Beginnings: iMode and WAP

The first forays into deploying mobile web for the masses were made by a Japanese company who developed a service called iMode in 1999. What iMode offered wasn’t quite the same as the web you are familiar with now. Users were not free to browse the internet per se, it was more of a selection of content that was specifically converted into iMode format, and supplied by mobile carriers. This content was typically News, Sports, Weather, Games and email amongst other things. iMode enjoyed great success in Japan, and overshadowed the deployment of its rival, WAP both in Japan and the rest of the western world.

WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) was slightly different to iMode, in so far that it was more restrictive in what it could deliver, yet it was the adopted standard for mobile web in the west. It was greatly (and deceptively) hyped at the time of launch.  However, WAP was slow and cumbersome, and frustrated many users. It was considered a commercial failure as it did not live up to expectations, and left many users disillusioned. Subsequently, iMode launched in the UK and enjoyed moderate success, built on the poor performance of WAP.

WAP and iMode were both similar in so far that they both offered a cut-down version of the internet, with content that had to be specially made for mobile handsets. Bandwidth was also a big issue. Users at this point were used to comparatively speedy connections on desktop machines, so the experience of slow loading times and limited cut-down down content simply put many people off. Needless to say, the general public was not greatly enamoured with mobile web at this stage.

2G and 3G and everywhere in between

Between 2001- 2007, telecoms companies worldwide began making incremental improvements to the mobile infrastructure, effectively increasing bandwidth available to mobile devices from dial-up speed to broadband speed.

The availability of fast and reliable internet speeds for mobile devices triggered a wave of innovation amongst handset manufacturers, heralding in the age of the ‘Smartphone’.

Mobile devices produced during this time were increasingly feature-rich compared to their predecessors, thanks to a phenomenon known as ‘Technological Convergence’. Convergence is the process where several different technologies evolved to share similar properties which then overlap.

During this period of innovation, device manufacturers sought to overcome many of the limitations imposed by mobile devices. Limitations like small screens and difficulty navigating through websites made using internet on a mobile device supremely difficult.

Borne out of these issues, Smartphones began to evolve. Screens became bigger, with better resolution and contrast. Operating systems made for PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) were adapted to be used on Smartphones, creating the first true Mobile operating systems such as Symbian OS 6 in 2001.

Mobile operating systems allowed users to take advantage of the Smartphone’s increased capacity, brought on by the effects of convergence. For example the capacity to create and manipulate digital images and video, play mutimedia and use productivity software such as word processing and email. The advent of mobile operating systems had a significant impact on the mobile web. Mobile browsers now had the capability to render normal web pages, making the ‘real’ web available to mobile users.

Whilst this was a step in the right direction, it was fraught with a whole new set of problems. Websites in this era were seldom designed to be displayed on anything other than desktop machines. Mobiles devices still had small displays, and would often have problems displaying certain page elements, or graphic-heavy websites. Navigating websites also proved difficult. Users were faced with limited scrolling features on their device such as up and down arrows, instead of a more complex pointing device like a mouse.

Manufacturers attempted to solve these issues; input was addressed with QWERTY keyboards and built-in pointing devices such as scroll wheels and trackpads. But then something happened. In June 2007, Apple launched the iPhone.

The new face of Mobile Web

Riding on the success of the ubiquitous iPod, Apple became renowned for creating devices that provided sublime user experiences. The iPhone did for mobile web, what the Ford Model T did for the automotive industry in 1908. The technology employed by Apple with this revolutionary device made using the mobile web more natural, and kick started a trend that is shaping the future of web development today.

Apple changed the game when they introduced the iPhone, by pioneering the use of touch sensitive screens and a superbly crafted user interface. Touchscreens allowed users to manipulate the iPhone using fingers via the use of gestures such as flicking, sliding, and pinching. By getting rid of a permanent keyboard on the iPhone, Apple freed a large amount of space that could be used for the display. A large display and a more intuitive method of navigating and scrolling websites made using mobile web considerably easier.

iPhone has improved over several iterations, hardware improvements mean that being connected to the internet at all times via WiFi, 3G, EDGE or GPRS is possible. At the same time, Apple continually promote their iTunes and App store, allowing users to download the latest entertainment, and more importantly software, directly to their device. The app store created the opportunity for a wide spectrum of businesses and developers to offer their services via small applications installed on the iPhone, capitalising on the iPhone’s excellent connectivity and user interface.

