Web Browsing on Mobile Phones: Characteristics of User Experience
Virpi Roto · Aaltodoc (Aalto University) · 2009
The increasing importance of the web in people's daily life calls for device-independent access to existing web sites. More than two billion people have a mobile phone today, and for many of them, a mobile phone may be the only way to connect to the web. There is an order for full web access on mobile phones, but it faces several challenges and the user experience is often poor. This dissertation has its focus in the area of human-computer interaction and user experience research. The overall goal of the research has been to improve the end user experience when browsing the web with a mobile phone. Previous research has identified that the user's internal state, context, and system affect the user experience, but product development needs a more concrete and comprehensive list of attributes. To understand the user experience building blocks in the case of mobile browsing, we ran several usability studies with mobile web browsers in both a laboratory and a mobile context. We also conducted 35 contextual inquiry interviews in Finland, United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The studies revealed that mobile browsing user experience is affected by the user's state, context, mobile device, browser application, network infrastructure, and web sites. Identifying these characteristics composes the main contribution of this dissertation. The mobile browser development activity at Nokia serves as a case study, in which we have considered the identified attributes and aimed to create a browser that fits well into the mobile context. Our field study results and early feedback from the market have been encouraging, which shows that taking the user experience characteristics into account helps creating positive user experiences. Finally, this dissertation adduces topics for future user experience research by discussing the difference between user experience and experience in general, the effects that pricing has on the user experience, and the role of a user's expectations in evaluating the user experience.