As companies progressively introduce more advanced technology in their consumer electronics products, handheld devices—including smartphones, digital cameras, mp3 players, eReaders, and GPS (Global Positioning Systems)—are taking up more and more of people’s time in their everyday lives. Are users interacting with handheld devices in the same way they interact with Web sites? What kinds of challenges are users facing when using such a wide range of handheld devices on a day-to-day basis? What should usability professionals take into consideration when studying usability for these different platforms?

One Hand or Two hands?

The first big question to ask is, do users need one hand or two hands to operate a device? Interacting with Web sites normally requires the use of two hands when typing on a standard keyboard and one hand when using a mouse or other pointing device. With the vast diversity of handheld devices, users often need to make a decision whether to use a particular device with both hands or only one hand. Such a decision is sometimes contextually constrained. For example, people driving a vehicle have only one hand free when operating a GPS device. Sometimes this decision is culturally constrained. For example, smartphone users in Japan are accustomed to using smartphones with one hand, because they’re often using their other hand to hold onto a handrail on a running train. Whether a device is intended for one-hand or two-hand use can greatly impact how the device is designed and, therefore, affect how people perceive its usability. Usability professionals should take this factor into consideration when planning test tasks and creating test scenarios.

A Standard Keyboard or Different Button Sets?

When interacting with Web sites, a standard QWERTY keyboard provides a consistent working environment with which users are familiar. However, when interacting with handheld devices, users may need to operate a particular devide either by using hard controls such as buttons or manipulating controls directly on a touch screen. Handheld devices come in many different shapes, with many different types of controls. For example, the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle 2 have very different button sets. The Sony Reader features 10 number buttons, a five-way control, a home button, a back button, a read button, and a zoom button. The Kindle 2 has a QWERTY keyboard, previous and next page buttons, a five-way control, a menu button, a home button, and a back button. Although these companies designed both devices to provide a better reading experience for users, their designers certainly have different ideas of how users interact with a digital reading device. Five-way controls make it easy to navigate up, down, left, and right. A QWERTY keypad makes it easier to type.

Lack of standardization adds to the frustration users might experience when interacting with such devices. Because of this lack of standardization, usability professionals must think of usability for handheld devices systematically instead of just focusing on single buttons. Questions such as Do users understand how to use this button? might be informative. However, it could be more beneficial to ask whether a device’s whole button set facilitates the tasks users most frequently carry out with the device and whether users can successfully find their way around or get lost in the set of buttons.

What’s a Device’s Context of Use?

Users don’t use handheld devices within a vacuum. They’re driving a car and using a GPS. Or they’re riding a train and text messaging a friend. Or they’re on a trip and using a camera to capture the view. Or maybe they’re  riding a bus and reading a book on a Kindle. Everything happening around a user coalesces to create an important part of the user’s experience with the device. The context, or the environment, in which people use handheld devices varies considerably and matters greatly in evaluating the usability of those devices.

When users interact with a digital camera, they are usually trying to catch a good shot—perhaps a fleeting moment—and have very little time to operate the camera. How well designers can optimize the design of the camera, ensuring users can easily push the right buttons without making mistakes, is a very important aspect of camera usability. When users are operating a GPS, driving is usually the highest priority task. The limited amount of attention users can give to a GPS requires that the buttons in its user interface be big enough to use easily within the context of driving. This is also why voice commands are now integral parts of navigation system user interfaces.

Methods for Studying Handheld-Device Usability

With these thoughts in mind, it’s clear that usability testing in a lab might not be optimal for studying handheld-device usability. When there is a designated lab testing environment participants must go to, they enter a testing mode from the moment they step into the lab. They start thinking about the testing facility, what’s going to happen in it, and what kinds of things they might experience during the test. I have heard participants make comments like “This is new…” or “I’ve never done this before…” when entering the lab. As soon as they step out of the lab, they again become their normal selves—and perhaps start to use their handheld devices in a completely different way from what they just told us they usually do.

Even if participants are completely at ease during testing and the user researcher created a perfect test scenario, lab testing just cannot afford the type of richness a real-life setting can offer. The cultural and environmental elements of real life are absent. It’s impossible to reproduce all of the ephemeral happenings of real life that affect the way people use handheld devices in their natural environments in a lab environment.

Ideally, it would be great if a researcher could be an invisible shadow, following users around without intruding on their reality. For instance, when a user is struggling to use a new GPS system while driving, the researcher could be sitting next to him and observe every problem the user experiences. There are a couple of methods that let user researchers and usability professionals get closer to users without intruding.

