robust. For example – many still treasure their Nokia 6310s and go all nostalgic when they talk about its reliability.

Festival for mobile phone films in Japan
Films made entirely on mobile phones are competing in Japan’s First Pocket Film Festival this weekend, with 48 titles in the running for the first prize of 500,000 yen (£2,200).

Ask the IntoMobile Magic 8-Ball – What is the future of mobile phones?
The UI is the future, and manufacturers are starting to realize that fact. Nokia is going with a touch-based S60. Motorola just bought a 50% stake in UIQ. Samsung has Croix. Apple has the iPhone. And therein lies the key to why the iPhone is such a success. The user interface on the iPhone is un-rivaled. Sure, it’s lacking in the hardware department, but Apple will eventually get it together and offer the same hardware specs that we’ve come to expect from high-end phones. But, the UI. Wow, the UI is incredible.

Ny portal giver det mobile overblik
Folkene bag MobStart mener nemlig, at portalen snart vil være sidestykket til Jubii og Yahoo – bare på mobiltelefonen. MobStart fokuserer specielt på hjemmesider, der er tilpasset det mobile internet.

Fuld fart på de mobile portaler
Både Sonofon og TDC jubler over deres respektive portaler, E-go og Fly.
»Inden for det sidste år er antallet af brugere steget med over 70 procent,« siger Peter Berg, der er markedsdirektør hos Sonofon.
Den markante fremgang har bragt E-gos besøgstal op på 192.000 unikke brugere, der skaber 1,5 millioner sidevisninger om måneden.
Hos TDC er der samme begejstring for portalen Fly.
»Vores opfattelse er, at Fly er en af de største mobile portaler. Vi har i øjeblikket 225.000 unikke besøgende om måneden, og vi ser en konstant vækst,« siger Morten Hother Sørensen, der er markedsdirektør i TDC Mobil Norden.

Apple trimmer iPhone til forretningsfolk
Indtil videre er det især inkarnerede Apple-entusiater og gadget-freaks, der har kastet sig over Apple-hittet iPhone. Men nu satser Apple på at udvide kredsen, og lancerer en erhvervsløsning, der skal gøre iPhone til forretningsmandens følgesvend.

Mobiler der stråler mindre
SonyEricsson S500i, SonyEricsson W580 og Samsung SGH-i600 er gode valg, hvis du ønsker en mobiltelefon med lav stråling.

A bank in every pocket?
Leonard Waverman of the London Business School has estimated that an extra ten mobile phones per 100 people in a typical developing country leads to an extra half a percentage point of growth in GDP per person.

As mobile phones have spread, a new economic benefit is coming into view: using them for banking, and so improving access to financial services, not just telecoms networks. Pioneering m-banking projects in the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa show the way. These “branchless” schemes typically allow customers to deposit and withdraw cash through a mobile operator’s airtime-resale agents, and send money to other people via text messages that can be exchanged for cash by visiting an agent.

Mobile Web: So Close Yet So Far
Similarly, surveys by Yankee Group, a Boston research firm, show that only 13 percent of cellphone users in North America use their phones to surf the Web more than once a month, while 70 percent of computer users view Web sites every day.

“The user experience has been a disaster,” says Tony Davis, managing partner of Brightspark, a Toronto venture capital firm that has invested in two mobile Web companies.