This proliferation of Apps has made the iPhone supremely popular, and given it an almost limitless range of uses. Thanks to the iPhone, mobile web is now being utilised by millions of people worldwide, in an unfathomable number of different ways.

The iPhone has also created a split in the way we view the internet and software. As the trend of using mobile platforms increases, mobile devices are becoming the primary internet portal for a large proportion of users. This means that users are increasingly using mobile devices to use web services on the go, instead of relying on larger desktop machines. The aforementioned split comes in when developers are presented with the problem of producing a product in the shape of a platform independent website optimised for mobile use, or creating a fully featured application for mobile devices?

This question is sure to yield some interesting answers in the near future, as Google squares up to Apple with its recent release of the Nexus One mobile device, which uses Google’s own mobile OS, Android. Google advocates open-source standards towards app development, offering developers more freedom with their creations. Apps for Android OS now reach the 20,000 mark, but it’s still a far cry compared to Apple’s 100,000 apps.

4G and beyond

4G is the name of the next iteration of mobile network standard, which could theoretically deliver data speeds equivalent to LAN, or 100 Mbit/s. As technological convergence progresses, inclusion of GPS into mobile devices has spawned services like Gowalla and FourSquare, which offer location-based social networking. The importance of location based services lies in the fact that information can be filtered down to an ultra-local level, delivering geographically relevant results in real time.

Other big players in search services like Google and Bing are scrambling to aggregate real-time search driven by services like Twitter, who rely primarily on contextual information supplied by distributed users on mobile devices.

Mobile web is now deeply embedded in the functionality of the software we use with our mobile devices, and this is a trend that is likely to continue to an unprecedented scale. The recurring theme of convergence in this article is not purely coincidental. Paired with the trend of miniaturisation of devices, growing use of near-field communication such as RFID will mean that more and more devices will begin to use aspects to the mobile web to communicate to users.

As the amount of information we are bombarded with in our daily lives increases, the challenge we now face, is how to filter out high quality,  relevant content for us.

In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in research carried out to gauge affective aspects of interactive interfaces. This has become a key determinant of how successful many interfaces are, especially games and new innovative interfaces where a significant amount of effort is spent on creating highly-valued user experiences.

While the classical research and evaluation methods have thus far yielded satisfactory results for designing for usability, they have not achieved similar levels of success for affective aspects of design. For example, self-report results often rely on people’s recollection of their affective state at a past moment, their communication skills or the integrity with which they report; for instance, they could forget key details after the trial is over, they might have poor communication skills or they could intentionally alter their report by consciously filtering it to please the researcher or reflect a positive personal image. Other likely issues are evaluator’s bias, where the evaluator could knowingly or unknowingly sway the results of a trial based on their own opinion, and construct invalidity, where a test does not measure the variable it is intended to measure.

Who calls the shots?

“Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.” Ambrose Bierce (1957)

What is free will? Is it the belief that our brains are the source for all decision-making? Is it the belief that all these decisions result from prior brain activity? Does it matter whether this activity is conscious or unconscious?

Studies have found that many complex psychological processes, such as social conduct, emotions and decisions, occur automatically without the intervention of conscious will. In other words, even while an individual will report her/his train of thought, current state of mind, emotions, etc, with absolute sincerity, it is still possible that this does not reflect what is actually happening in her/his mind. No analogy could be more fitting in this case than the psychological iceberg metaphor of the conscious and unconscious minds, where our conscious thought is the floating 10 percent of the iceberg while the subconscious is submerged under water; however, governing most of our actions.

In HCI, we often rely on users’ conscious self-report and empirical observations for research; or for evaluating designs. The conscious mind, however, can be very deceptive when interrogated about emotions; it can become more prolific, creating colourful stories to justify decisions.

So, where do the true answers lie? And how can we extract them?

