Mobile Web Browsing: Usability Stud. Categories and Subject Descriptors. General Terms, страница 9

Figure 3. Box and whisker chart of overall task rating for four tasks performed on mobile browser

As initially expected (see Figure 3), participants found task 1 and 2 relatively simple, 3 medium to difficult and the task 4 which

was sending email the most difficult to perform on mobile browser.

5.5 Organization of information in mobile browser

After completion of all the tasks, participants rated how they found the organization of information when viewed on mobile browser. In the 5-point scale used, 1 meaning clear and 5 meaning confusing, the average rating was 3.6 which show most of the participants did not find the organization of information clear.

Performing the first task on mobile browser, most of the participants could not understand the page structure and thought it lacked natural visibility as they felt it did not present information instantly and were just not prepared for the scrolling down. For some participants, there was so much scrolling involved and did not know where exactly the information was in the long narrow page, they even forgot what the task actually was. However, realizing difficulty of locating the information, two participants used Google search feature of the mini Opera browser and were able to find the right information a lot quicker than others.

On a desktop browser, users intend to scan the pages rapidly while browsing through familiar web pages focusing on the content of their interest, identifying and using relevant links and information if necessary. One research study on desktop web showed 79% of users skim-read and only 16% read word by word [19] and mobile users away from a stationary computer or in a mobile environment, are likely to have limited time to access and browse a wireless application. Thus, good organization of information is critical for achieving greater efficiency [4]. In the study of web page visualization method for mobile phones, Roto et al. found the participants did not see that the mobile browsers would be suitable to be used in a hurry, which shows that a small screen makes it hard to just glance at the page and spot the needed content [26]. So, on small-screen mobile phone, browser presenting content in a tall narrow layout did not promote such a browsing behavior, as it required users to concentrate more in browsing the information by a lot of careful scrolling.

5.6 Correcting your mistakes

For the question how easy or difficult participants found correcting the mistakes in mobile browser, the average rating was 3.3 in the 5-point scale used, which shows participants did not find it easy but also did not have major problems while correcting mistakes.

On desktop browser, selecting, typing, updating and deleting is a simple activity. But on mobile, typing using keypad and different text entering method which required using joystick to move between form elements, and push it in to mark boxes and buttons or activate form field before typing was time consuming but of course not impossible. Therefore, even though it was difficult, there were not any other major problems. But most of the participants had problems working with forms, especially in the case of task 3. W                               *(   :0       

the drop-down menu, most of them simply thought it was not working, and either carried on performing the task without making any selection or just gave up the task.

In this study, participants were on average very familiar with web browsing on desktop. When using mobile phone for web browsing, their common perception in mind was that it should

work the same way and so they expected similar straight-forward way to work with the forms and the page.

5.7 It is easy to find information I needed in mobile phone