S60 Open to new features

I wanted to address a topic from what I believe was my very first entry for this blog, on cultural usability. One quote in particular is useful for this discussion: “the ways in which users learn and adopt new roles and rules vary by culture.” Now, remember my trip to Vienna last weekend, and the resulting blog entry? I wrote about a specific user behaviour we see emerging within some cultures, like the youth in Vienna and London, but not among others, specifically not among the youth in Helsinki. In my eyes, this group activity of music-listening on one mobile device is quite annoying and obtrusive. Now granted, I only ride public transportation once in a while, but I’ve asked around among those who do use it more regularly and their observations are similar. It is just not happening (note: thank goodness) here in Helsinki...YET.

This is a really good example of cultural differences in usability. This begs the question: Why would the Finnish youth not adopt this type of behaviour, of listening (sometimes loudly) to music on their mobile devices with their friends while riding public transportation?

Well, I’ll tell you a story and maybe we’ll see the connection. When my Finnish husband and I were living in the US, friends and family would unfailingly say and ask the following: “We saw a news piece on 60 Minutes about Finns and tango dancing. Are Finnish people really depressed all the time?” Note: the tango dancing from this 60 Minute piece is not the sexy, fast-paced tango dancing we imagine but the somewhat slow, quite melancholy stuff. Nonetheless, the answer to the silly question is a resounding NO.

However, the Finnish culture, especially when compared with American or other “outgoing” cultures, does value quietness and humbleness; they do not value “being seen or noticed”—in fact, I often observe parents hush their toddlers and babies on public transportation, even when they are barely making a peep and/or sitting well-behaved in their seats or strollers. Children are taught, perhaps not intentionally, that it is a negative thing to draw attention to themselves. Could this be why the Finnish youth are not easily and quickly adopting this mobile behaviour? I don’t know. But it makes me wonder…

My point here is that developers need to consider how their products will be used, by whom, and in what context. They need to understand that not everyone will adopt behaviours in similar ways. These tend to vary and change all the time; in fact, the youth are some of our best inventors of new mobile behaviours. Good quality user research is needed to gain a clear understanding of cultural differences in user behaviours, attitudes and needs.

I was on my paternity leave during the last 30 days and I have to say that it was a refreshing experience. Because of our family situation, I took care of all the shopping. From this experience, totally new needs emerged that I hadn't recognized before. It’s the same old story; you have to go far before you can see the most obvious things close to you.

Anyway, the story goes like this: My wife gave me different kinds of shopping lists and I went to the market and started to collect all the items on the list. And every time - just imagine how frustrating it was - when I ended up close to the checkout area, I had to go back because the next item on the list was located somewhere close to the entrance. After this happened several times, I started to wonder why there weren't any suitable solutions to solve my problem. Was there any possibility that someone has created an application that would arrange your shopping list (sent by SMS for example) into right order, according to a market's floor plan? This could have been a big help to me, and probably some other people too! And guess what, I couldn’t find any solutions. So is this something that has to be created or just a good example of my hopeless situation?...don’t ask this from my wife…

So what’s the thing? This all reminded me about one point that's been so obvious but has been off the agenda for a while: In the hands of an experienced expert, real life could work as a wonderful source of innovation. The truth is out there, just go and harness it!

I am glad Wendy brought up the sharing theme. Sharing - the fact that people are social and communicate with each other - is behind the success of mobile phones.

Often when applications are developed the benevolent idea is to increase efficiency and make people more productive. While those benefits are of course significant, especially in the work context, many killer apps are based on sociability. People want to belong, they want to share their feelings.

Text messages were not supposed to become a huge success in the mass market; but they did. Because they offered a silent, non-intrusive way to submit thoughts, greetings, wishes, etc. There was a latent need for being in touch (and it was much more efficient, too).

The ability to "read" users' lives and identify latent needs is the cornerstone of application development.

I was in Vienna this weekend, riding public transportation, and observed something that I haven’t seen yet in Helsinki…young kids are listening to music from their mobile devices and they are sharing the experience with their friends. Here’s the problem for me: they are listening to it in public spaces and I don’t necessarily want to listen to their music--especially if it’s competing with others talking on their mobiles or listening to their music (even with earphones, you can still hear “something”).