Neuromarketing

A significant research direction that developed in recent years is neuromarketing; a field which utilises neuroscientific studies of consumers’ affective and cognitive responses to marketing stimuli to give insights into how and why consumers make their purchase decisions.

Recently we have also seen many emerging neuromarketing companies, that claim (some sincerely, many others not) that they can gain valuable data directly from the user’s brain which they can then use to optimise products to create more successful user experiences.

Furthermore, more and more interactive companies are seeking to utilise neuromarketing to improve their own products.

NY Times (opens in a new browser window)

Neuromarketing at Microsoft (opens in a new browser window)

Controversy

Neuromarketing has often been the focus of attention (opens in a new browser window) and intrigued outside observers (opens in a new browser window) therefore it has unsurprisingly, had its fair share of controversy. Many dubbed it “Orwellian” for believing it is very intrusive to the extent that it will allow its user to control people by knowing what they think and predicting how they will respond.

On the other hand, people who are involved in neuromarketing and have applied it in their work will know that the above is far from the truth. It is still a growing technology that is already proving to be a strong tool for marketers; however further ongoing research is taking place to improve its functionality and its applicability in more fields.

Introduction to some neurological & physiological methods used in neuromarketing

Electroencephalography (EEG) The electroencephalogram (EEG) is a non-invasive measure of brain wave activity from the cerebral cortex. It is set up by placing electrodes on specific locations on the scalp surface. It was first reported on human subjects in 1920 by Hans Berger, who detected two basic wave patterns which he termed alpha and beta. Later, other wave bands were identified and termed gamma, delta, theta, kappa, lambda and mu. When detected in healthy individuals, these waves indicate various mental or physical activities.

EEG’s non-invasive approach to recording continuous real-time responses from an individual’s scalp makes it ideal for measuring affect without interfering with their conscious thought.

functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) works by detecting blood-flow changes in the brain according to metabolic mechanisms, such as glucose and oxygen consumption.

Other methods include galvanic skin response (GSR), heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), electromyography (EMG) and respiration rate.

References

• Andreassi, J. L. (2007). Psychophysiology: Human Behavior and Physiological Response. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Bargh, J. A., & Ferguson, M. L. (2000). Beyond behaviorism: on the automaticity of higher mental processes. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 925-945.
• Bierce, A. (1957). The Devil’s Dictionary. New York: Sagamore Press.
• Boehner, K., DePaula, R., Dourish, P., & Sengers, P. (2007). How emotion is made and measured. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 65, 275-291.
• Fechner, G. T. (1966). In D. H. Howes & E. C. Boring (Eds.), and H. E. Adler (Trans.), Elements of psychophysics. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. (Original work published 1860).
• Fox, E. Emotion Science. (2008). Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Picard, R., & Daily, S.B. (2005). Evaluating affective interactions: alternatives to asking what users feel. In CHI 2005 Workshop on Innovative Approaches to Evaluating Affective Systems, Portland, OR.
• Rowan, A. J., & Tolunsky, E. (2003). Primer of EEG: With A Mini-Atlas. PA, Philadelphia: Butterworth-Heinemann.
• Shami, N. S., Hancock, J. T., Peter, C., Muller, M., & Mandryk, R. (2008). Measuring affect in hci: going beyond the individual. In CHI ‘08 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Florence, Italy, 05 – 10 April 2008 (p. 3901-3904). New York, NY: ACM Press.

Thanks to the aforementioned experts, amongst countless others, the use of usability best practices is now filtering into the mainstream.  Implemented from the earliest conceptions of any design, many products, systems and countless other items now benefit from improved usability.

It’s all about the user

Research shows that if 10% of a development project is spent on usability, metrics such as traffic or conversion rates can increase by factors of up to 135 % for websites (opens in a new browser window) (slightly less for intranets). Put simply: allocating some of your project’s budget for usability is a very sound investment.

Looking back at how things have evolved over the past 10 years, it becomes apparent that the role of the user is playing a central part.

Using technology today is easier than it has even been before.  Without wanting to make any specific predictions about the future, one thing is certain; the technology we now take for granted will become increasingly easy to use and further ingrained in our daily life.

