Handheld Usability Reviews

• You'll find better elsewhere, and nowhere.

  
  By on 2003-03-04
  I am an experienced interface designer who has never designed for a handheld. So, when I faced a new project that would be deployed on a handheld, I looked here to further my education. This is the only book I could find that is specific to handhelds.

  When I was considering this book I read seven glowing reviews, and one total pan. The pan got it right. This book may be more useful for someone who knows very little about interaction design, usability testing, prototyping, and all that, and who isn't interested in gaining more than a superficial understanding of these topics. (If you are new to usability design, you'll find a much better place to start with Mayhew's "The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design.") If, however, you are a usability professional looking for insight on how you need to think differently now that your screen is the size of a Post-it note, wait for the next book to be written. I could have written this book, and the sum of my handheld experience is that I own a Palm and a cell phone.
  
  

• very disappointing

  
  By on 2002-09-26
  I originally reviewed this book in Sept, 2002. Though the book had been available for a while, my review was the first. I'm revisiting my review in order to mention that within a week after I posted it, seven or eight glowing reviews suddenly appeared, as if in response to my pan. Still, I stand by my original:

  There are few books available on the subject of designing usable products for handheld devices -- a fast-growing discipline -- so I was eager for the publication of this book. Via his web site and his other organizing activities, the author has done a lot to foster a growing community of handheld device UX specialists, but his book was a big disappointment.

  I hardly know where to begin.

  The book is poorly organized and would be greatly improved by the addition of sidebars, pullquotes and other methods of coding and grouping information. A more comprehensive index would help too. As it is, it's difficult to scan and nearly useless as a reference.

  In many ways, the book is both too general and too specific. Less than seven pages are devoted to "Designing for WAP for Mobile Phones," which is not enough space to cover the topic at even the highest level, yet those seven pages are full of strangely specific guidelines that fail to consider the real world range of WAP applications and contexts. For example, his list of "important principles" includes the remarkably specific recommendation to "use 'Main' instead of 'Home'. 'Home' is ambiguous - is it the carrier's portal, or your application's start page?" The implicit point he's making is certainly a good one (i.e. be careful about how you link to the various things that can be interpreted as 'Home'), but he doesn't seem to understand how to write at this more useful level of abstraction. As a result, many of his recommendations as they're written do not apply in the real world.

  The few nuggets of useful information in the book are often incongruously buried -- in the middle of paragraphs, in the middle of chapters discussing other things entirely. He drops these useful tidbits here and there and spends no time supporting them with evidence, research or even an explanation of his own rationale. In an early chapter (called "Handheld Devices"), he includes just a single short paragraph(!) under the heading, "Design for Small Screens". In this paragraph, he makes a few recommendations (e.g. "never use blank lines" and "use dashes... to create separations in content"). These are useful, but they belong in a different chapter, and they should be supported.

  The meat of the book is the author's discussion of what have essentially become the tenets of the UX/IA/ID field: usability testing, prototyping, the iterative design process, etc. But these discussions consist mainly of repetitions of the obvious, amounting to a thin survey of what you will find in the standard texts of the broader field (by Neilsen, Norman, Raskin, Tufte, Wurman, etc.).

  The book does contain some moderately useful bits about wireless technologies and devices in general, but not enough to justify the price tag.

  The upshot of all this is, 'Handheld Usability' does not provide a broad enough overview of the discipline for the curious or those just getting started, and it doesn't go deep enough to help mobile UX professionals like me.
  
  

• The worst usability book ever...

  
  By A2OMS8ATL7X4FW on 2006-01-10
  I truly cannot recommend this book to anybody who has any knowledge about UI design. Not even if you don't have experience in designing for handheld devices. This book has nothing to offer for you. If you are just starting to study usability, there are far better books out there.
  
  I bought this book when it came out due to fact that there are no books about handheld usability. I had high hopes that it would provide new information about the area. Instead I found out that it was merely a copy paste book, which had nothing to offer. Many of my colleagues read the book also and none had anything good to say about the book.
  
  Scott Weiss probably noticed that there are no books about the subject and decided to make money. With a price as high as 60$ he is probably succeeding.
  
  

• Too bad

  
  By on 2003-03-05
  Don't buy this book.
  I cannot find any usabiltiy testing technique in this book. Just explain what PDA and Palms are and all thing we already knew. Alsom appendix is too long.
  I don't want to know Palm history. Why author explain detail about each funtion of Palm or PDA?
  Save your money!
  
  

• Well written and easy to understand

  
  By on 2002-10-02
  "Handheld Usability" is well-organized, articulate, and surveys all of the existing technologies for this medium. The author clearly carefully researched every angle of design for handheld devices.His research is neatly organized into consistent, well-thought-out sections.

  It is especialy helpful to see how Weiss applies traditional HCI design strategies to small computing devices. He provides ample examples throughout this well-illustrated, easy to follow volume.

  The appendix on Paper Prototyping Palm OS was particularly helpful, with its photographic illustrations and clear instructions on how to produce a paper prototype. I have looked for a long time to locate a book on paper prototyping, and this is the first one available. He covers the topic fairly, presenting its strengths and weaknesses, and gives good instruction on the technique.

