HASTINGS Internet Development and Infrastructure RESEARCHINC. Wireless Usability 2001-2002: A Glass Half-Full Wireless devices and services have—through many wrong turns— started to become usable in the U.S. and Canada. The key to effective implementation is in wisely choosing devices, services, and feature sets. Executive Briefing — p. 2 Table of Contents — p. 7 Body of Report — p. 9 By Nicholas Carroll, Sheldon Brahms, Mardee McGraw, Deborah Rodgers © 2001-2002 Hastings Research, Inc. All rights reserved. www.hastingsresearch.com License for this copy of WUR2001-2002 Report: free for individual users. Not for resale. Executive Briefing Synopsis This report is based on a study designed and conducted by Hastings Research to deter- mine the present state of usability for wireless devices, protocols, and connectivity in the U.S. The study consisted of extensive user testing, with a total of 25 subjects (17 of them IT professionals, and 8 non-technical users), 10 wireless services, 6 portals, and 23 de- vices, including a variety of cellular phones, Blackberries, Palms and Handsprings, and handheld PCs (HP Jornada and Compaq IPAQ). Methodology We conducted the study on a qualitative basis rather than quantitative. From long experience, we prefer good qualitative studies to bad quantitative studies. (And from equally long experience, we know that most quantitative studies can be misleading, unless you know exactly what questions to ask.) Subject Training The test was for usability of wireless access to the Web — plus email. To make things simple, we showed each subject the basic keys and navigation, which key or icon to get onto the Web, and they were on their own from that point. This allowed each subject to start from the same point in the learning curve. ______________________ Devices Used We chose the following devices for the study, out of almost three dozen choices at our disposal. Cell Phone: Sprint TP 2100 Blackberry: 957/857 Palm OS: Palm VIIx Handheld PC: HP Jornada Cellular Phones One thing stood clear about web-enabled cell phones: they connected. While over half the users grumbled about “2400 bps downloading,” the connections were at least reli- able. Past that, opinions varied widely. Readability varies from phone to phone depending on the brightness of the screen and backlighting. Joystick features for navigation make them easy to use although the size and touch sensitivity of the joystick do make a difference in how they were rated. Would users equip their company with these? Some would, saying “They’re excellent 2 for quick messages and light web surfing.” Most would not, feeling that the small dis- play and difficult typing placed cell phones at a deadend for web access. Blackberries When it came to email, Blackberries just worked. Sending and receiving email were almost flawless. Web access was not as easy. The Blackberries came with different services preinstalled: one using the GoAmerica portal, and another with Yahoo!. Our testers didn’t like using the Yahoo portal because of the default search engine, Ask Jeeves. They would have rather been able to use Google. Would users equip their company with these? All but one user replied that they would happily equip their company with Blackberries for email. They were more cautious about the benefits of web access, feeling that GoAmerica was not quite perfected. Palms The Palm VIIxs came preinstalled with palm.net service. Connecting through palm.net was adequate, however accessing the Web was not. Apparently Palm has placed their strategic partnerships before the needs of their users. Users were able to send email with ease, in fact the Palms almost matched the Blackberries in ease of use on email. But they found WWW access a disaster. Would users equip their company with these? Users responded with “No,” or “Never with Palm.net.” (We carried out further Palm testing with AvantGo and EudoraWeb, observations included in the body of the report.) Handheld PCs Handheld PCs, both the Compaq IPAQs and the HP Jornadas we used in the test, had slow and unreliable connections. Users downgraded them for waiting time, regardless of the usability of the actual interface. However, users liked them for the novelty of the color screen, and familiar Windows Internet Explorer interface. Would users equip their company with these? Excited by the color display and graph- ics rendering, most said “Yes!” Then they would begin hedging, saying “... maybe, if the connectivity improves.” ______________________ The Best Best web access: Palm OS devices using AvantGo or EudoraWeb, or Blackberries using GoAmerica. Best cellular phone Web access service: Yahoo! and Google Best email service: Blackberries. In our view Blackberries have real potential, despite their relatively high cost. They are the best available device for email, which remains 3 the killer app of the Internet. Best Handheld PC: Inconclusive. When it comes to