With a Cre8asite Usabilty forum, and a forum that focuses upon how Web pages look on different types of browsers, including mobile devices (I’m a big fan of both forums), I was excited when I came across a new paper from Google which looks at usabilty testing of mobile devices.

I’ve recently written about a patent application from Google that discusses software that could enable people to search Google without using a browser, and Aaron, at soloseo, followed up with some of his experiences searching on a phone. I’m curious if others are enjoying the experience.

Google’s paper, Towards the Perfect Infrastructure for Usability Testing on Mobile Devices (PDF), describes some of the processes that they’ve set up to explore the user experience. The abstract for the paper:

In this paper, we describe various setups that allow usability professionals to conduct effective user studies on mobile devices. We describe the factors relevant when building a solution for mobile device observation and the various designs we worked with in the Google user experience research environment as we iterated to meet changing study needs. We highlight several systems that can successfully be used in an industry environment, including a novel setup that is fully portable, can be used in a usability lab as well as in the field, accommodates a large variety of different mobile devices, and allows for live observation by product teams around the world.

Some of the issues around testing mobile devices identified in the paper:

1. Mobile devices come in a lot of different sizes, shapes, and brands with different user interfaces and operating systems.

2. The devices may have very different input systems, from scroll wheels, to custom menu buttons, to styluses.

3. Testing needs to accomodate people holding their phones or PDAs in a natural manner.

4. Since context is important, and phones are mobile, testing needs to be portable.

If you’re a fan of the television show Mythbusters, this report has a similar feel to it, with the creation of different ways to watch people interact with their phones - some more successfully than others. There are pictures in the report of some of the stuff that they came up with, such as cameras that mount directly on peoples’ phones.

I searched for some blogs that focus upon mobile devices, and discuss usability, and came up with the following list. If you know some others, please let me know.

If you use your phone on the Web, what do you use it for, and how has the experience been?