I completely agree with Nick about the issue of scrolling on an i-mode
screen -- which is a significantly different experience than when navigating
the wireless web using an emulator.
Based upon my first experience with Google's i-mode beta, I found a couple
of items that deal with usability. I used a N502it handset, and also tried
it with Pixo 2.1 cHTML emulator, and MSIE 5/NT.
One usability issue that doesn't show up in a desktop browser or an emulator
is the display limitations of a handset. In my experience, pages with long
links (more than one or two words of text) take a long time to scroll and
are difficult to read.
There is the issue that Nick stated about links being a cursor stop, but
also the link is highlighted when selected -- and jumping from one link to
the next takes a considerable amount of time to refresh the screen when
navigating lists of long links. The Google results page uses the title of
the page as a link and the result is that this page is *painfully* slow to
navigate in my handset. It works fine in the emulator and desktop browser,
but the phone has limited memory and processor capacities.
CNN's i-mode site has done a good job of navigating lists of articles by
using just the emoji numeral (which should also correspond to the link's
accesskey) as the link, which increases the scroll speed immensely, and also
makes the text much easier to read. I have an assumption that highlighted
text has a lower comprehension rate than plain text, but haven't done
research in this area (yet).
Also, I find that the Google results screen is setup more for a desktop
environment than a handset. The abstracts are too long and (possibly)
unnecessary, and the URL is superfluous in this context -- as a user, I
assume that clicking the title will link me to this site. With all these
items, the results page becomes very long. Can the user remember what link
number 1 was about when they view link 5? Do they have to scroll back up to
see, and then scroll back down to compare? These are huge usability concerns
within the context of a small screen device. And Nick is correct to state
that you have to test this with first hand experience of the devices that
people use.
Lauren, what type of usability testing have you done -- or plan to do --
with i-mode handset users? I am interested in doing more research in this
area, so contact me directly if you would like to collaborate on this.
Paul
] paul wallace, ph.d.
] senior information architect
S P I K E C y b e r W o r k s
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nick@kyushu.com [mailto:nick@kyushu.com]
>
> The other issue - and the main one for me - is that when you
> scroll down a
> page on an imode phone, the cursor hops from link to link, slowing the
> scroll down. So the more links on a page, the more painful scrolling
> becomes.
>
>
> This is why I am particularly interested in the opinions of people who
> actually USE imode on a daily basis as the "problem" may not
> be apparent
> to people on the list who do not have first hand experience
> of imode. If
> people respond in this thread could they also say whether
> they have/use
> imode.... ?
This e-mail has been checked for viruses by MimeSweeper.
-- HTML Attachment decoded to text by Listar --
Re: Japanese phone numbers (Google usability)
I completely agree with Nick about the issue of scrolling on an i-mode
screen-- which is a significantly different experience than when navigating
the wireless web using an emulator.
Based upon my first experience with Google's i-mode beta, I found a couple
ofitems that deal with usability. I used a N502it handset, and also tried it
with Pixo 2.1 cHTML emulator, and MSIE 5/NT.
One usability issue that doesn't show up in a desktop browser or an emulator
is the display limitations of a handset. In my experience, pages with long
links (more than one or two words of text) take a long time to scroll and
aredifficult to read.
There is the issue that Nick stated about links being a cursor stop, but
alsothe link is highlighted when selected -- and jumping from one link to
thenext takes a considerable amount of time to refresh the screen when
navigating lists of long links. The Google results page uses the title of
thepage as a link and the result is that this page is *painfully* slow to
navigate in my handset. It works fine in the emulator and desktop browser,
but the phone has limited memory and processor capacities.
CNN's i-mode site has done a good job of navigating lists of articles by
using just the emoji numeral (which should also correspond to the link's
accesskey) as the link, which increases the scroll speed immensely, and also
makes the text much easier to read. I have an assumption that highlighted
text has a lower comprehension rate than plain text, but haven't done
research in this area (yet).
Also, I find that the Google results screen is setup more for a desktop
environment than a handset. The abstracts are too long and (possibly)
unnecessary, and the URL is superfluous in this context -- as a user, I
assume that clicking the title will link me to this site. With all these
items, the results page becomes very long. Can the user remember what link
number 1 was about when they view link 5? Do they have to scroll back up to
see, and then scroll back down to compare? These are huge usability concerns
within the context of a small screen device. And Nick is correct to state
that you have to test this with first hand experience of the devices that
people use.
Lauren, what type of usability testing have you done -- or plan to do --
withi-mode handset users? I am interested in doing more research in this
area, so contact me directly if you would like to collaborate on this.
Paul
] paul wallace, ph.d.
] senior information architect
S P I K E C y b e r W o r k s
>-----Original Message-----
>From: nick@kyushu.com [mailto:nick@kyushu.com[1]]
>
>The other issue - and the main one for me - is that when you
>scroll down a
>page on an imode phone, the cursor hops from link to link, slowing the
>scroll down. So the more links on a page, the more painful scrolling
>becomes.
>
>
>This is why I am particularly interested in the opinions of people who
>actually USE imode on a daily basis as the "problem" may not
>be apparent
>to people on the list who do not have first hand experience
>of imode. If
>people respond in this thread could they also say whether
>they have/use
>imode.... ?
This e-mail has been checked for viruses by MimeSweeper.
--- Links ---
1 mailto:nick@kyushu.com
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu Jan 25 06:03:42 2001