The 12 Myths of Mobile UIs

Software developers generally agree: Well-designed user interfaces improve the performance and appeal of the panoply of mobile devices now clamoring for their time and attention: phones, organizers, music and image storage and play systems, navigators and special-purpose products for vertical markets like medical, finance, manufacturing, travel and transportation.

Developers also agree that we’re in a time of great flux. After the Big Bang, however, astrophysicists tell us that things simmered down to a steadier stew from which patterns of solid reality emerged. In this aftermath of the Web-world expansion, we’re seeing that same exciting, creative turmoil in the telecom industry: A colossal reshaping after the rush to install pipes for delivery systems that were only slightly premature. Now, few question the path of evolution away from desktop dependence toward untethered computers. Obscuring this future, however, is a haze of myths about how best to develop applications for mobile devices. Let’s examine and debunk some of the most troublesome.

Myth: 3G is here!
Well, not exactly. The U.S. will be the last to get the advanced messaging, data streaming, multimedia and fast transmission promised by third-generation wireless standards. Japan and Korea, followed closely by China, are likely to lead the way, with Europe trailing second, as has been repeatedly demonstrated over the last decade in the telecom marketplace. Unless the U.S. changes its lack of unified platform support for telecommunication, this fragmented systems approach will continue to hamper advanced service introduction.

Myth: Features are everything.
Not so. Investigations of phones and PDAs for Samsung and Nokia reveal that users want speed and simplicity, but style is also important. Marketing tends to emphasize short-term bells and whistles to sell devices without considering even a modicum of longevity. In Japan, for example, lenticular mobile phone screens that dynamically display two or three images are popular now, but they seem unlikely to provide lasting value. When it’s your turn to develop a new UI, remember the KISS approach: Keep it supremely simple, but don’t assume the users are stupid.

Myth: The Swiss Army knife approach is best.
Look at the breakfast cereals at your favorite grocery store—an enormous variety, catering to every taste and nutritional discrimination. Some consider it a delightful cornucopia; others, a pernicious pandemonium. In the consumer as well as the business mobile world, we’re likely to see an ever-richer merging of devices that mix phone, organizer, music, video, camera, game, Web connection, computation based on full desktop application suites, and other applications in unimaginable combinations that will be difficult for manufacturers, as well as consumers, to track.

Myth: Focus groups and market analysis tools are the best way to detect user needs.
Sorry. These approaches are better suited to maximizing sales, not eliciting user-centered design data. You must also consider contextual observations: Go straight into work and play environments. There, customers’ actions and comments can show what they can’t tell you. In addition, trained user-interface analysts can see the details that users and market researchers might not notice, such as function hierarchies, missing data, switching input or output media, the ways users seek help and navigate, and the metaphors they use to explain their roles, objectives, goals and tasks. Users often do a poor job of envisioning new technology solutions in which they have little experience. For example, wireless short message service (SMS) was never a hot item on consumer requests, but grew like Topsy once it was available. In the business community, users often have difficulty imagining the challenges that may occur when a system or device is very successful. Spam control, the sludge of resolving e-mail and the consequent productivity slowdown were unanticipated consequences of Internet messaging.

Myth: If it works in Silicon Valley, it will work anywhere.
Bzzt! Wrong again. Netherlands-based researcher Maricke deMooij has shown that, with sufficient income, consumers often migrate to the same technology purchases, but use them in different ways in different countries and cultures (see “Internet and Culture” in Symposium Proceedings, and “Internet, Economic Growth and Globalization,” Institute for International and Regional Economic Relations, Gerhard-Mercator-University, Duisburg, Germany, August 2001). Research has also revealed that cultural dimensions affect Web and other user-interface designs (see the article by Marcus and Gould in the “Further Reading” sidebar). WuKong, a prototype PDA/phone developed by Sony Ericsson (see www.PointForward.com), has demonstrated that a truly Chinese version designed for Chinese users not only uses Chinese characters, but has very different fundamental metaphors: not documents, applications and folders, but people, relationships and knowledge, wherein knowledge means best practices (that is, action plans) coupled with the wisdom of traditional experience. Localization through language translation is necessary, but not sufficient in itself. Cultural or national characteristics also affect service patterns, such as customer attitudes toward security or economic questions. In Japan, for example, service providers bill per packet; in the U.S., per unit of time.

Myth: The killer app will be games—er, sales force automation; oh, no, I mean ...

