Trends in Usability:<br/>Usability for Mobile Devices: An Issue of Information Design

By Brian Still

This column examines the ways technical communicators contribute to the development of more usable products, especially those used in complex, dynamic environments. Novel usability evaluation methods and design techniques, as well as those rediscovered or repurposed, will be the focus. Please send your comments, questions, and suggestions for future articles to me at brian.still@ttu.edu.

Recently at work for a client, I was tasked with testing an already live medical reference application. The user population was made up of a variety of clinicians, including physicians and nurse practitioners. The reference was tested in two environments: the smart phone and the tablet.

Not surprisingly, those who described themselves as non-phone users (people who were least likely to turn to the phone for online information) were less satisfied with their use of the reference system on the phone. However, what was really interesting, if not also a little surprising, was that those who did describe themselves as experienced, expert, phone-preferred users didn’t like the phone application too much more than the non-phone users. In fact, without digging into the metrics here, the difference in overall satisfaction, as well as performance and other key measurements was slight.

Now this was a system that was fundamentally healthy, so it wasn’t like either user group had real problems to point at about the application itself. No major or catastrophic errors in use were observed, task failure was negligible, and even time on task, as well as dwell time between inputs were very good, all things considered. Shouldn’t phone-friendly users like the phone application a lot more?

It’s just really hard, it seems, for a phone, whether you prefer to use it or not, to be as usable as other platforms. And we’ve known this for a while. Early on, in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, we blamed phone usability issues on poor network coverage, slow networks, too few applications to do on the phone what users could do on a desktop, etc. Then Jakob Nielsen’s insightful 2009 study, comparing phone usability in 2009 to 2000, showed that in many ways, despite better technology, phone usability in 2009 actually fared worse than it did in 2000. Now a more recent study he has conducted reveals that smart phones make the user experience a little better, but what I discovered, and what others have as well with recent research, is that there are still a lot of things that make us not like the phone interface experience.

There is too much data for such a small screen, too much finger scrolling, too much confusion about how to swipe, what to swipe, when to swipe, and where that swipe will take us after we do it. Novice users do not understand icons, and expert users want more and faster applications, despite the limitations of screen space. And the bane of everyone, it seems, is typing. There’s too much typing involved, trying to do other things in a more mobile, complex environment, introduces more cognitive load, more error, more frustration, and, overall, less usability.

Yet, it isn’t like we’re going to throw phones away. Google is at work on goggles that would allow us to see phone screens in our pockets. Even at Grinbath, our startup company, we’re now at work on a digital mobile device meant to deliver data from the user in real time, based on what they see, as well as send data back to the user in real time, so they can see it, hands-free, wherever they are, whenever they want it. No, we can’t put laptops, not even iPads, into our pockets, so we’ve got to make phones work better for us.

I believe, and research supports, that the solution(s) cannot come solely from software and hardware advancements. In fact, I think technical communicators have a role to play in what I think is an issue of information design. That is, unless fashion designers find a way to make pants that hold laptops or tablets.

First, not every use situation on the phone causes problems. Quick searches, consumer-casual requests for addresses or restaurants, and less information-heavy activities have proven to be pretty reliable and satisfactory via mobile. Where we run into trouble, like the medical reference system, is when we try to put on a phone what can be overwhelming, even in a large-screen environment. We just have to think through—and this is the job of a technical communicator—how information should be chunked to be usable on a small screen. White space, believe it or not, can be used even on the small screen. Navigational links must be signaled better by their appearance. Icons must have a universal understanding among populations, divided by experience, age, culture, etc. Furthermore, typing, as a means of data entry, must be made more usable. Yes, there are hardware and software solutions on the market for this to be considered, but better content design, search functionality, and navigational structure would require less typing.

Whatever is done, before we jump into creating smart-phone-specific applications, or roll out new hardware solutions, we need to advocate for users by involving them in the design process at the beginning, and then throughout. Let’s experiment with different ways to lay out content, even in paper prototypes, and let users interact with it. Let’s educate designers about mobile interface design. Let’s standardize icons and other navigational aids so that they are understandable across the widest possible spectrum of user communities.

Ultimately, all this effort’s success assumes that the phone remains a reference tool first, not the primary means by which users try to interact with information. The reason why certain apps are more favored over others has everything to do with information load and interaction. The phone cannot at this stage be a laptop or a tablet, for that matter. Screen real estate and keyboard issues prevent this. If users expect such capability, then usability will forever be a problem. Even if we come up with some new hardware interface, such as screen-reading goggles or holograph keyboards, what makes the phone’s usability so problematic is that users want it to do more, designers are giving it more to do, but the use environment where both this expectation and design meet is mercurial and, arguably, very obstructive.

We don’t put our desktops into cars as we drive, nor do we interact with them on the move in other mobile environments. How can a phone be expected to perform to our satisfaction, even if we improve the interface, in equally demanding, distracting environments? Cranial implant using RFID technology? Let me bone up on Donna Haraway before answering. Cyborgian design may very well be the optimal solution. But for now, as user expectation and design clash, let’s do what we do best: design the information better for the environment.

Suggested Reading