Comments on Mobile: The State of the Art

Shawn Honnick — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:43 GMT

I cam across this site searching “cost of sending SMS”+discussion (on Google) while working on a project for my business. I would be interested in your critique, comments or questions about what we’re doing with SMS at my link below…

I love the article. I assume you’ve read “Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold? Great stuff as well.

May Woo — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:43 GMT

Another book that might be of interest is DoCoMo: Japan’s Wireless Tsunami by John Beck and Mitchell Wade. It’s not a book on usability…more of a boosterish business book (that idolizes the management of the company)...but it does provide some interesting insights here and there on why i-mode is such a hit in Japan.

May Woo — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:43 GMT

Anyone interested in mobile devices should look at the Danger Hiptop / T-Mobile Sidekick. It has a form factor that is much more suited to mobile data communication than any of the phones currently on the market and the web browsing, email, messaging, PIM apps on it are incredibly well designed – very elegant and easy to use. The major handset manufacturers have a lot of learning / catching up to do.

Douglass Turner — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:43 GMT

Shawn,

Do you have an email address you can be reached at?

Matthew Pollard — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:43 GMT

I think the popularity of SMS is shown here(UK) by the fact that you can send SMS from your PC. I think it’s quite interesting that the SMS thing worked and the WAP thing hasn’t really. SMS negates the idea of checking your email via a mobile phone. The screens are too small aswell.

Incidently the BBC Radio 4 here are the moment they are having a competition to decide the best and worst invention ever – some one nominated the mobile phone as the worst. You’ll be able to tell when SMS has truly taken off because you’ll hear those irritating beeps of messages being received wherever you go.

George Schneiderman — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:39:58 GMT

Timo wrote:
> There are two books that are worth mentioning when it comes to mobile interaction design/IA/usability.
> Handheld Usability. Scott Weiss.
> Haven’t read this expensive tome, but it sounds interesting, but likely too focused on rapidly changing standards.

I have read Scott Weiss’s book, and I highly recommend it. He does a good job of including current technology and standards without making them the focus of the book. The focus is solidly on conceptual principles that will persist even when the technology standards have been rendered obsolete.

He also has an excellent website: http://www.handheldusability.info/

The book is expensive, but if you are working professionally in the design or evaluation of interfaces for handheld devices, it is a worthwhile investment.

Disclaimer: I know Scott and think he’s a great guy, so I may not be entirely objective about this.

Jay Kumar — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:43 GMT

In regards to SMS in Singapore, Its a big hit, although the interface is hard to use. I would however say that its very popular only to the younger generation. Teenagers to young adults. I don’t see SMS being used by the older generation.(This is my opinion on observation for many and not validated research.)

These are the reasons as to why its a big hit in Singapore (In my opinion):

Motivation: Teenagers and Young adults per se love talking on the phone to Instant Messaging and now you can carry on this using SMS while mobile.

The love for communication between friends no matter where you are. The motivation to learn the hard to use interface through trial and error so that you can chat while you are in the bus/ MRT ( sorta like the BART in San Francisco) and whereever its inconvenient to talk on the phone.
Also, when you do not want to converse with the person but rather just inform the person a specific comment, for example, “meet me at 2p.m.”, if they called the person, it might lead ot a conversation and SMS solves this problem. The motivation factor is a great reason as to why people learn to use these hard to use interfaces.

Price: The cost of sending SMS messages are way cheaper than talking on the handphone. This factor is an important factor for the teenagers and young adults whose budget is small or for most people who choose to use SMS.

Society: The teenagers and the young adults in Singapore have grown up in a society where they are introduced to technology in the early age. Kids are introduced to computers as early as 6 years old and high school students use wireless devices for various purpose and majority of singaporeans have a computer at home. With this influence, they are also introduced to interfaces which are often hard to use. They have come to expect interfaces to be hard in any IT product/service. Although, there has been a slight awkening to need for easy to use IT products and services.

In Singapore, most people blame themsleves for not be being savvy enough to know how to use these SMS or any other IT products or services. They learn to be “Savvy” enough to use these products/services.

These are some reasons as to why I believe that although the interface is very hard to use, its popular in Singapore.

Timo — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

Very interesting Shawn; can you give us more details of that xml tool?

Shawn Smith — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

There are several philosophies that can guide the development of applications and content for different devices…

The comments so far have focused on the maddening challenge of developing device-specific “alternative” versions of what we develop for the PC. There are three basic approaches I have used:

1. Custom coding – Custom coding for each device class (and sometimes for specific devices) is the most difficult and time-consuming approach, but it offers the most control. It’s analagous to coding for a wide range of PC browser versions, but it goes a few steps further. Developers have to accommodate a high degree of both software and hardware variation.