I know this problem is elsewhere in other European cities, e.g. London, and there have been public responses to this (and, in turn, some new rules that “prohibit” these behaviors). But it forced me to think about this: there are users who would like to share their music with their friends; they want to do this anywhere, anytime and, most likely, with no restrictions. My guess is that this doesn’t stop with music--users will want to share anything and everything (e.g. pictures, MMSs, video clips etc). So, the bottom line is that there is an obvious need yet to be met…how can/will/have developers respond(ed) to this need?

When you spend time with S60 users, it becomes pretty obvious what drives the usage from an end-user’s point of view. Of course, things like design, ergonomics etc. have a strong influence but if we concentrate on every day usage, features that make usage more efficient are the ones that users are really looking for. These play a big role in high user satisfaction and desirable user experience. Based on my knowledge about S60 users, the following features are considered wonderful among the users: 1) menu key functionality; 2) copy-paste functions; 3) mark function; and 4) quick activation of silent mode. There are more, I’m sure, but these features are something extraordinary and increase user satisfaction a lot. Unfortunately, every S60 user is not familiar with these. Once most users learn about these, it will be hard to change the platform – with these you’re hooked on S60!

Imagine a situation where you first had a very little and then suddenly you were given almost everything. It can be tricky, or? I’m not talking about new rich people (like me ;P), but mobile UI development. Since the birth of Flash Lite the UI developers have been offered loads of new chances to impress the users and other stakeholders with the mobile UI. It is great, but as the chances grow, so do the challenges. It’s like being in a huge candy shop with all sorts of candy and having to find the perfect mix.

It’s much easier to choose if the alternatives are few, but a real talent is required to make a design rock when you have all the opportunities open. That’s a little what Flash Lite UI design is about – at least when compared to traditional Java or C(++) or even (X)HTML UI development – you have to find your own successful way of narrowing down the alternatives and creating a UI that is both unique and usable. For helping you to get started with Flash Lite UI design, Forum Nokia has published an article called ‘Flash Lite Visual Guide’. This guide contains hints, tips and guidelines how to make the User Interface of you Flash Application usable. It offers you a good starting point for your UI design, but unluckily no guidelines how to make the UI fun and unique are included ;) – I guess that’s up to you!

Now, ladies and gentlemen, the S60 UE blog will switch to a sentimental mode for a moment. I'm going to get a bit personal [drumrolls, please!] as I'm going to tell you a few things about me. [Now where's all the applause?] As I've been enjoying this journey with Idean Creative and Idean Research, I've seen many upsides and downsides while marketing usability & user experience and the whole how-to-sell-something-abstract stuff. Take my word; this is not as easy it might sound. But it IS lots of fun. I might one day post something about marketing, but that's a whole different story.

A six months ago or so I came up with a conclusion which you can see in the headline. To make it more clear I feel I have to tell you some background. Basically 6-7 years ago we started with really simple stuff and had this optimistic innovation that "world-should-be-better-and-more-usable-place" and "simply-we-will-make-that-happen".

Four guys, one goal, 52883 ideas and different tracks to make it reality. And a feeling that we were alone in the dark. We were not happy with the tunes the usability world was dancing to. Too many usability gurus for too few people, talking about things too high-level. We desperately wanted to provide a way to actually develop more experiences to the users. But soon we realized that the time was too young to handle that (or the enterprises and organizations were). So, we decided that hey, let's work out the usability things first and then we can reach the actual User Experience things. We assumed it would take some 1-2 years but we didn't know the reality. Luckily.

Patience, please, I'm getting to my point. Among many others, we had one guiding line, one mantra, that we felt would describe our mission: "User is the King"...

When you think of mobile games, you think of fun. But what does fun have to do with usability?

Fun is one of the main factors that differentiates game usability from usability in other applications. Mobile games are typically played for brief time periods, so there is no extra time to learn how to navigate inside the game. Playing should be as intuitive as possible and the challenge should be in the game play, not in the interaction with the game user interface.

Usability provides the framework and tools for playability, which is a quality every game must have in order to survive. Playability is defined as the degree to which a game is both fun to play and usable, with an emphasis on the interaction style - the quality of game play.

It has been said that an individual game lives or dies by its interface. If usability problems get in the way of intense game playing, the game probably will not be played again.

