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

The artwork in the Altima Coupe ad inspired our graphics for the WAP Design course. Molly Bowman created the logos for London & New York.

What is it about the cell phone that inspires art? Is it that the device keeps us in touch, is ever-present in our pocket or purse, and has so many sense-inspiring features? We feel the devices, see them (and their screens), hear them... We don't taste or smell them thankfully, but they satisfy the other three senses beautifully.

It's interesting that touch screens lack that sense of feel--except those that use Immersion's VibeTonz technology, which makes touch screens "feel" like they've been pressed when buttons are activated.

T Interactive pushes content to the idle screen, with overnight downloads of content, free of charge. The content is then shown throughout the day without requiring further downloads. One example is Cizle, a movie ticketing service that shows advertising for new movies for which customers can buy tickets.

With search, search results are providing a single result, the nearest, instead of a list of many. Searching for Starbucks in their old design provided 169 results on 19 pages. The new design provides a single result with a map to it, with links to other locations.



The "After" solution looks a whole lot better, though it actually looks as if one of the links in the "Before" image was clicked. I would prefer to see a set of information above the map, with links below it. Above the map, I'd list the address and cross street, business hours, and a short review. Below the map, I'd list the phone number (linked for a call), the directions links, and "More search results for 'Starbucks'".

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.

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.

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.

Widget engines are the technology platforms on which widgets are deployed, the most well-known of which is Widsets, a well-funded Nokia spin-off with no monetization model in sight. While Widsets is available for free download, it only works on the latest smart phones. Furthermore, Widsets requires download and installation procedures likely to baffle most mobile phone users, and which could be costly for mobile phone users without all-you-can-eat data plans.

The one operator-deployed widget solution is Celltop from Alltel, a regional US operator. The left softkey label on the idle screen is "Celltop," which launches the widget engine, reputed to be UI One from Qualcomm. The engine starts with a branded animation and sound effect, lasting several seconds. Celltop emerges, with two side-by-side applications, each laid atop a subtly three-dimensional gradient bubble See http://mycelltop.com for a sexed-up demo of the experience, though you should know that though Celltop looks like the demo, it's not nearly as responsive.

Each Celltop widget is a single data application. Several "cells" ship with a new Celltop handset, including Inbox, Call List, Weather, and different sports, including Rodeo. Celltop has two modes, Navigation, and Application. In Navigation mode, one can slide the display left and right between the subscribed widgets, with an associated "whoosh" sound effect. Pressing the center select button enters Application mode, where the selected widget expands to take up the entire display. Widgets update automatically in either mode, though in Application mode, more data is obviously visible. In an as-yet unreleased Usable Products Company study of Celltop, updates were sluggish, and the data was sometimes stale. The Search cell is not yet available.

Celltop sets a low standard, being the first deployed solution. However, there are non-deployed solutions from several providers, including Nokia's Widsets, Mobidgets, BluePulse, Openwave's MIDAS, Opera Widgets, and the just announced Microsoft spin-off, Zen Zui. All have received some amount of hype.

Come to MAPOS in San Francisco 26 – 28 June, 2007 to learn more about mobile widgets, and attend a very special workshop devoted to widgets that I will be moderating. This workshop is an exciting full-day strategy session that starts by teaching the background, advantages, and challenges of each of the major platforms. It continues with group design sessions for widgets on today's—and tomorrow's phones. It wraps up with a round table discussion on policies and pricing: what should widgets cost, and also their use on a regular basis. The brightest minds in mobility will be there, so please join us! Email me to receive a 25% discount from Informa on the MAPOS US event.

Included in the survey were Internet Access, Mobile Television Features, and MP3 Player Capabilities. Only 9% rated Mobile Television Features Very Important, and 14% rated MP3 Player Capabilities Very Important… The highest percentage of respondents (33%) rated Mobile Television Features and MP3 Player Capabilities as Neither Important nor Unimportant in their mobile phone purchase decisions. Internet Access was rated Very Important by 34% of respondents.

Mobile usability is hard to gauge in stores, but impossible to miss once the phone is purchased. According to WDS Global's 2006 survey in the UK, one in seven mobile phones is returned within the first year of purchase by subscribers as faulty, but 63% of the devices being returned are found to be without fault, costing the mobile industry $4.5 Billion per year. Usability is a big deal.

