Mobile & Handheld User friendliness Testing — Why That Matters

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

— The number of people accessing the online world from portable and portable devices can be increasing in a massive rate – in 2008 alone there’ll be an estimated 54.99 million PDAs sold globally.

– People generally have a lot less experience of using their mobile to visit online than they do of using their laptop. This means that computer-based users can be assumed to possess a higher level of existing expertise than mobile and handheld dev1.telguard.com users.

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

Which will mobile phones and PDAs should you consider?

Mobiles and PDAs can differ from a another noticeably, and this can radically switch how people experience and use websites. Some of the ways handheld devices can differ contain:

– Screen-size (small or large)

– Display screen layout (portrait vs . landscape)

— Input equipment (stylus, numeric pad, dial-wheel, QWERTY keypad)

Because the cellular phone / PERSONAL DIGITAL ASSISTANT that somebody is applying will have this sort of a deep effect on all their experience of your web site, you should try to evaluate with several mobile phones and PDAs as is possible.

Of course , diagnostic tests with every cellular phone and PDA is out of the question. Here are some guidelines to help reduce the number of units you’ll need to evaluation with:

— Your portable site visitors could belong to a selected audience. Selected audiences normally prefer particular types of phones (e. g. telephones with big screens that are designed to support via the internet access versus small-screen designs that aren’t).
– There are ‘phone families’ that offer the same user knowledge (and will not likely need to be tested individually).
— You may only want to test considering the most well-known mobile phones in Europe or maybe the most well-known models that are being used to gain access to your site (you can look at your site stats to find out this kind of information).

Who do you want to test with?

The people you want to conduct the mobile phone usability testing sessions with definitely will, of course , be based upon your particular organization and its market. Some things to keep in mind include:

— How much knowledge they should possess of using their mobile phones to access services. This can be particularly important as the market with regards to accessing online services through mobile phones is growing and the percent of ‘complete novices’ (i. e. persons using the technology for the first time) will be a good deal higher than intended for computer users of your website.
– Which mobile phone or PERSONAL DIGITAL ASSISTANT they have. We would usually suggest that people work with their own cellphone in a session, so the evaluation can concentrate on your website without on the way the handheld device functions.

In which should cellular usability testing sessions become conducted?

Cell phones and PDAs are used in the real world so usability testing of portable devices will need to 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 are really accessing. One of the following circumstances could effect this experience and therefore factors of the website’s usability:

– Lighting
– Background sound
– Interruptions
– Contingency tasks (i. e. nearly anything the person is doing at the same time)
– Physical movement

As such, there was recommend, if you can, that any mobile phone and PDA user friendliness testing can be conducted at a lab and also inside the ‘outside world’.

How you approach and operate mobile phone usability sessions depends on your business and its customers, but the many popular techniques of mobile wonderful testing contain:

– Lab-based (using a camera to record the session)
— Diary-studies (asking people to maintain a record of how they have used all their mobile phone and any problems they encounter)
– Newspapers prototypes (running usability screening on a paper based version for the site, using mobile phone screen-sized pieces of paper)