main input control for scrolling & selecting, and soft keys for options, cancel, back & similar functions.
The mini Opera (Version 2.0) used in this evaluation is a freely available small (currently less than 100K footprint) a Java (MIDP) client that relies on a proxy server which pre-process web pages and sends the optimized web content to the device. It is capable of running on even the humblest of devices, as long as the device has a Java VM running on it [28].
3.2 Procedure
Participants were given instructions about how to use this particular mobile phone so that there was not any confusion and problems because of not being able to operate the mobile phone itself. Briefly, participants were informed about the mobile browser and how it represents the same content on mobile phone that is seen on desktop browser. Participants were also given an overview of the planned evaluation and agreed for voluntary participation. All the participants read and signed the informed consent form [10]. Pre-test questionnaire [17] was used to collect demographic information about participants.
Four very common goal-oriented tasks were set out for participants to perform within estimated time 20 minutes to complete. It was expected that all those tasks would be very easy to perform on desktop browser, but on mobile browser, task 1 would be very easy, 2 easy, 3 difficult and 4 very difficult to perform. The address of relevant sites for each task was provided but participants were free to use any other site they were familiar with. The tasks were:
· Find the todays top Sports news(BBC)
· Find out the weather forecast for your area. (Yahoo)
· Find the live departure Rail time from High Wycombe to Marylebone. (National Rail)
· Check your email and send an email (short message) to your friend. (Hotmail)
The participants performed tasks under direct observation and were requested to think-aloud. While participant performed the task, for the each task - following measures were recorded in observation.
· Time taken for each task to complete.
· Different type of (incidents) and number of time it occurred.
· Task Completed or not.
· Participants comments
At the end of evaluation, participants completed post-test questionnaire based on Web-Based User Interface Evaluation with Questionnaires [22] to express their perceptions of the task and mobile web browsing.
3.3 Participants
Twelve under-graduate and post-graduate students from Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College took part in this evaluation. The age of participants varied from 18 to 45 years. Eleven subjects were male and one female. They all had modest to high desktop computer experience and used internet everyday or almost everyday. All the participants had different range of mobile phones from Simens A65, LG Chocolate, Samsung D600, Nokia 8310 to N80.
Out of twelve, nine participants had a good mobile using experience, one had an average and other two had below average
mobile phone experience. Seven of these participants had no experience of web browsing on mobile phones as well. Other five participants had used mobile for web browsing at least once a week. All the participants used their mobile phones mostly for making calls and text messaging and occasionally for pictures, music and alarm and were not very versatile in their mobile phone skills. Those who used mobile for web browsing used it for checking train-time and reading emails.
When asked why they do not use mobile for web browsing, participants were concerned about the cost, speed and believed browsing web on mobile will not be comfortable and convenient as well. Four participants said they do not need to use mobile phone for browsing and desktop use was sufficient and one of the
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