Designing Software for the Mobile Context

Roman Longoria The goal of this book is to provide a useful and timely guide to the practitioner who designs or develops mobile applications. The contributors to this book are leaders in the user interface (UI) community actively working in mobile platform technol­ ogy and mobile application design. Thus, this book offers the reader unique insight into the latest technologies, market trends, design ideas, and usability data. We provide the reader with the latest information that will have direct and immediate impact on a broad scope of product design decisions, including those for voice, phone, and personal digital assistant (PDA) applications. In other words, this book is written by practitioners, for practitioners. When I approached my coauthors about writing a chapter, I had only a few criteria. First, each author should have unique experience and expertise about a certain aspect of mobile applications. Second, that the authors be able to provide an introduction to the technologies with which they work. Third, that each chapter include case studies and lessons learned from empirical usability evaluations. And fourth, that each author include in the chapter some fundamental knowledge that they wish they had known when they got started designing for the mobile context.

Contenu

1 Designing Applications for 3G Mobile Devices.- 1.1 Introduction.- 1.2 The Designer's Role.- 1.3 Understanding the Industry.- 1.4 Understanding the User.- 1.4.1 Consumer Characteristics.- 1.4.2 Consumer Devices.- 1.4.3 Demographic Segmentation.- 1.5 Understanding the Technology.- 1.5.1 Applications and Media Overview.- 1.5.2 The Application Environment.- 1.5.3 Symbian OS.- 1.5.4 Brew.- 1.5.5 Java.- 1.5.6 Browser as an Application Environment.- 1.5.7 Conclusion.- 1.6 Understanding Devices.- 1.6.1 Designing for Local Applications.- 1.6.2 Interaction Models.- 1.6.3 Selection.- 1.6.4 Device Interaction Models.- 1.6.5 Scrolling.- 1.6.6 Text Input Methods.- 1.7 User Interface Elements.- 1.8 When and What to Use (Markup, Native OS, or Messaging).- 1.8.1 Case Study: Games, Information Applications, Messaging Applications.- 1.9 Tips.- 1.10 Outtakes from Usability Testing.- 1.10.1 Issue: Navigation.- 1.10.2 Issue: Cost.- 1.10.3 Issue: Login and Password.- 1.10.4 Issue: Localization of Terms and Abbreviations.- 1.10.5 Issue: Help.- 1.11 References.- 1.11.1 Industry.- 1.11.2 Market Research.- 1.11.3 ISP.- 1.11.4 Service Providers.- 1.11.5 Operator Requirements Documents.- 1.11.6 Environments.- 1.11.7 Device Manufacturers.- 2 Designing Voice Applications.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.1.1 Some Background on Speech Technology.- 2.1.2 Caller Satisfaction with Speech Systems.- 2.1.3 How Speech Recognition Works.- 2.1.4 The Elements of a Voice User Interface.- 2.1.5 Design and Development of Speech Applications.- 2.2 Requirements Definition.- 2.3 High-Level Design.- 2.4 Detailed Design.- 2.5 Production.- 2.6 Tuning and Validation.- 2.7 Case Studies.- 2.7.1 Overview.- 2.7.2 Bell Canada.- 2.7.3 Avon.- 2.8 Guidelines.- 2.8.1 What Are the General Process Guidelines We Can Extract from These Two Case Studies?.- 2.8.2 What Design Guidelines Are Particular to the Mobile User?.- 2.9 References.- 3 Designing J2ME(TM) Applications: MIDP and UI Design.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 J2ME Platform Architecture.- 3.2.1 Configurations.- 3.2.2 Profiles.- 3.2.3 Optional Packages.- 3.3 MIDP Overview.- 3.3.1 MIDP Features.- 3.3.2 MIDP Device Requirements.- 3.4 MIDP Application Overview.- 3.4.1 Consumer Characteristics.- 3.4.2 Characteristics of Consumer Products.- 3.5 Creating a MIDP Application.- 3.6 Using Abstract Commands.- 3.6.1 Parts of an Abstract Command.- 3.6.2 Paired Commands.- 3.7 Using MIDP User Interface Components.- 3.7.1 High-Level User Interface Components.- 3.7.2 Low-Level User Interface Components.- 3.8 Handling Deployment and Usage Issues.- 3.8.1 Presentation Issues.- 3.8.2 Size Issues.- 3.9 Conclusion.- 4 Designing Multimodal Applications.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Motivation: Multimodal Interaction Use Cases.- 4.2.1 Use Case 1: Multimoda1 Map.- 4.2.2 Use Case 2: Multimoda1 Voicemail with a Smartphone.- 4.3 Discussion of Interaction Modes.- 4.3.1 Graphical User Interface.- 4.3.2 Voice User Interface.- 4.4 Contextual Information as an Input Modality.- 4.5 Degrees of Multimodality.- 4.6 Multimoda1 Synchronization: What Makes Multimodality Work?.- 4.7 Solutions for Voice and Graphical Interfaces.- 4.8 Design of Multimoda1 Applications for Mobile Devices.- 4.8.1 Design for the Audience.- 4.8.2 Social Implications of Multimodal Interfaces.- 4.8.3 Design for Context.- 4.8.4 Separation of Concerns.- 4.9 Internationalization and Localization.- 4.10 Usability.- 4.11 Design Artifacts.- 4.12 Testing Mu1timodal Applications.- 4.12.1 Testing Strategies for Multimodal Designs.- 4.12.2 Multimodal Testing Environments.- 4.13 Tutorial Example: Designing and Implementing a Multimodal Color Chooser.- 4.13.1 Using SALT.- 4.14 Summary.- 4.15 References.- 5 Heuristics for Designing Mobile Applications.- 5.1 Introduction.- 5.2 Summary of the Heuristics.- 5.3 Heuristics in Detail.- 5.3.1 Heuristic 1: There Is a Need.- 5.3.2 Heuristic 2: Every Pixel Counts.- 5.3.3 Heuristic 3: Every Round Trip Counts.- 5.3.4 Heuristic 4: Employ Feature Shedding.- 5.3.5 Heuristic 5: Keep Your Navigation Model Simple and Clear.- 5.3.6 Heuristic 6: Think Modular.- 5.3.7 Heuristic 7: Minimize Data Entry.- 5.3.8 Heuristic 8: Allow for Desktop-Based Customization.- 5.3.9 Heuristic 9: Fight the Hype.- 5.3.10 Heuristic 10: Basic VI Principles Still Apply.- 5.4 Conclusions.- 6 A Development Process for Advanced User Interfaces of Wireless Mobile Devices.- 6.1 Introduction.- 6.2 Project Details.- 6.2.1 Project Participants.- 6.2.2 Project Dates.- 6.2.3 Design and Development Process.- 6.3 Solution Details.- 6.3.1 Design Concepts Based on User Observation.- 6.3.2 Wireless Device Usage Space: An Analytical Framework.- 6.3.3 Wireless Devices: The First Truly "Personal" Computer.- 6.3.4 The Promise of Mobile Computing.- 6.3.5 Two Design Philosophies: Specialized Use vs. Does Everything.- 6.3.6 The Design Concept Catalogue.- 6.3.7 Input and Output Limitations.- 6.4 Post-Project Results.- 6.5 Acknowledgements.- 6.6 References.