Mobile Web Browsing: Usability Stud. Categories and Subject Descriptors. General Terms, страница 5

and so never used it. However, even though none of participants have ever used this particular mobile phone that was used for an evaluation and the mobile web browser such mini Opera, initially they showed positive attitude towards its use and were interested in testing. Participants did not have to pay the browsing costs during the test period.

4. USER PERFORMANCE

4.1 Task 1

Performing Task 1 on desktop browser to find top sports news on BBC was very simple task. Before beginning the first task on mobile, all the participants expressed that it would have helped if they had some previous experience of using this particular mobile phone and the mobile browser. However, they all completed this task on mobile browser as well.

However, attempting the first task, initially participants did not intend to scroll down to find the information and were rather expecting to find it right on the top. Specially, when they clicked the link, they just forgot they had to scroll down to find the content and were clicking the same link again and again as it seemed though the page did not change because the top information was exactly same as it were before. However, once they realized they needed to scroll down, they were able to find the information. But, one of the participants knew the top sports news link was also located in the home page, so just scrolled down the home page and found the top news. So, in this case, the familiarity of web page on desktop helped find the information on mobile browser easily.

4.2 Task 2

While performing task 2 using Yahoo portal, first of all participants had a little bit of difficulty even on desktop browser to find the weather link as it was not located on main menu of links at left-hand side, which participants usually glanced through expecting to find the link there and so it took little extra time.

After completing the task on desktop and when performed on mobile browser most of the participants found difficulty to find the weather link again as it appeared as a text link without the weather icon as seen on desktop browser. It was interesting to see one participant spotted the link quickly remembering the fact that the weather link was alongside of “Mail” and “Messenger” link.

So, when scrolling the long page on mobile browser it helped him spot the link by keeping eye on expected location of all the links as a whole.

While scrolling, participants could either scroll vertically link by link or page by page of screen size using joystick. As the page length was very long, most of the participants tried to scroll page by page to scroll down quickly, but some of them easily missed

The “search by City or Region” option and end up browsing by following “Browse to locate a city” link which requires going through few long pages many times and try locating right information again by careful scrolling, which was indeed very time consuming. It was very obvious that using search option was more convenient and quicker to use in this case.

4.3 Task 3

Similarly, participants took more time on task 3 to find the “live departures & arrivals” form on desktop browser, because at first all the participants misunderstood the task even though clearly stated, and used the quick journey planner instead. Even after finding the right form, participants complained it did not have usual input field with labels “From” and “To” and instead uses drop-down menu and also there was no clear instruction about how to use it.

However, after completing the task on desktop browser, it helped them recognize the right form on mobile browser and didn’t get confused with the quick journey planner. However, ten of the participants were unable to select the limit by option, as it require to use the ‘more” menu on the right-hand side to selected “Form” or “To” option would appear on the form.