Handheld Usability

Rating:
Summary: Well written and easy to understand
Review: "Handheld Usability" is well-organized, articulate, and surveys all of the existing technologies for this medium. The author clearly carefully researched every angle of design for handheld devices.His research is neatly organized into consistent, well-thought-out sections.

It is especialy helpful to see how Weiss applies traditional HCI design strategies to small computing devices. He provides ample examples throughout this well-illustrated, easy to follow volume.

The appendix on Paper Prototyping Palm OS was particularly helpful, with its photographic illustrations and clear instructions on how to produce a paper prototype. I have looked for a long time to locate a book on paper prototyping, and this is the first one available. He covers the topic fairly, presenting its strengths and weaknesses, and gives good instruction on the technique.

This book is easy to read, written in an instructive, helpful style like a good "hands on" textbook. There is a companion web site, handheldusability.info, which has additional materials that supplement the book nicely.

I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: Handheld Usability: An informed approach to design
Review: I thought that this book was user friendly, easy to read and wriiten for all users including the layman. The layout is pleasant and the graphics have "eye appeal".

We need additonal publications to ease our way into the PDA world.

Rating:
Summary: A Usable Book That You Can Hold In Your Hands!
Review: Some quick observations about the book:
1. Excellent cognitive architecture (structure) moves readers from basic principles to core discussions and related topics smoothly.
2. Chapters 3-6 are a "must read" for all practitioners and students of Interaction Design for device GUI/ SUI as well as pure screen UI.
3. Content is clear, concise, and engaging.* Big points for not presenting long arduous blocks of text.
4. Page Layout and Design are perfect. Any book on Usability has to pay close attention to the best practices and details of visual design for readability, scanning and memorability. This book succeeds where most fail.
5. Thoroughness. You hit all the key areas- Definitions, Historical Chronology, Best Practices, Getting Started ,Cost Justification, Resources (Bibliography & Companion Website, the works!
* Here are the few detractors and guarded recommendations
1. In a time of concern over the use of resources- is the Hard-back format justified ?
2. This book is so good, it deserves to be reprinted as a reference manual with a suitable package design.
My immediate thought was to sell it as a multi-ring binder format with tab dividers for the chapter headers and the ability to remove and update the pages that discuss rapidly changing products and technologies. This evolved presentation format would make it very attractive to enterprise clients, such as schools, design teams and technology wonks like me, who like to teach "Out of Books" but can't because the common book format is a single
user linear reading paradigm. As a case in point, I like many of the core discussions and cases in *Information Appliances and beyond* but so many HW/SW references in there are obsolete already- I've extracted 15% of the contents and have sold the book as "used". I suspect some customers would enjoy paying for annual updates to their binder- downloadable off the site, of course - I would.
3. Missed opportunity? I've reviewed many software books for IDG in the past and the smart thing they did was to include a PP Business Reply Card for
reviewers to comment on various aspects of the publication. I'm wondering if perhaps you included a feedback form on the site that I missed ?
* The most important pluses are 1. Conciseness and 2. Usefulness
* The most important minuses are 1. Lack of feedback and 2. fixed binding

Rating:
Summary: Too bad
Review: There's been an explosion of handheld devices in recent years. Some manufacturers are more guilty than others of creating unusable interfaces for their users.

This volume from usability practitioner Scott Weiss provides a timely and hands-on guide, concentrating on helping designers address practical issues in designing for handhelds.

You may find Weiss's style dry, but he's packed a lot in by cutting the prose. Handheld Usability highlights the particular challenges of designing for smaller mobile devices (he doesn't cover held devices such as tablet PCs), making a great companion to the standard works on general interaction design.

Rating:
Summary: Practical coverage of handheld usability issues/tools
Review: This book is one of the first serious works about usability for handhelds. Explanations are accompanied with interesting examples collected from the renowned author's experience in the field. I find it a valuable reference book for University students of HCI. It is also a very useful guide for usability professionals.

Rating:
Summary: Was helpful for my final year dissertation
Review: This was the only book specific to handheld/mobile devices that discussed usability testing.

It is divided into short, concise sections that are easy to read and understand. The sections form a good basis on how to approach designing and testing a system. It has some very good pointers. The only thing was that it was too short!