In-home or at-work visits are often superior to usability testing in a lab. When researchers go to places with which users are very familiar, this allows the users to be more conformable while demonstrating their typical daily usage of a device. A conversation between a user and a researcher that occurs in a comfortable, normal environment might help users to remember certain stories about using a device that prove to be very valuable and offer opportunities for great insights.

Short-term longitudinal studies can also be very beneficial for studying handheld-device usability. Longer periods of observation let users experience the device in a more relaxed and natural way, allowing more random accidents and issues to arise. Diary studies can also be effective if users are sufficiently motivated to keep track of what happens during the course of each day throughout the longitudinal study. However, the retrospective nature of diary studies might not work for all users. Some people find it difficult to sit down at the end of a day and think about what happened during the day. An on-device diary might be a good alternative. A diary on the actual device could prompt users to enter short logs whenever there is a need.

In Summary

Users confront different usability challenges on handheld devices than when interacting with a Web site. As usability professionals, we need to consider whether a device is intended for one-hand or two-hand use. When observing users interact with handheld devices, it is more beneficial to think about a device’s usability systematically instead of focusing on the use of single buttons. Since context plays such an important role in the use of handheld devices, in-home or at-work studies, short-term longitudinal studies, and diary studies are more suitable than conducting traditional usability testing in labs.

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By Brendan Jonesrebandt

In User Centered Design (UCD) we always put the user first and foremost. But what about the client? Our deliverables have to resonate with the client in addition to providing a good user experience. Wireframing with the client in mind not only makes the process smoother, but will often make the entire interaction much more fruitful.

Brief Introduction to Wireframes

First off, what is a wireframe (see Figure 1)? Wireframes, applied directly to web design, are visual guides used to plan the layout and structure of a webpage with regard to its interface. What exactly does that mean? We use wireframes to plan how the page will look and function. Keeping in mind gestalt principles, usability heuristics, and best practices/learned conventions will help facilitate the creation of an aesthetically pleasing website that is easy-and dare we say-a pleasure to use.

Figure 1: Example of a wireframe.

Using a UCD methodology is a key ingredient and a strong impetus behind wireframing rather than just rushing off into creation/development. These lower fidelity prototypes are easy to edit, revise, and overhaul if needed, rather than a full blown webpage. This ease of editing provides a medium which can be used to showcase ideas with the elegance required, without the time required of fully developing a page. Many clients rely on these visual presentations to get a better feel for what the website will look like upon completion and how the user will flow through the site.

Education is the Foundation

An important step in the wireframing process is setting a client’s expectation about the purpose of a wireframe. Making sure that the client is on the same page will greatly enhance the interaction during this section of the process. Wireframes are great tools which can really highlight important questions and get conversations moving about the web design. If expectations are not set correctly, clients may be confused or feel overwhelmed. Remember that they may have never been through this process and many of them want to learn about it (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Informing the client about common wireframing practices such as using Latin filler text and boxes that say "image" or "screenshot" is crucial. These items are place holders, not actual content.

A key concept, to get across early and often, is the wireframes illustrate the layout, not the content or the design. This may sound like a contradiction, but understanding this tricky idea is imperative to understanding the purpose of wireframes. We can compare this process to the creation of a car. During the wireframing process the number of seats, the side the steering wheel will be on, and where the warning about the airbag will go are decided. In the next step they determine the material to be used for the seats, the exact dimensions of the steering wheel, and how the airbag warning is worded. For a website, knowing that there is a video and creating a layout that includes a video placeholder are parts of wireframing. Writing the two sentence description of the video, choosing the colors for the background around the video, and deciding on the most appropriate font for the site are content and design decisions. The content and design, while integrated into the wireframe are the next steps in the project.

Typically wireframes are created in shades of gray, with colors used to emphasize items for the design team, such as blue for hyperlinks. The content is often Latin filler text or English description placeholders. By utilizing a gray color scheme and Latin text, clients are less likely to focus on issues such as color or incorrect wording and look more at the structure and purpose of the page. When clients know what to expect from the wireframes, they are much more likely to provide feedback on the layout and placement of objects rather than focusing on little details such as the wording of the text or appropriateness of the colors which will be handled in the next phase.

Now that we have laid the foundation by defining a wireframe and educating clients about them, we can discuss the real topic of interest: how to wireframe with the client in mind. Five things to keep in mind:

1. Examine the layout for any “holes”.

2. Utilize the best practices, web standards, and usability heuristics.

3. Annotate key changes, functionality, and  anything else that might need further clarification.

4. Make sure the client is aware of who the users are.

5. Determine what is needed for the client.

1. Examine the layout for any “holes”

A “hole” in the layout is empty space (see Figure 3). Clients usually want a clean website with a minimal amount of items fighting for the user’s attention, but when there is empty space it is a natural reaction to want to put something there. By removing all “holes” from a wireframe there is nothing that “needs” to be filled.