[click for larger image] You Are Here Each usage space has subordinate areas for different possible markets and user-interface designs.

Myth: The most popular device will be a combination phone-organizer-music and video player.
As Hamlet scolded Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Truly, the possibilities are vast. For example, consider all of the combinations of applications and content that will assist an aging baby-boomer population in many nations (usability analysts’ note: this demographic may be hard of hearing, have trouble reading small type and suffer from arthritic digits). Japan has the fastest-growing geriatric population on earth. Possible applications include nutritional advice, medical measurement and just-in-time education.

Consider transportation. A major revolution coming in mobile devices is vehicle UI design. As vehicles continue to acquire advanced networks, communication technology and sensors, they transform the experience of both drivers and riders. Vehicles may evolve UI and information-visualization interactive displays depicting virtual presence in other spaces; games played with other vehicles’ drivers and riders; status or instruction concerning driving and parking maneuvers, repairs, parts reordering; complex loyalty program advertisements, ad infinitum. Multimodal UIs that can wisely change the way information is entered or displayed, from visual/touch panels to voice, depending on whether the car is in motion or not, will help driver concentration and reduce cognitive load. Speaking of killer apps, keep this in mind: Cars are essentially two-ton mobile devices hurtling through space at 60 miles per hour, and they literally can kill. Safety in mobile UI design for vehicles will be an enormously complex issue for which most mobile UI designers aren’t yet accountable.

Myth: The industry is converging on a UI standard.

[click for larger image] Culture Shock In comparing cellular phone user interfaces, it becomes clear that the one thing they seem to agree on is the importance of the manufacturer’s name above the screen.

Myth: Highly usable systems are just around the corner.

[click for larger image] Organizing Principles Like mobile phones, PDAs differ widely in screen layouts and hardware buttons.

Myth: One OS will dominate.
You can bet Microsoft hopes so. As things go, however, the world’s mobile products will probably be powered by a variety of offerings that make a developer’s mind go numb. One way to keep up with the alphabet soup of offerings and technologies (which include Microsoft, Nokia, Palm, Symbian, WCDMA, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GSM, GPS, MSMS, MPEG and the like) is to use a good online cross-technology mobile device dictionary such as http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/glossary.html, www.phoneinfo.net/portal/glossary.html or www.mobilecomms-technology.com/contractors/handset/mobileglossary.html. (See “A User Interface Glossary”)

Myth: Mobile devices will be free—or nearly free.
Some commodity devices, disposable cards or components for more permanent products will be given away to enlist potential customers for long-term service contracts. However, as Nokia’s pricey gold-plated phones and other limited-edition contraptions show, the very rich will always have access to mobile devices that enable them to stand out in a crowd and cost as much as some people earn in a year—or, in some countries, a decade.

Myth: Advanced data services are just around the corner.
You might encounter them in Japan soon, but don’t count on widely available voice-driven 3G data services tomorrow in the U.S. Too many companies have tried to start with too much, too soon. Advanced technology isn’t even necessary to solve the data speed and UI design problems. In addition, you need to take the right approach to development, as Professor Jeffrey L. Funk, University of Kobe, Japan, points out (see his book in “Further Reading”).

According to Funk, the important thing is to start simple, focus on the right early adopters and avoid setting your sights on overly rich feature sets. He critiques the Western affinity for business users and high-margin products, instead lauding the Japanese pursuit of the youth market with inexpensive but wildly popular products and services. Funk emphasizes using existing technology, citing the example of Lawson’s 24-hour food stores selling tickets to one type of musical event before diversifying and providing more complex services. This approach was echoed by Spain’s BankInter which has introduced simple SMS-based mobile banking using existing technology platforms employing printed paper code-cards (not smart cards) to provide security. In some vertical business markets, like finance and health, mobile data services may be expected to gain a foothold. They already exist, for example, for the mobile broker who wants to stay tuned to the market from a trusty PDA. These will flourish if designed well for demanding users.

As mobile devices continue to proliferate, UI and software developers need to work together to make the most useful and appealing products and systems. Keeping these 12 myths in mind should help developers design UIs that show the right things, in the right way, at the right time, to the right people. In the ’60s, pop culture priest Marshall MacLuhan informed us that the medium was the message. Forty years hence, while we toy with technology unforseen by even that famous futurist, it behooves us all to pay attention to the style that delivers our substance.