Usability Week 2009
San Francisco
Jun 22-27		 New York
Jul 13-17		 Sydney
Jul 27-Aug 1		 Edinburgh
Sep 14-18

Mobile Usability

  • San Francisco: Saturday, June 27
  • New York: Not offered
  • Sydney: Not offered
  • Edinburgh: Not offered

Raluca Budiu
Full-Day Tutorial

2009 is the year of mobile design, but how do we create a satisfactory user experience when limited to a small device? Not by following big-screen design guidelines, that's for sure.

This seminar is based on a multinational study with participants ranging from students to early technology adopters and business people using a variety of mobile devices. We will also report on the latest findings from articles published in prestigious journals and conferences.

Our user research included feature phones, smartphones, and touchphones from several different vendors, and the seminar will discuss the issues in designing for this range of devices. It does not target any individual phone model.

What You’ll Learn

  • What behaviors users engage in when using mobile devices
  • Guidelines and best practices about how to make your website mobile-friendly, with emphasis on:
    • Features that make mobile sites usable
    • Easy navigation on mobile devices
    • Writing and producing content for mobile devices

Course Outline

Mobile user behaviors:

  • Navigation to websites on mobile devices
    • Search
    • Portals
    • Bookmarks
    • Direct access
  • Browsing for news, entertainment, sports
  • Finding specific information (weather, movie times, etc.)
  • Transactions (such as online banking and other financial operations)
  • Using maps and location information
  • Integrating e-mail and contact information with browsing and fact-finding
  • Content management (ringtones, photos, etc.)
  • Monitoring and communication
    • E-mail
    • Instant messaging
    • Online communities
    • Social networks
    • Discussion groups
    • And more
  • Shopping
    • Finding information about a product
    • Comparing online and in-store costs
    • Purchasing
    • M-commerce
  • Killing time
    • Video, music, and games
    • Accessing, choosing, and downloading content
  • Accessing nutrition and health information

Design strategy considerations:

  • Creating a dedicated mobile site vs. having mobile users access your regular website
    • Integration between mobile services and your regular website (if you have two separate designs)
  • Designing for high-end models vs. the lowest common denominator
    • Direct manipulation UI for touchphones (e.g., iPhone, BlackBerry Storm)
    • Indirect manipulation for low-end devices

Specific design guidelines for mobile sites and services:

  • Workflow
  • Navigation and information architecture (IA)
    • How many options for mobile?
    • Category labels
    • Link design
    • Pop-ups and new windows
  • Page layout
  • Search
  • Homepages
  • Illustrations and graphics
  • Advertising
  • Forms
  • Content usability
    • How users read on mobile devices
    • Writing for mobile use
    • Presenting text: legibility and readability
  • How to perform usability testing with mobile devices

Format

This full-day tutorial includes lectures, video highlights from user testing, and some exercises.

Handouts

Copies of the presentation slides

Who Should Attend

Anybody who designs websites, intranets, or online services that have mobile users. People in charge of mobile strategy, including the question of whether to develop dedicated mobile services.

Instructor

photo of Raluca Budiu Raluca Budiu, Ph.D. is a User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. She previously worked at Xerox PARC, doing research in human-computer interaction. At PARC, she built computational models of how people search for information in visualizations of large data structures. She also explored new ways of measuring information scent and conducted research on interfaces for social bookmarking systems and on the cognitive benefits of tagging. Budiu was also a user researcher at Microsoft Corporation, where she explored future directions and made strategic recommendations for incorporating user-generated content and social web features into MSN. Budiu has authored more than 20 articles and conference presentations on human-computer interaction, psychology, and cognitive science.  She holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.