Summary

This report describes our findings regarding the usability of WAP itself, WAP content, and WAP services. The report also contains a substantial number of quotes from users reporting on their subjective experience with the services and their preferences for WAP design.

When users were asked whether they were likely to use a WAP phone within one year, a resounding 70% answered no. WAP is not ready for prime time yet, nor do users expect it to be usable any time soon. This finding came after respondents had used WAP services for a full week, so their conclusions are significantly more valid than answers from focus group participants who are simply asked to speculate about whether they would like WAP. We surveyed people who had suffered through the painful experience of using WAP, and they definitely didn't like it.

The report details the many usability problems that caused users to come to this negative conclusion. Unless the usability of mobile Internet services and devices improves considerably, people will simply not use them and billions of dollars will be wasted.

See also Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox summarizing the findings.
 

Table of Contents

Authors: Marc Ramsay and Dr. Jakob Nielsen.

1. Executive Summary
   • WAP Doesn't Work
   • Déjà Vu: 1994 All Over Again
   • Killing Time is the Killer App for Mobile
   • Handsets Had OK Usability
2. Introduction
3. Methodology
   • Users
   • Study user profiles
   • Data Collection
   • The Phones
   • The Networks
4. General Impressions of WAP
   • Overall Usability
   • The Phones
   • Connectivity and Download Time
   • Error Messages
5. Navigation
   • The Portals
   • Labeling
   • Going Backwards
   • Searching
   • Bookmarks
6. Getting the Information
   • Reading From the Screens
   • News
   • Financial Information
   • Weather Forecasts
   • Sports
   • Travel
   • TV Listings
   • Entertainment
   • Shopping
   • Lifestyle
   • Need for Accredited Recommendations
7. WAP and the Internet
8. Final Verdicts
   • The Downside
   • The Upside
9. Conclusions
10. Bibliography
11. Appendix 1: Interview Questions
12. Appendix 2: Set Tasks
13. Appendix 3: The Ericsson Phone Used in the Study
14. Appendix 4: The Nokia Phone Used in the Study
15. Appendix 5: Author Biographies

Is This Report Still Relevant?

• We used the best phones money could buy in 2000, so the user experience was similar to that found on lower-end phones today.
• Our newer studies of mobile user interfaces have been conduced for consulting clients and can thus not be discussed, other than to say that we continue to find many of the same usability problems that we discovered in 2000.
• The usability issues documented in the report are still issues that you need to consider in current mobile designs, even if there are admittedly newer ones as well.
• The user attitudes to mobile services and their frustrations with difficult services that are documented in the report continue to be relevant for current designs.

Current design projects for mobile content and services will still benefit from the insights and findings in this report. At the same time, of course, there are additional issues that are not covered in the report, so we also recommend that you conduct your own user testing to supplement the report with newer findings. (If need be, we can test your mobile designs for you, both on actual devices and in the prototype stage.)

Who Should Read This Report?

• Responsible for a company's mobile Internet strategy: the information in the report will help you decide whether to go ahead with WAP or whether to aim at newer mobile services instead.
• Designing or implementing mobile services: the usability findings will help you improve the quality of your service and allow you to avoid many of the mistakes we identified among the WAP services, even if you are using a newer technology.
• Planning a post-WAP service: avoid the mistakes of WAP, listen to the users.

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