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.
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.
JupiterResearch 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.
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 principle. ferent devices.
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. “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.
Source: Fierce Mobile Content
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