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I'll be teaching a "WAP Design" full-day course in London and New York this December.
This course is for designers who want to know how to design for today's phones, using today's mobile browsers. It is filled with examples and exercises geared to ready designers for immediate success.
WAP Design includes XHTML, CSS, and .mobi issues in a designer-focused course covering the following topics:
* WAP Overview
* WAP, including XHTML, CSS, and .mobi
* Successful and Unsuccessful WAP Sites
* Requirements Gathering for Design
* Competitive Analysis of Desktop and Mobile Web Sites
* Mobile Design Patterns
* Expert Design Guidelines
* WAP Design Toolbox
* Wireframing
* Paper Prototyping
More Info
Register for London: 3 December, 2007
Register for New York: 11 December, 2007
 New York, NY – August 21, 2007 – Usable Products Company recently completed an independent user experience benchmark on Mobile Search. Eighty participants evaluated three text-based and one voice-enabled mobile search solution resulting in several unexpected insights about the preferences of today’s mobile search users. Researchers were surprised that 79% of participants favored advertising-supported mobile search, and 37% felt that banner ads actually enhanced the mobile search user experience. Paid and sponsored text based ads proved most detrimental to user experience.
Also unexpected was that participants initially predicted voice search would be the most difficult to use but after an hour of usage gave it higher ratings than text search. According to Scott Weiss, president of Usable Products, “Users predicted voice search would be the worst of the four search products, but in final usability, it performed better than expected. We were surprised that participants enjoyed voice search, and how much more they liked it than searching via phone keypad.”
“Mobile search is in its early stages, with many opportunities for improvement. While participants averaged an impressive 88 percent success rate in submitting mobile search queries, only 53 percent found relevant results. Participants who found what they were looking for averaged 143 seconds to submit queries and find answers,” said Weiss. “None of the four search solutions was a clear winner. Our researchers have developed 25 Best Practices, which if followed, are likely to dramatically increase user satisfaction in mobile phone searches.”
The four mobile search solutions benchmarked were: InfoSpace WAP, JumpTap Java (Alltel Axcess Search), Nuance Voice Control, and Yahoo! Go. Participants each used a single mobile search product to check a horoscope, weather, a stock quote, find a restaurant, check a sports score, and find a ring tone. Success, time to complete, and user perceptions were tracked. 20 one-hour usability interviews were conducted for each search product.
“Mobile Search User Experience Benchmark” spans 179 pages and is delivered in print and on CD ROM, with 25 best practices, 76 charts, 32 demonstration videos of mobile search in action, 34 usability video clips, and hundreds of high resolution photographs. It is available for immediate sale from http://usableproducts.com.
 Usable Products Company’s recently-completed report, Celltop Usability, found that Celltop was harder to use than WAP. Alltel’s Celltop is a mobile widget solution, which Usable Products studied alongside Axcess Web, a WAP portal, on LG’s AX8600 mobile telephone.
Mobile widgets are ‘Web 2.0’ for phones. Mobile widgets are highly interactive, Internet-aware applications. Celltop is a mobile widget solution launched by Alltel in January 2007, with the promise of increased usability. A case study from the designers of Celltop states that “Celltop … was created specifically to communicate the Alltel brand attributes of reliability, simplicity, and service.”
 Unfortunately, Celltop is less usable than WAP. Only 7 out of 10 usability test participants were able to successfully check the weather in Miami, Florida using Celltop, while all 10 were successful using Axcess Web, a WAP portal. Furthermore, of those who succeeded, Celltop took 36 seconds (27%) longer than WAP. Half of the participants started with Celltop; the other half started with Axcess Web.
Participants checked the phone’s call log using Celltop and the phone’s native user interface, with similar results: 70% were successful using Celltop, while 100% were successful using the phone’s native user interface (UI). Celltop required 161% more time to check the call log than the phone’s native UI. Participants needed a full minute to check the call log with Celltop, and only 23 seconds using the native UI.
Celltop is visually appealing, but its ease of use is inferior to LG’s native UI. Despite poor usability, participants preferred Celltop overall, 6 to 4. However, not for checking the weather or the call log—in those cases, participants favored WAP and the phone’s native user interface 7 to 3 over Celltop. Usability tasks included finding and launching Celltop, checking the weather, sports scores, stock quotes, the call log, adding the News cell, and reordering cells. 10 one-hour usability interviews were conducted in Spring, 2007.
The report, Celltop Usability, delivered in print and on CD ROM, is available for immediate sale from http://usableproducts.com. It spans 50 pages, starting with background on 7 mobile widget solutions. The report contains 17 charts, dozens of high resolution photographs, 10 demonstration videos of Celltop in action, and 15 usability video clips.
 I was wrong! In recent User Experience Benchmarking training sessions in New York and San Francisco, I explained Usable Products Company's strategy on conducting research using under-18 participants. I stated definitively that as long as they were legal to work, parent permission was not required. Technically, that statement is true; however, “legal to work” means that work papers for children aged 14 – 17 have been signed by parents.
Our Mobile Search User Experience Benchmark study includes four under-18s out of each suite of 20 interviews. I was curious, so I looked up the information at the New York State Department of Labor web site. We also looked at market research web sites, which were less helpful. Rather than ask under-18 respondents to see work papers, we decided to stay on the safe side and get parent permission.
We created a fast, easy, electronic strategy to gather and nearly guaranty credible parental approval, in seven easy steps:
1. Filter our existing panel for respondents aged 35 – 55.
2. Prepare an Under-18 survey, with the first entry fields requiring the parent’s full name, email, and telephone number.
3. Ask panelists with children aged 14 – 17 to forward the survey link to their children.
4. After harvesting data from the Under-18 survey, cross-reference and verify Under-18 parent information with the 35 – 55 panel.
5. Email verified respondents’ parents a PDF permission form.
6. Require parents to fax or mail the signed permission form.
7. Schedule Under-18s by calling the parent.
We went a few steps further: The parent permission form included fill-in fields that enabled the parent to permit his or her child to attend alone or only with parent in tow. If the signed form was faxed, the original was required when the child arrived for research, if the parent did not require their own presence. When parents are present, we allow them to watch interviews from the observer side of the one-way mirror.
We prepared a background with "Under 18" in large type that we use during interviews with children. Why? Child privacy laws! Rather than ask the parents to permit our use of the still images and video, we decided to omit Under 18 videos and stills from our studies, instead using icons to represent the child respondents with quotes. The background is there in case we accidentally harvest a child’s video, so that the analyst pulling the video clip doesn’t accidentally include a video clip of a child in the report. Note: the image used in this blog entry comes from a study for which we did receive parental permission to use the child's likeness.
Once I realized my error, I decided that a thorough process for parental approval made the most sense. With electronic surveys, email, and the fax machine, even the seven steps above don't take too much time or effort, and the fax and original form paper trail provides us with ample tracking information to protect the safety of our under-18 respondents.
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