Then came Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, with a lot of fascinating statistics and a hot pink tie. He received a long standing ovation. (George Bush received a short standing ovation.) Clinton spoke of the telecommunications act that opened up cable and wireless to more modern competition, though he expressed regret for the "antiquated language" in the act. Clinton said that median incomes rose in the second half of the 1990's due to information technology, which accounted for 7% of US employment, but 28% of US economic growth from 1996 to 2000, with economic growth of 4%, with IT growing 21%. Inflation was 3%, but in IT it was 1%. Jobs paid twice as much as foreign affiliates in the same industries and 25% more than average jobs in the US. Median wages rose due to IT.

In Rwanda, Clinton is working to put together a healthcare network, relying on cell phones and solar power. Penetration of cell phones in Africa is over 12%. Every increase of cell phone penetration of 10% increases GDP 1/6 of 1%, increasing access to markets through their mobile phones. Haiti, afflicted by bad governments and oppression, has a new job class where people sell minutes of use on a mobile phone. The fastest category for micro loans in Bangladesh is to women so that they can buy cell phones. 60% of loan takers use this money to lift themselves above the poverty line. Clinton urged us to make micro loans to people all over the emerging world to enable those below the poverty line to rise above it through the use of mobile technology.

The Upstage was just one of a whole line of Ultra phones, the craziest of which was the SGH-F510, below. Samsung didn't have any US announcements for the SGH-F510, which not only flips, but has an embedded hinge, inside of which hides an aerial, used for television reception. It seemed pretty fragile.

The u740 is a dual-hinged flip phone with a QWERTY keypad. It looked pretty tricky to use in vertical orientation, but the horizontal orientation looked terrific. The button feel wasn't perfect, but the unit was thin.

The Zeemote device duplicates navigation and other button functions of the handset. Zeetoo plans joystick, trackball, and Wii type control with accelerometers. The two areas of Zeetoo's initial focus are games and Location-Based Services (LBS). Pairing seemed trivial, and Zeetoo's target is under 30 seconds.

Zeemotes will be available in small numbers in the Fall, and in mass in 2008. Street prices are expected to start at $29.95, which could include a game or game demos, up to $49.95. Including an SD slot on the unit would increase price, but would tremendously expand the applications possible. Zeetoo's technology has been fully tested on 44 different phones so far. They expect the technology to work on all newer Nokia and Motorola phones, numbering in the hundreds of models. So far, Zeetoo has targeted Java and Windows Mobile, with hope for BREW soon. If I were them, I'd target all the fun phones that Helio supports, and try to get an exclusive to build the brand. I bet Zeetoo devices will increase mobile gaming sales—that would be a fun correlational story.

The Zeetoo pairing process installs software that sets up the controller--a seamless installation without any need for further customization. Each controller has a unique ID, so crosstalk won't be a problem. New game ideas could utilize multiple Zeemotes for the same phone. This technology could be used for console gaming when enough controllers are not available. I can imagine cinematic gaming in a movie theater where dozens or even hundreds of people are playing at the same time, taking interactive entertainment to the next level.

Usable Products' User Experience Benchmarking Training

MEX: 2 – 3 May, 2007, London, UK
MEX is Marek Pawlowski's annual Mobile User Experience conference, held in London (http://pmn.co.uk/mex). This year it's on the 2nd/3rd of May. It is a two-day strategy forum for "leading minds in mobile telecoms." I have spoken at and attended the last two MEX events, which I found inspiring. This year I will be one of the facilitators, who will each lead discussions within a group of approximately ten delegates throughout the two-day conference. Readers of this list are entitled to a £100 savings. Email me to receive this discount on your MEX registration.

MAPOS USA: 26 – 28 June, 2007, San Francisco, CA, USA MAPOS USA is Informa's annual forum for Mobile Applications and Operating Systems. This year is the first that it will be held in the US. It is the most interesting mobile technology conference for UI designers, marketers, and solution providers. I will be chairing a panel on "Widgets: Mobile’s Door to a PC-Like Experience and Development Ecosystem… or simply Marketing Spin?" I will also run a full-day workshop after the conference for delegates interested in "Widget Frameworks and the Mobile User Interface: How to Succeed, Today & Tomorrow." Readers of this list are entitled to a 25% discount on MAPOS USA registration. Please email me for the conference brochure and also to register with the 25% discount.