The book was very, very helpful but it wasn't long enough and doesn't provide working examples. It just tells you the points that you should be considering when you are building a usable system. It doesn't go too in depth on any of the sections either.

Rating:
Summary: Essential
Review: Zipf's law states that common words are very common, and that uncommon words are combinations of uncommon words. For example if you start typing the letters 'th' then you are probably trying to write the word 'the' rather than 'theologian'. Applying this simple insight to mobile phones gave us predictive text entry, where a small dictionary allows the phone to guess the word that the user is most likely trying to enter. For example if you press the keys '82' while entering a text message on a modern phone, the phone will predict 'the' as your word. This invention allows QWERTY-snobs like me to approach the speeds of Finnish teenagers in tapping text messages on a mobile phone.

Such innovation is just amusingly clever on a PC, but on the small screens of handheld devices, it is essential. A good user interface converts a small device from a limiting gadget to a useful tool. European consumers' 'wapathetic' response to WAP-enable phones was due to over hyping by the telecommunications industry, but also poor usability of the devices.
So a textbook on the topic is certainly appropriate.

Handheld usability defines handheld devices as highly portable machines that can operate with no cables and can be operated within one's hand. In addition, they must either allow the addition of applications or support internet connectivity. So the book's focus includes handheld computers (such as Palm-powered machines and Pocket PCs) and mobile phones (with WAP, i-mode or email connectivity) but excludes devices such as music players.

Naturally the discussion includes details of devices that are obsolete. Such is usually the case with any discussion of the details in information technology. But the principles are timeless and the practices will remain practical.
Perhaps the most useful chapter is the one on prototyping. Weiss' advice is that this should be done with a pen and several pieces of paper. For example the designer would draw the first screen on the paper. The user would then say what he or she expects to see on interacting with each element of the "screen". During this feedback, the designer would draw the next screen, and again ask the user what he or she expects. This technique is of course cheap but I was surprised by its effectiveness. No doubt Weiss' clients also found it useful.

If your team is designing applications for handheld devices, consider hiring Weiss. If you cannot afford that, buy his book. You cannot afford not to.

Review appeared in British Medical Informatics Today, Issue 41

Rating:
Summary: Essential
Review: Zipf's law states that common words are very common, and that uncommon words are combinations of uncommon words. For example if you start typing the letters `th' then you are probably trying to write the word `the' rather than `theologian'. Applying this simple insight to mobile phones gave us predictive text entry, where a small dictionary allows the phone to guess the word that the user is most likely trying to enter. For example if you press the keys `82' while entering a text message on a modern phone, the phone will predict `the' as your word. This invention allows QWERTY-snobs like me to approach the speeds of Finnish teenagers in tapping text messages on a mobile phone.

Such innovation is just amusingly clever on a PC, but on the small screens of handheld devices, it is essential. A good user interface converts a small device from a limiting gadget to a useful tool. European consumers' `wapathetic' response to WAP-enable phones was due to over hyping by the telecommunications industry, but also poor usability of the devices.
So a textbook on the topic is certainly appropriate.

Handheld usability defines handheld devices as highly portable machines that can operate with no cables and can be operated within one's hand. In addition, they must either allow the addition of applications or support internet connectivity. So the book's focus includes handheld computers (such as Palm-powered machines and Pocket PCs) and mobile phones (with WAP, i-mode or email connectivity) but excludes devices such as music players.

Naturally the discussion includes details of devices that are obsolete. Such is usually the case with any discussion of the details in information technology. But the principles are timeless and the practices will remain practical.
Perhaps the most useful chapter is the one on prototyping. Weiss' advice is that this should be done with a pen and several pieces of paper. For example the designer would draw the first screen on the paper. The user would then say what he or she expects to see on interacting with each element of the "screen". During this feedback, the designer would draw the next screen, and again ask the user what he or she expects. This technique is of course cheap but I was surprised by its effectiveness. No doubt Weiss' clients also found it useful.

If your team is designing applications for handheld devices, consider hiring Weiss. If you cannot afford that, buy his book. You cannot afford not to.

Review appeared in British Medical Informatics Today, Issue 41