  This book is easy to read, written in an instructive, helpful style like a good "hands on" textbook. There is a companion web site, handheldusability.info, which has additional materials that supplement the book nicely.

  I recommend it highly.
  
  

• Average Person
  By A28775JWGSWV80 on 2002-10-02
  I thought that this book was user friendly, easy to read and wriiten for all users including the layman. The layout is pleasant and the graphics have "eye appeal".

  We need additonal publications to ease our way into the PDA world.
  
  

• Handheld Usability: An informed approach to design
  By on 2002-10-03
  The book is deceptive. It seems to be `common sense' and perhaps to say very little, yet in fact it contains a great deal of practical information, written in a highly accessible style. This book needed to be written, and Scott Weiss has more than ably risen to the challenge.

  For me, this is not a highly technical `how to do' book, nor should the reader expect such detail from this book; that is to miss the point. It is a `how to think' book, and all the more valuable for that. The author's recommendations are clearly based on hours of observing people trying to use mobile devices. This is someone who knows. His recommendations are based firmly on direct knowledge of the real difficulties faced by users of handheld devices and of how they intuitively expect a device to behave. This book points up the fact that knowledge without understanding is not enough. Designers are challenged to understand who they are designing for. They are not necessarily designing for other experts. With this in mind, the author gives guidance on how to avoid design mistakes - to avoid reinventing the wheel. This book will tell designers things they already know (or should know), but didn't know they knew.

  It encourages designers to start the design process from the right place - don't start from what is possible but from what is desirable. This is the basis of great design.

  The chapter on how to carry out a usability test was impressive, not least for the author's sensitivity to the people he works with - the general public. For those who wish to carry out their own usability tests, read this book if only to find out how to deal with 'difficult' clients in a charming, inventive and non-offensive way. Here, the author is clearly in his element. The author here describes in detail the entire process (from choosing pariticpants to what the moderator should wear).

  For the reader who wishes to carry out usability tests for the first time, without outside help, read this chapter first and think. Then think again. This is a fine art, and the author is clearly a grand master.

  The book also contains a useful glossary and an interesting potted history of telephony and mobile devices.

  I have read the book from cover to cover with great enjoyment, and have already returned to it several times as a reference work.
  
  

• Practical coverage of handheld usability issues/tools
  By on 2002-10-04
  This book offers a clear and well structured methodology for designing user-centred handheld products.

  The book starts with initial 'grounding' for readers - covering issues including the challenges of designing for handheld products compared to desktop products.

  The sections about Information Architecture, Prototyping and Usability Testing offer excellent insights and practical methods. These sections will teach 'new-comers' to the field all they need to know - and will provide new perspectives and ideas for current practitioners of handheld usability.

  Information Architecture, Prototyping and Usability Testing are the fundamental tools in creating products that are usable - and this book covers them in-depth and with a practical style.

  This is the only book currently to offer a comprehensive approach to designing handheld usability and is a must for all those involved with handheld design.
  
  

• A Usable Book That You Can Hold In Your Hands!
  By A1S1NE457V4KRQ on 2002-10-25
  Some quick observations about the book:
  1. Excellent cognitive architecture (structure) moves readers from basic principles to core discussions and related topics smoothly.
  2. Chapters 3-6 are a "must read" for all practitioners and students of Interaction Design for device GUI/ SUI as well as pure screen UI.
  3. Content is clear, concise, and engaging.* Big points for not presenting long arduous blocks of text.
  4. Page Layout and Design are perfect. Any book on Usability has to pay close attention to the best practices and details of visual design for readability, scanning and memorability. This book succeeds where most fail.
  5. Thoroughness. You hit all the key areas- Definitions, Historical Chronology, Best Practices, Getting Started ,Cost Justification, Resources (Bibliography & Companion Website, the works!
  * Here are the few detractors and guarded recommendations
  1. In a time of concern over the use of resources- is the Hard-back format justified ?
  2. This book is so good, it deserves to be reprinted as a reference manual with a suitable package design.
  My immediate thought was to sell it as a multi-ring binder format with tab dividers for the chapter headers and the ability to remove and update the pages that discuss rapidly changing products and technologies. This evolved presentation format would make it very attractive to enterprise clients, such as schools, design teams and technology wonks like me, who like to teach "Out of Books" but can't because the common book format is a single
  user linear reading paradigm. As a case in point, I like many of the core discussions and cases in *Information Appliances and beyond* but so many HW/SW references in there are obsolete already- I've extracted 15% of the contents and have sold the book as "used". I suspect some customers would enjoy paying for annual updates to their binder- downloadable off the site, of course - I would.
  3. Missed opportunity? I've reviewed many software books for IDG in the past and the smart thing they did was to include a PP Business Reply Card for
  reviewers to comment on various aspects of the publication. I'm wondering if perhaps you included a feedback form on the site that I missed ?
  * The most important pluses are 1. Conciseness and 2. Usefulness
  * The most important minuses are 1. Lack of feedback and 2. fixed binding
  
  
• Good design resource
  By ARRSPRF6DR02E on 2002-10-03
  This book is one of the first serious works about usability for handhelds. Explanations are accompanied with interesting examples collected from the renowned author's experience in the field. I find it a valuable reference book for University students of HCI. It is also a very useful guide for usability professionals.
  
  

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