Handheld Devices Simplicity Testing — Why It Matters

Cellphone and PDA usability screening is critical on your business. In fact , mobile and handheld functionality testing could be even more important than computer-based user friendliness testing. The key reasons for this kind of are:

– The number of people accessing the online world from cellular and hand held devices is certainly increasing by a massive fee – in 2008 by itself there’ll be an estimated 58 million PDAs sold throughout the world.

— People generally have much less experience of utilizing their mobile to move online than they do of using their computer system. This means that computer-based users can be assumed to get a higher level of existing expertise than mobile and handheld users.

– The platform through which users get your site is definitely far less estimated when using mobile phone devices. Computer-based guests generally only differ from the other in their browser and operating-system (i. y. most people will make use of a screen, mouse and keyboard), whereas different types of mobile phones and PDAs fluctuate can drastically.

Which will mobile phones and PDAs do you need to consider?

Cell phones and PDAs can differ from one another considerably, and this might radically transformation how people experience and use websites. Some of the ways handheld units can differ contain:

– Screen-size (small vs . large)

– Display layout (portrait vs . landscape)

– Input device (stylus, www.alessandrogargano.com numeric pad, dial-wheel, QWERTY keypad)

Because the mobile phone / PDA that someone is applying will have this sort of a profound effect on their experience of your internet site, you should try to test with as many mobile phones and PDAs as is possible.

Of course , tests with every mobile phone and PDA is out of the question. Here are some tips to help focus the number of gadgets you’ll need to test out with:

— Your cellular site visitors may belong to a certain audience. Certain audiences are likely to prefer particular types of phones (e. g. mobile handsets with big screens that can support on line access vs . small-screen units that aren’t).
– You will find ‘phone families’ that offer a very similar user experience (and will never need to be tested individually).
— You may want to00 test when using the most popular mobile phones in Europe or perhaps the most well-liked models that are to be used to gain access to your site (you actually can look at your site statistics to find out this kind of information).

Who do you wish to test with?

The people you intend to conduct your mobile phone functionality testing trainings with might, of course , rely upon your particular business and its target audience. Some things to make note of include:

– How much experience they should have of using their mobile phones to locate services. This is particularly crucial as the market intended for accessing web based services through mobile phones keeps growing and the percent of ‘complete novices’ (i. e. persons using the technology for the first time) will be very good higher than pertaining to computer users of the website.
— Which cellular phone or PDA they have. We would usually recommend that people employ their own mobile phone in a treatment, so the test out can focus on your website and not on the way the hand-held device works.

In which should mobile phone usability screening sessions end up being conducted?

Mobile phone devices and PDAs are used in the real world hence usability assessment of handheld devices should therefore not merely take place in a usability lab.

Where, once and how a mobile phone is utilized is critical to a person’s experience of the site they may be accessing. One of the following instances could affect this encounter and therefore factors of the website’s usability:

— Lighting
— Background sound
– Interruptions
– Concurrent tasks (i. e. nearly anything the person does at the same time)
– Physical movement

As such, we’d recommend, whenever possible, that any kind of mobile phone and PDA simplicity testing is certainly conducted both in a lab and also inside the ‘outside world’.

How you strategy and run mobile phone wonderful sessions depends on your organization and its target market, but the many popular strategies to mobile simplicity testing involve:

– Lab-based (using a camera to record the session)
– Diary-studies (asking people to continue to keep a diary of how they have used all their mobile phone and any problems they encounter)
– Magazine prototypes (running usability assessment on a paper based version in the site, applying mobile phone screen-sized pieces of paper)