2. Transcoding – At the other end of the scale is transcoding, an automated process by which web markup and scripts are parsed and processed into WML or other device specific markup. Developers have very little control, and since the transcoding engine doesn’t *know* anything about the content, usable and useful output is far from guaranteed.

3. Recently, a few developer tools have appeared, which automate parts of the process and allow control over other parts. One I have begun to use requires a developer to translate HTML (or other) markup into a proprietary XML-based markup that essentially makes every element an object. Then, using a simple GUI that references the markup and a library of objects defined by the markup, the developer can build custom layouts per device or device class.

So far I have been satisfied with this tool, but it amounts to a workaround. At some point the mobile world will settle into some sanity and our lives will be made easier by established standards and more powerful development tools.

Fabrizio Ulisse — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

As in the early days of web development (remember Netscape Vs. Internet Explorer?), we’re facing a new two-contendents match: Microsoft Vs. the rest of the world (now embodied by Symbian OS inside Nokia and Ericsson mobile devices).

The main issue is the lack of CSS and XHTML support by Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer for Smartphones and Pocket PCs. Obviously we can still operate server-side transformation with XSL, but the IA suffers: we should finally deal with a consolidated workflow, and again this is not possible, although the W3C efforts to establish standards in this chaos.

Our only possible commitment will be to design consistently across devices, keeping in mind on one hand the two or three different technical implementations, and on the other hand the digital identity of the project, making large use of liquid design. Otherwise we will loose our sleep chasing all the esagonal screens that mobile industry will provide…

Brian Thornton — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

It appears you have done some extensive research. However I would ask you comments on the possibilty of a newer idea in the using of standard webpages via a mobile device. Instead of creating seperate copies of wesites (HTML) for device types. Would it be beneficial to have a fully engage HTML parser that only displayed usable content for that device? This is a newer concept from what I can tell is being introduced via smaller fish in the market such as phone.com and parts of Ericcson. Do you think it might stick around? How does similar areas such as Japan, europe handle such? Thanks,
Brian

Timo — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:39:59 GMT

I have been doing some casual research in the UK, Norway and Finland looking at the patterns and interaction flows within different handsets, and handset modes.

A key observation is that when connecting to a WAP service a Nokia phone becomes highly unusable – the WML encoded sites cannot make proper use of the keypad or other buttons.

For example the ‘soft keys’ under the screen usually act like back and forward buttons in a browser; taking the user in and out of menu items for normal phone functions. But in ‘WAP services’ mode they are can be reversed or become entirely redundant.

It makes me a little depressed to read the end of your article, thinking about the dozens of handset designs currently in development for 2.5 & 3G use, and wondering how many site versions we are going to have to develop in order to take advantage of these different interaction possibilities, or to just make them barely usable… This model also seems to put far too much power in the hands of developers who will constantly have to reinvent the wheel with inconsistent interfaces.

Can there not be a standard for hardware interfaces as there are for WML stacks or xhtml divs?

On positive note: on a recent trip to Tokyo I found the best features of iMode phones to be the *heart* and the *car* symbols, for ‘courtesy mode’ and ‘driving mode’ respectively. The ability to turn off all sounds or divert all incoming calls at the press of one button seems like such good contextual design.

Shawn Smith — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

At the last minute, I had to trim some of my thoughts on market penetration out of the article to keep it under the maximum length, but it’s worth discussing.

Essentially, there are two factors that have slowed the market penetration rate in the US. First and most significantly, the mishmash of transmission standards chosen by US operating companies meant that in many ways they couldn’t share the burden of infrastructure development. Instead, they had to build large, expensive networks almost entirely independently of each other. As a result, Wireless coverage in the US is weaker than it is in Europe, especially in rural areas. Coverage is still a prime differentiator for customers shopping for cellular service in the US, which is not the case in Europe or Japan.

Secondly, and this has more to do with data transmission than voice, PC penetration is much higher in the US than it is in Europe or Japan, so there is not the same market here for high-end mobile phones with all kinds of data capabilities.

Timo — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

There are two books that are worth mentioning when it comes to mobile interaction design/IA/usability.

Information Appliances and Beyond. Eric Bergman ed.
Has a couple of detailed case studies on the design of Nokia and Palm interfaces that deal with contextual design issues and interface trade-offs: a really good resource.

Handheld Usability. Scott Weiss.
Haven’t read this expensive tome, but it sounds interesting, but likely too focused on rapidly changing standards.

Steve Mulder — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

Excellent overview of a complex domain. I’m curious: What’s your take on why market penetration has stayed relatively low in the U.S.? Are competing standards entirely to blame, or is there something cultural going on?