wap usability deja vu: 1994 all over again

In the fall of 2000, Nielsen Norman Group sponsored a field study of WAP users in London. We gave 20 users a WAP phone and asked them to use it for a week and record their impressions in a diary. We also performed traditional usability tests with users at the beginning and end of the field study. We gave half of the users an Ericsson R320s and the other half a Nokia 7110e. We ran this study in London because of the advanced state of the United Kingdom's mobile phone market relative to the United States. The U.K.'s WAP services have been under development longer than those in the U.S. and were also more widely deployed at the time of our study. Figure 4 shows the bottom line of our study: When users were asked whether they were likely to use a WAP phone within one year, a resounding 70% answered no. WAP is not ready for prime time yet, nor do users expect it to be usable any time soon. Remember, this finding comes after respondents had used WAP services for a week, so their conclusions are significantly more valid than answers from focus group participants who are simply asked to speculate about whether they would like WAP. We surveyed people who had suffered through the painful experience of using WAP, and they definitely didn't like it. At the same time, when users were asked whether they might get WAP within three years, the " no " responses dropped to 20%. Users obviously see potential in the mobile Internet. It's just not there yet. We tend to agree with our users' assessment: Mobile Internet will not work during 2001, but in subsequent years it should be big. We thus recommend that companies sit out the current generation of WAP but continue planning their mobile Internet strategy. Don't waste your money on fielding services that nobody will use; as we document in this report, WAP usability remains poor. Instead, plan on launching mobile services as soon as the next generation of devices ships. Our conclusion that WAP doesn't work is based mainly on our examination of timed task-performance studies. We asked users to accomplish simple tasks with their WAP phones, both at the beginning of the week and at the end. Here are some of the findings (Figure 6 shows additional results). Task time in minutes Read world headlines (from …