Figure 3: Removing "holes."

2. Utilize the Best Practices, Web Standards, and Usability Heuristics

The client hires a User Experience Expert to make wireframes since the Expert will bring their knowledge of the best practices, web standards, and usability heuristics into the project (see Figure 4). The client is counting on the expert to guide them in the right direction. Showing examples and utilizing statistics can be very powerful tools to illustrate points and to further position yourself as a credible resource.

Figure 4: Expert utilizing knowledge to make a top level navigation usable, 7 tabs instead of 14.

3. Annotate key changes, functionality, and  anything else that might need further clarification.

Oftentimes when wireframing, there is just simply not enough information about the page. The contents of the page may not be clear, it might not have been explained how the client wants a certain section to work, or all that there is to work with is the title of the page, which means it could contain anything from A to Z. The difficulties associated with any of these situations can be mitigated by creating notes (see Figure 5). Notes can be used to highlight areas that you have questions about, call attention to areas where you used the clients feedback to revise, serve as a series of talking points when presenting the wireframes, indicate why a particular decision was made, or a plethora of other uses. If anything seems confusing, or if you can anticipate where a client may have a question, be proactive and make a note about that section or feature. Another great feature about the notes is their availability to answer client questions when you are not there. If the client needs to show the wireframe to someone else, the notes are still on each page to help them explain how certain features work or to remind them of the questions they need to ask. Many clients wont have very much feedback the first time they see a wireframe and like to dig into it on their own. The notes provided often help the client work through the wireframe and come back with insightful and helpful questions and answers.

Figure 5: Notes calling attention to certain elements of the wireframe.

4. Make sure the client is aware of who the users are.

Since the process is centered around the user, making sure the client understands who the user is will help with the understanding of why certain things are included or laid out in a specific format. Many times products get into trouble with the mantra “I understand it so of course the user will.” Ensuring that a similar situation doesn’t occur with a website often requires taking that step back and looking at the product from an outside perspective, which is often difficult, especially if you built/designed it. Using examples and data on how users interact, particularly with the internet, will help the client become aware of the differences between them and the user.

Figure 6. The client is not the same as the user.

5. Determine what is needed for the client.

One of the most difficult tasks in the wireframing process is coming up with a solution to perform a certain task, provide specific information, or include particular functionality. Sometimes the Clients don’t really know what they need. They might have a vague idea or saw another site that does something they want, but putting it all together into something they need is a fine art. Many times clients will use other websites as examples of what they want their site to look and/or function like. This may or may not be helpful though depending on how well the example site’s features or functionality is compatible with a great user experience and the needs of the client.

Pulling clients into the wireframing process can often help solve problems and allow the client to see how their input directly affects the wireframes, which can be very rewarding. If the client wants a clean homepage, but 20 items on it, have them prioritize them. This will really get them thinking about what is important and might cut down on their list. If nothing else you have a prioritized list and have more information to work with. Utilizing clients, who often want to be really involved in the process anyways, to help solve issues or provide answers will make for a better experience all around.

Figure 7: The client may have an idea of what they want, but working with them to arrive at a solution with what they need is the true challenge.

Summary

Cutting down on the number and complexity of revisions and making the client happy not only makes for a better experience on both ends but also helps the project stay on or under budget. Building the foundation is just as important as the rest of the project, if not more so. Explaining what a wireframe is and how it fits into the design process is a key step to ensure that everyone is on the same page and all expectations are realistic. In addition, keeping the five points in mind just discussed will mitigate confusion and the need for revisions further down the road.

Thanks. You too.

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Design for Emotion and Flow – September Issue, 2008, Boxes and Arrows
This article addresses how to appeal to user’s emotion as well as creating better flow on your website.

Using Online Videos to Engage Your Users – September Issue, 2008, WebCredible
From OMS yesterday, I had an in depth conversation about how online videos will shape the future of the web as bandwidth becomes bigger and bigger, as computers move from our desktops into our pockets, and as the web becomes more ubiquitous.

Store Finders and Locators - September 15, 2008, Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox
A good article by Jakob on how users forage for location information. Essentially, users rely on search engines for this task reaffirming my prediction that SEO is becoming more pervasive in Usability.

Look At It Another Way – September 09, 2008, A List Apart
As usability practitioners, this is what we do almost every day- we embrace the user’s life. The only way to really understand a user is to breath the same air s/he breaths, to dig down into the nitty-gritty in order to convey the right messaging and providing the right content. This article hits close to my heart as it really sheds light on how we approach problem solving as usability practitioners.

I hope everyone enjoys these articles and have a great weekend.

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