Mobile HCI: 11 – 14 September, 2007, Singapore
Mobile HCI (http://mobilehci.org) is the annual academic conference for Mobile Human Computer Interaction. I have submitted two tutorials and an industrial case study, and plan to submit a panel for consideration by reviewers. This event is the only academic conference devoted to HCI for mobile devices. With keynotes by Songyee Yoon, VP Communication Intelligence at SK Telecom, Donghoon Chang, VP of Mobile User Experience Design at Samsung Electronics, and Prof. Masaaki Fukomoto of NTT DoCoMo's Frontier Technology Research Group, this event should draw UI designers, developers, marketers, and executives from all over the world. It is comprised of papers from students, professors, and industry participants. Papers are of varying quality, but the tutorials and workshops are truly forward-thinking.

IMS phones will be Internet appliances, for which voice will be a single application. Other applications could be live television, instant messaging, or a shopping tool for new music downloads. The conference was about infrastructure, technology, user experience, and getting to know the players, both the vendors and the buyers.

IMS has several UE considerations:
1. Pricing of application services, data, and voice
2. Cost conveyance to the consumer
3. Policy management: digital rights, pathways (SMS vs. email vs. IM…), moving identity from a personal device to another device, either another personal device or a shared public device (like from a mobile to a TV, either in the home or in a hotel).

There's a lot more after the break...

Mark Burk, a Research Analyst at Informa Telecoms, suggested that handsets for mobile TV will cost $150 more than existing 3G handsets. He said that 43% of the cost to consumers for mobile TV will be the handset for the 18-month period of the typical contract. He also said that consumers were willing to spend $10-15 per month for these services. I ask, what’s Mark been smoking?

Place shifting is the technical name for video podcasting, as users would choose what programs to watch and simply download them to their phones. This choice is a bandwidth constraint that will ultimately fail, unless it’s done through a USB cable or Bluetooth/WiFi to the home or work broadband connection.

One-to-one and one-to-many are cellular transmission of mobile content. This strategy could fail, since cellular sites can at most handle three or four simultaneous broadcasts, even with EVDO Rev. A and HSDPA deployments.

Broadcast using radio frequency (RF) technology will turn mobile phones into television receivers, giving them two radios. This concept makes the most sense, as it doesn’t impact the cellular network in any way. The challenge here is broadcast quality and spectrum allocation, both of which will be tremendous issues. The program guide and other content will stream via the cellular network. I see snow on screens in the future—isn’t that a step backward?

The program guide can also combine the three broadcast methods, not necessarily even indicating which is in use. The biggest usability challenge stated by all of the speakers is the channel change time, which is longer than three seconds.

Paul Scanlan, COO & Co-Founder of MobiTV spoke about the future of mobile TV.

2004: <1 FPS with MJPEG, then 5-7 FPS with MJPEG, GPRS & 1X-RTT
2005: 12-17 FPS, MPEG, GPRS/EDGE/EVDO
2006: 15-30 FPS, MPEG, UMTS/EVDO

I’m looking forward to 2007. MobiTV has a new, sexy program guide (EPG), which has up-sell area above the programming content, which they showed on the Sprint service. While watching content, they scroll up-sell opportunities for ring tones, voting (using premium SMS), and what appears to be sponsorship banner ads.

MobiTV monitors the broadcast traffic, down to each cell site. The Michael Jackson verdict was the most popular day in their history.

MobiTV believes in WiMAX as the future.

Cost Implications of Mobile TV & Video
David Carey, President and CTO of Portelligent gave a fascinating presentation about the cost implications of mobile TV and video on handsets. It seems to be about $60 for the Bill of Materials, though Mark Burk earlier said $150 to the end user. Portelligent creates "tear down" studies of handsets, where they "kill them gently," taking them apart and lovingly photographing every aspect of the design. The biggest costs didn't appear to be the chips, but the complicated double hinging mechanisms for the displays.