Mobile & Handheld Simplicity Testing – Why This Important

Mobile phone and PDA usability testing is critical to your business. Actually mobile and handheld user friendliness testing could possibly be even more important than computer-based usability testing. The main reasons for this kind of are:

– The number of people accessing the web from mobile phone and handheld devices is increasing in a massive level – in 2008 alone there’ll become an estimated 49 million PDAs sold around the globe.

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

— The platform whereby users access your site is definitely far less foreseeable when using mobiles. Computer-based guests generally simply differ from one other in their internet browser and os (i. age. most people will use a screen, mouse button and keyboard), whereas the different types of mobile phones and PDAs are different can dramatically.

Which will mobile phones and PDAs should you consider?

Cellphones and PDAs can differ derived from one of another dramatically, and this should radically adjust how people experience and use websites. Some of the ways that handheld equipment can differ incorporate:

– Screen-size (small versus large)

– Display layout (portrait vs . landscape)

— Input device (stylus, squatchi.com numeric keypad, dial-wheel, QWERTY keypad)

Because the cellular phone / PDA that someone is applying will have this kind of a unique effect on their very own experience of your web blog, you should try to check with numerous mobile phones and PDAs as is feasible.

Of course , assessment with every cellular phone and PERSONAL DIGITAL ASSISTANT is extremely hard. Here are some ways to help narrow down the number of products you’ll need to test out with:

– Your mobile site visitors could belong to a particular audience. Certain audiences normally prefer particular types of phones (e. g. smartphone with big screens that will support online access or small-screen versions that aren’t).
– You will find ‘phone families’ that offer the same user experience (and is not going to need to be analyzed individually).
— You may only want to test with the most popular mobile phones in Europe and also the most popular models that are being used to gain access to your site (you can check your site stats to find out this information).

Who do you need to test with?

The people you need to conduct the mobile phone user friendliness testing times with can, of course , rely upon your particular organization and its viewers. Some things to bear in mind include:

– How much encounter they should contain of utilizing their mobile phones to gain access to services. This can be particularly crucial as the market with respect to accessing on line services through mobile phones is growing and the percent of ‘complete novices’ (i. e. people using the technology for the first time) will be considerably higher than just for computer users of the website.
– Which mobile phone or PDA they have. We might usually recommend that people apply their own cellphone in a time, so the evaluation can focus on your website instead of on the way the hand-held device performs.

Just where should mobile usability diagnostic tests sessions become conducted?

Cellphones and PDAs are used inside the real world consequently usability diagnostic tests of handheld devices ought to therefore not merely take place in a usability laboratory.

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

— Lighting
— Background noise
– Distractions
– Concurrent tasks (i. e. nearly anything the person is performing at the same time)
– Physical movement

As such, we would recommend, if possible, that virtually any mobile phone and PDA usability testing is conducted at a lab and also inside the ‘outside world’.

How you method and work mobile phone usability sessions depends on your business and its viewers, but the the majority of popular methods of mobile user friendliness testing incorporate:

– Lab-based (using a camera to record the session)
– Diary-studies (asking people to keep a journal of how they may have used their mobile phone and any complications they encounter)
– Paper documents prototypes (running usability testing on a paper based version from the site, applying mobile phone screen-sized pieces of paper)