(Based on an article called "Usability And Fun - Best Friends In Mobile Games" published previously on Forum Nokia)

There is something in this entry for everyone. For developers, you can read about how to create a mobile game that results in a positive user experience. For the rest of you, there are good tidbits about general ways to improve mobile usability.

Navigating in the waves of a game experience

When playing a game, users should experience the game world. In order to do this, the game navigation structure should support the experience. Use of high-level UI components should be avoided. Game menus should look and feel like the game. If high-level UI components are used, they should support the game experience seamlessly.

Designing for interruptions

Mobile games are played in a context where interruptions often occur: somebody might call or send an SMS message, or the player might need to pause the game to buy a bus ticket. Therefore, the game design should support saving and pausing.

Wendy posted an interesting entry about the developer not being a user. Along a similar yet slightly opposing line, there are many companies who utilise hobbyists in their product development. Tanja Kotro defined the term hobbyism in her Doctoral Dissertation some time ago. According to her, Suunto has very much trusted the expertise of its employees when developing e.g. diving computers.

You also hear talk about prosumers. Prosumers are kind of professional consumers (see also Wikipedia for this). Prosumers are expected to create and develop new usage patterns as they are assumed to find them first. Companies want to utilise this.

The remaining question is: do prosumers find similar usage patterns as "mainstream" users or do they use products differently? I guess when it comes to interaction, the patterns might be quite similar; but when it comes to the role of products they use, prosumers are more active in using them and, most of all, they utilise more features. I have no public evidence on this, but I would be somewhat concerned about using prosumers only when developing new things. Prosumers can show the way but they are one kind of consumer, not a perfect representation of the whole market.

W3C published a couple of months ago a set of best practices on how to improve the User Experience of mobile web content [via]. That is a relevant approach, since the mobile web content at the moment has a very varied quality especially from the usability and the accessibility point of view.

Users seem to be happy (and sometimes surprised) about being able to access any site from their mobiles, mostly because they are used to more limited access though a portal provided by their operators. But in the long run, this ‘happiness’ or ‘being surprised’ is not enough – when the mobile web is accessed by masses, the user experience of the content needs to be improved and more uniform.

The document includes altogether 60 practices that mainly address the accessibility and the usability of mobile web services. It’s a really good and detailed checklist for anyone who is developing web content also meant to be used on mobile phones. Thank you for bringing a little discipline and order to this jungle :). Marco Casario has summarized the main points of the document in his blog [via], so if you want a quick review of the content you may read it or the summary provided by W3C.

The Best Practices working group has also defined the Default Delivery Context. It is a definition that the designer can design for if (s)he does not know exactly on what kinds of devices her/his web content will be used, which is often the case with mobile web-content.

Finally all the web services that are designed to support the best practices defined in the document are planned to be mobileOK-certified. The mobileOK certificate would not necessarily be visible to the user, like the traditional web-certificates; it would be more like a technical certificate. I think a good idea would be to make it visible when the website is viewed from a normal web browser and invisible when the site is viewed from a mobile device.

Jakob Nielsen writes: "One of usability's most hard-earned lessons is that 'you are not the user.' If you work on a development project, you're atypical by definition. Design to optimize the user experience for outsiders, not insiders…It's tempting to work on what's hot, but to make money, focus on the basics that customers value."

A common mistake when designing and creating devices is, as a developer, to rely on one’s own “intuition” about the how a device should work and feel. Are those involved in creating and developing the product, in this case the device, the most appropriate to say what the device should look like, how it should act, how it should react etc.? How often does this happen when user experience research and usability studies are based on "developer testing" as opposed to user testing?

What is your take on this? What do you think a developer’s role should be in this process? Am I wrong, do developers have better insight into what the user needs and wants?

For me developing user experience is much about developing ideas - by myself, with a group of people, with an end-user and so on. I really think that ideas are pretty worthless without excellent execution but then again, good execution without an excellent idea will vanish like a smoke.