The internet has risen to improve many aspects of our lives, mainly communication, e-commerce, learning and entertainment. But to better understand how the internet has evolved we should first take a look at a few examples of how usability has influences this process.

News evolves to be read on screens

The way we consume information today using technology is different to the way we use printed media. While superficially similar, there are some key differences.

Reading on screens is on average 25% slower than on paper (opens in a new browser window). Writing content for websites has evolved to accommodate for ease of reading, compensating by encouraging succinct writing styles. The use of subheadings is also employed to help readers ‘scan’ over the text.

If we look at the BBC as a benchmark, we can compare how the site design has evolved to incorporate these practices for good usability.

BBC News then:

Wayback Machine: BBC News Circa 2000 (opens in a new browser window)

BBC News now:

BBC News Today (opens in a new browser window)

Also note how the current site makes much better use of grouping similar items together and balancing the layout of information with white space, making the experience of reading, much easier on the eye.

E-commerce

Amazon has been around for quite a while, and they have learnt a thing or two about how to offer the best experience possible for their many customers.

When compared, Amazon’s website from 10 years ago looks and feels similar to the current one. This is a good strategy, as familiarity helps build trust and loyalty.

Amazon then:

Wayback Machine; Amazon circa 2000 (opens in a new browser window)

Amazon now:

Amazon Today (opens in a new browser window)

Having been in the game for such a long time, Amazon have been continually testing subtle differences (opens in a new browser window) with their shopping cart functionality. By paying such close attention to detail with this crucial part of the online transaction process, Amazon now have a very high conversion rate.

Another thing to notice is the emphasis placed on the search box. On the old site, the box was located on the left hand side – something which is not very common today (search boxes are mostly located centrally or to the right hand side of a page), but 10 years ago, these conventions had not yet become mainstream.

By locating the search centrally and dedicating more screen real estate to it, makes searching a very prominent option on Amazon’s latest design

Nielsen’s Law

One thing that has certainly changed a great deal in the past decade is the availability of high speed internet.

10 years ago, a site like YouTube would not have been feasible, but with bandwidth of a high end user increasing by 50% each year,  (opens in a new browser window) sharing and watching rich media is now very popular and often taken for granted.

YouTube then:

Wayback Machine: YouTube circa 2000 (opens in a new browser window)

YouTube now:

YouTube today (opens in a new browser)

As can be seen from the difference between the Youtube of 10 years ago and the current YouTube, use of the site has proliferated. Emphasis has changed considerably, with search being a primary objective, placing a search box in the most prominent place of its homepage.

Search empowers users

Search has probably changed the most in the past 10 years, with Google becoming the most prominent name associated with this service.

Google has fundamentally changed the way information is listed and ranked according to search criteria, improving it to the point where Google is now synonymous ‘online search’.

This in itself is an important achievement for usability as it avoids users trawling through irrelevant results.

However, most of these changes happen behind closed doors, with improvements constantly being made into how Google works, instead of the way it looks, as the following links show;

Google Then:

Wayback Machine: Google circa 2000 (opens in a new browser window)

Google Now:

Google (opens in a new browser window)

Today’s version of Google does not look a great deal different to the old version, but subtle changes such as the large, visible search bar, (opens in a new browser window) and the additional functionality which is hidden from the user initially is again an emphasis on the importance of search.

More time and effort is being spent in making sure that the needs of the user are put first, with un-necessary and irrelevant interactions removed from the picture.

This underlying trend of using search as a tool to empower the user is part of the bigger picture of what is coming in the next decade.

Signs of things to come?

With the recent announcement of Google’s ‘Nexus One’ smart phone – a direct competitor to the Apple iPhone, it would be foolhardy to ignore the importance of mobile in this article.

However, the evolution of mobile internet from the painfully slow days of WAP pages to the plethora of feature-rich mobile apps and sites of today is in itself worth an article, so watch this space.

By placing more emphasis on the needs and interests the user, and customising results and queries to those preferences, the user receives a better user experience. This is a trend that is already in action, and will carry on throughout this decade.