wireless, we are not sure that they currently fit in anywhere. The screens are far too narrow to display most web sites. Like Palms and Blackberries, they are largely restricted to text-only web sites. In connectivity they were consistently the worst devices we tested. The fact that Windows CE will run on them does not mean they give true Windows usability. As best we can tell, most handheld PC owners use them as “PIM-plus” devices; a personal information manager with a little bit more capability than a Palm or Blackberry, and the ability to access Microsoft files in a pinch. ______________________ Conclusions & Strategies Preliminary Conclusion Contrary to previous reports by other research companies, we found that wireless devices themselves were far from perfected. However, wireless access has indeed ar- rived in modest but often useful ways. And on some devices, certain features have been nearly perfected. Blackberries have become increasingly popular in spite of their high price because they provide excellent service with that traditional killer app: email. Even cell phones have been successfully enabled; address lookup and driving directions are extremely useful to road warriors. The fact that users become adroit with such devices merely proves that mobile tele- phony is a killer app. It does not demonstrate that users are willing to learn their way around the Web using devices with illogical controls and poor ergonomics. Just as many VCRs are used purely for playback of rented movies—recording being too compli- cated to be worth the owner’s time—we expect that most wireless devices currently available will be used for the absolute minimum necessary tasks. Strategies 1. Equip and train your employees to use wireless devices with currently avail- able services Choosing Devices - look at many before testing, test several before buying. We tested 11 cell phones for the study. Not a single one was fully satisfactory (reasons why we excluded most of them are listed in the Appendix). However, if the Sprint TP 2100s had the larger screen, good backlighting, and the high quality font hinting of the Motorola Nextel L85, they would have been thoroughly satisfactory. So when it comes to cell phones, testing 30 different phones is probably a realistic minimum. Figure on a week of initial research by two or three varied employees. This 4 would involve taking our checklist, visiting multiple computer stores and cell phone suppliers, and simply testing the ergonomics, keypad logic, and readability of several different types of phones. 2. Rework your intranet to support your employees, suppliers, or B2B custom- ers. Obviously the employees that would benefit most from being able to connect directly to the company intranet would be the field staff. They could look up availability of prod- uct, check for technical updates, or company news. If they were selling software they could download the latest version for demonstrations. They could access other more mundane but useful information like company phone lists, email addresses, company health benefits and other employee information. Enabling your remote staff to connect and access public files cuts down on administrative support. It also cuts down on wasted time, especially when you are dealing with a 3 hour time difference from one coast to the other. Suppliers & B2B customers: although in theory this is a good idea, most manufacturers still don’t want buyers to know exactly what they have and how much. It interferes with their pricing strategies. Most manufacturers would rather keep their databases off-line. Suppliers of raw materials like oil, gas, metals and minerals are different, being more subject to a market economy. Their prices constantly fluctuate based on how much is available and what the demand is. Providing this information via wireless might be an added convenience for their buyers. 3. Rework your Internet access (web site) to support niche markets or the gen- eral public. If your market is financials, and your customers are day traders, you may want to rework your web site to enable wireless access. You have to judge your market care- fully—and do the numbers. If your market is pet food, you probably won’t want to rework your site for wireless access. Yahoo! and Google have done a good job of making their sites usable to even the most display-challenged of wireless devices, cellular phones. However, these are both broad- market plays, that will live or die by popular appeal. And the services that a portal like Yahoo! provides are the types of services that consumers want: news, restaurant list- ings, weather reports, driving directions, and yellow pages. Of those, only the last three are likely to be of value to business users. Cellular Phone Checklist These are a few of the questions you should ask when looking at buying cell phones: Devices 5 1. Are the controls intuitive for both voice and WWW use? 2.