MSearchGroove

Several surprises come out of a new report by Usable Products, a New York-based company focused on UI design and usability testing. The vast majority (79 percent) of users surveyed felt advertising-supported banners enhanced their mobile search experience. Conversely, 37 percent said paid and sponsored text-based ads “proved most detrimental to user experience.” (More details in this release.)

No further explanation on this interesting observation, but Scott Weiss, president of Usable Products, will join us next week in an exclusive podcast to outline his research and delve into more details and best practices. (His full report, Mobile Search User Experience Benchmark – which tested InfoSpace WAP, JumpTap Java (Alltel Axcess Search), Nuance Voice Control, and Yahoo Go - spans a whopping 179 pages, so there’s a lot to tell.)

The usability report also underlined the pivotal position of voice as a no-brainer interface to content and services. Scott reckoned participants would be put off by voice search – but the opposite was true. “In final usability, it performed better than expected. We were surprised that participants enjoyed voice search, and how much more they liked it than searching via phone keypad.”

Other report highlights:

• While participants averaged an impressive 88 percent success rate in submitting mobile search queries, only 53 percent found relevant results.

• Participants who found what they were looking for averaged 143 seconds to submit queries and find answers.

In a nutshell, none of the four mobile search solutions was a clear winner – and the industry has a long way to go. But the positive feedback on voice-enabled search speaks volumes about the user experience (no pun intended.) Indeed, voice is making a comeback as an interface to mobile phone functionality and core services (such as voice-to-text voice mail and mobile blogging - or moblogging – as provided by SpinVox). Forget your initial frustration with speech recognition software. This time the industry isn’t aiming for perfection; it’s delivering performance. Technologies I’ve seen and tested are able to deliver a more than satisfactory user experience and the ones in the pipeline are even better. (More on this in my report on path-breaking mobile search technologies on behalf of VisionGain.)

The report also emphasizes the need for usability improvements and more usability. Kudos to Scott’s company for identifying this knowledge gap and doing something about it.

BTW: Usable Products’ earlier report, Celltop Usability, found that the mobile widget solution offered by U.S. operator Alltel was actually harder to use than WAP. Only 7 out of 10 usability test participants were able to successfully check the weather in Miami, Florida using Celltop, while all 10 were successful using Axcess Web, a WAP portal. Furthermore, of those who succeeded, Celltop took 36 seconds (27 percent) longer than Axcess Web. (More detail in this blog post.)

• Posted in
• Multimodal Search, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising

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