So there will be that ultimate day when you will feel completely idealess. And the schedule is pressing heavily. So how to generate ideas? The answer: it's not easy. I just saw this nice entry how to start Idea Mining by using Blogs and wanted to share it with all of you. Dorai gives us a couple of simple things to do:

- Identify the experts (this is easy to do in any specific area)
- Subscribe or track their blogs
- Track the blogs they read (these are called blog rolls)
- Find product managers who blog (in areas of interest to you)
- Find product reviewer's blogs
- Track comments on blogs (For example, when Don Box blogged about Teaching his kids to program he received hundreds of comment)

Sometimes I have a feeling that bloggers are losers but this definitely gives us some hope;) See, some of the bloggers really are gold mines and somehow they just have time to spread the word and be excellent resources for all of us. Especially if one is developing something. But it's not just "take", it's more "give'n'take". You can feed bloggers' minds by commenting on stuff they've written and see how they react...you never know, one day you might be authoring your own blog.

Do you know any blogs that are devoted solely to generating new ideas?

A very interesting event in London - The PMN Mobile User Experience conference.

The conference also has a blog.

Until recently, only traditional research methods have been used to understand the use of mobile devices and applications. These include, for example, focus groups, observations and interviews that are conducted in controlled laboratory-like settings. In reality, however, these methods possess several challenges and even problems. Most importantly is the fact that these methods do not consider or measure the influence of context. The fact is this: a user does not exist in a social or physical vacuum.

Many of the complexities related to gathering data about mobile technology use emerge from the fact that the real life is “out there”– it’s not enough to gather information in a fixed environment. The physical movement and ever changing geographic location found in the modern mobile lifestyle suggests the need to use a more fluid, hence less static, method of analysis. Therefore, the methods used to study mobile use and usability need to be context-centered.

You still have a few days left to register to the Wireless Enterprise Symposium held 6.-8.5 in Florida. This is what they they tell on their webiste:"The Wireless Enterprise Symposium 2006 is the premiere event for business professionals, IT managers and developers looking for wireless solutions for the enterprise."

In typical application development processes, a significant portion of the expenses occur after the release of the product. The product may require changes or updates, different language versions, porting to new devices, or a new episode.

• Group testing: How would users modify the application, what more do they want from it, what would get them to update or buy another version?


• Satisfaction survey: After the application has been in the market for a while, competition may affect users' attitudes and requirements. Also, they will have had a longer time to evaluate the application.


• End-user analysis: See how well the product fits into the market for which it was intended.

The Ring Tone is probably the most noticeable part of the mobile device user interface since the user hears it for every incoming call. As this article from CNN suggests, one of the most successful business areas has been the sales of Ring Tones.

Back in piip-piip-pi-pi-piip days it was really hard for me to understand why Ring Tones were such a hit. Expensive, short and low quality - didn't sound like a good deal to me. Now as sound quality gets better and better it becomes more reasonable to buy a Ring Tone. Man, it still makes me wonder how one can buy a Ring Tone of a few seconds that costs an equivalent price of a full song, but luckily everything just doesn't need to make sense. And after a short brainstorming (today it is the First of May celebration in Finland, using brains isn't the most clever thing to do...;) it starts to make more sense. For me the success of Ring Tones emphasizes how mobile phones are actually a way for personal expression. From the beginning of the mobile revolution, personalization has hugely helped the development of cellular to leap forward, sometimes even more than the technology innovations. Remember those first Nokia color covers? Or what happened with the first camera phones? You took a picture and made it as wallpaper for your phone. And how about all these nice mobile phone charms?

Usability of Ring Tones is quite a hazy area. Most of them are not very recognizable but still it doesn't matter so much - what does matter is your emotional attachment to a particular Ring Tone. If you grew up with AC/DC, it's obvious that Thunderstruck will make your "cocktail party" effect work better than Mozart's Requiem. And vice versa. As it's important to keep Ring Tones usable - you can read many good ideas about how to create a cool S60 Ring Tone from this Ring Tone Guideline - it's even more important to make a user feel good. For example, my mother really started to use her phone after she realized that this new phone actually plays her favorite song every time it ring's (it was a part of my big "do-not-fear-the-mighty-phone"-campaign). And suddenly, all new calendars, to-do's and MMS's made sense to her. It's not about technological innovations, it's about breaking the barrier with human and technology. Ring Tones are one sophisticated way to make people feel safe with new stuff. Ring Tones give users experiences!

But still it feels weird, that if you want to make music that sells, you will have a better chance with Ring Tones than with any other form of music. Do I need to start to sell my synthesizer rig?