Redefining the mobile UI
By Jason Ankeny
It's appropriate that the thumb is the digit most closely aligned with mobile data consumption: Anyone who's ever struggled in vain to access content and applications on their wireless device may feel as if they're all thumbs, too. Awkward access and discovery protocols have remained sources of subscriber frustration virtually since the inception of the mobile user experience. As texting and photos have given way to increasingly complex multimedia services including mobile TV and music, interfaces have grown proportionately more challenging, with each new activity demanding a labyrinthine and seemingly endless series of clicks.  Â
That's the bad news. The good news is that both operators and software developers are making significant strides to simplify the mobile user experience. "We probably haven't done a good job as an industry merchandising the content we have to sell," admits Scott Moody, director of data services for Alltel Wireless. "But if you look back, there's probably not as much demand for digital content as we see today. We're getting better across the board--a lot more people are taking a lot more time thinking about merchandising and content discovery."
In January 2007, Alltel introduced Celltop, an exclusive, patent-pending UI technology promising customers improved access and management over their mobile content experience via category-specific, widget-like "cells"--i.e., graphic and text shortcuts to applications including weather, news, ringtones and text messaging. "We found a way to take content all the way up, as opposed to launching a WAP browser," Moody says. "We're seeing great feedback in terms of metrics--we see that Celltop drives incremental usage of applications over and above its BREW or WAP counterparts."
Widgets are also the foundation of software developer Zumobi's signature mobile browsing application, an intuitive, interactive UI enabling users to zoom in, out and across a grid of up to 36 tiles, each displaying handset-optimized versions of popular web pages and services. While user-friendly applications like Celltop and Zumobi may seem a long time coming, especially to wireless subscribers burned time and again by substandard UI solutions, Zumobi co-founder and vice president of products and services John SanGiovanni says they're not too late.
"Certainly there were some people who experimented with mobile data in the early days and never looked back--they spent 20 minutes trying to get a sports score and gave up," SanGiovanni says. "But now there is another segment of tweeners moving into the knowledge space that is more experimental and more comfortable around new user experience paradigms. Anyone from the ages of 15 to 35 is used to learning new interaction models based on their experience on different gaming platforms. These are users who are much more open to learning new models--they're going to try out data consumption more than once."
JupiterResearch vice president and research director Julie Ask agrees that inferior user interfaces have so far done little permanent damage to the collective mobile user psyche. "There tends to be more of a lack of interest or a lack of need for mobile data--adoption isn't slow because the UI is poor," Ask says. "We're still approaching the point where the demand for services is high enough that your average cell phone needs to deliver the kind of experience that an iPhone or N95 does." While Ask is a proponent of the widget model, she also notes the success of other user interfaces. In particular, she cites the popularity of Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile web platform and its dedicated handset button that brings up an always-on menu of data services.
According to both Moody and SanGiovanni, the major obstacle facing a uniformly efficient and simple user experience is the sheer volume of handsets on the market and in development. "We've got to fix the problem of mobile device porting, which is a sad commentary after we've all seen the growth of the PC environment around consistent device principles," SanGiovanni says. "It requires a ridiculous number of engineering hours to get an experience to work consistently across different devices. That's a huge impediment--if you're a two-person start-up in a garage and you want to address the marketplace, it's impossible."
Improving the mobile user experience also hinges on understanding the mobile user experience, in particular the so-called "snacking" mentality that most analysts suggest will dominate mobile content consumption. "People have tried to shoehorn the full desktop browser onto the mobile device platform--the problem is a lot of websites are designed to be sticky, which is not the right usage pattern when you're mobile," SanGiovanni says. "Mobile is about bouncing in and bouncing out--it's a crisp, bouncy experience. You fly in, snack on a blog or game, and fly back out."
Most of all, it's critical that operators, applications developers and handset makers all understand the user experience is not a selling point in and of itself. Subscribers expect simple, efficient content access and discovery--they'll certainly take exception to an absurdly complex user interface, but an intuitive, even innovative UI will pass by virtually unnoticed.
"It's subconscious--a subscriber may think 'Wow, I really like this Alltel handset,' but they may not directly say it's easier to use," Moody says. "At the end of the day, it's not about making the user experience prettier--it's about merchandising our content better. Celltop is a beautiful application. It's really nice to look at and elegant to use. But it's a merchandising environment. When others realize that improving the user experience is going to improve their content sales, they'll come around."