Moving WebWord > Portable Devices Cause Problems

Portable Devices Can Cause Usability Problems

by John S. Rhodes

Take a moment and think about the various portable Internet devices available. You see everything from wireless hand held devices, to web-enabled pagers, to cellular phones with email access. The list goes on and on. Every day you can scan the technology headlines and read about several new Internet technologies being announced.

Think about the nature of these portable Internet devices: they probably are not very usable.

Before I go on, think about web sites for a moment. Web sites, taken as a whole, are generally not getting better every day. Even while usability is getting better on many sites, the number of sites with poor usability is increasing at a greater pace. Let's do the math. There are thousands of new sites being added every to the Internet every day. Only a very small fraction of those will have conducted usability testing. Only a fraction will have developed their sites with customers as their driving goal. So, the mean proportion of sites with good usability is dropping.

Now, if you take a moment again to think about all the Internet devices becoming available, you can see many problems coming down the road. First, many devices were not originally engineered or tested for web usage. From the ground up, they had different roles: phone, pager, PDA (personal digital assistant). When you mix the web with these technologies, you will have usability problems.

Second, even if these devices were designed for web use, the web as a medium might not be appropriate for use on them. Put another way, forcing a web page onto to a screen even smaller than 640x480 is bound to cause usability problems. I'm sure you can think of many more examples. Of course there are workarounds, and engineering solutions. There always are.

But that takes us directly to the point. Any time you force one technology on another technology, you must have usability problems. It is the nature of technology change. And, even when users are added to the mix, and testing is done, you will have usability problems (although you'll have fewer).

As you probably know, you can gain distinct competitive advantage through usability. The developers of these devices should keep this in mind. It is very hard to engineer a pleasant experience with new technology. The pain can be eased with usability. Remember that good usability will increase trust of the devices. Also, people will be much more likely to favorably review devices that are usable.

There is a hidden usability problem that needs attention. Many companies think that usability is only about interface design and user testing. This is dead wrong! Usability is also about understanding the tasks of users and building technology around them. Most companies first build devices and then test them with users. I'd wager that most of the current portable devices (e.g., wire pagers) were designed first (then testing was probably done). A much better approach is to understand and define your users' needs and their typical tasks. Then, and only then, should you begin to build the technology.

As a general rule, you should not build technology and fit users to that technology. Instead, you should build technology around users and tasks. The companies that follow this approach will command a distinct competitive advantage.

When you add these new delivery devices to the Internet mix, you see that usability must get worse. Web page usability problems were only the beginning. We are going to see problems with small interfaces, hard to read text, noisy environments, and so on. Imagine slightly more radical situations. There might be a day in the near future when broadband delivery and portable devices collide. Imagine having unlimited access but your device has a screen the size of a business card.

Mark my prediction: usability problems with the Internet are just beginning. Learn as much as you can, get there before your competitors, and reap the rewards.

If you have any usability stories about your portable devices, please email me at john@webword.com. I'd like to hear from you.

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