Overview


We Live Usability

mobilePeople is widely known as a pacesetter in the practice of mobile search usability and user experience development. Everything we do at mobilePeople, we do for the end user – the customer. We believe that ‘the user is the message’ and that the only way to success it to build our solutions with user-oriented instead of technology-oriented methods. By driving usage of mobile search we are able to drive revenues.

We therefore engage end users throughout the design process to evaluate the desirability of new ideas and possible solutions. Our approach is a combination of both, the user-centered and the user-driven design. This means that we design our solution with our intended users in mind at all time and we make some of the users become actual members of our team. Understanding the users, their motivations, wishes, and challenges enables us to build a mobile search solution that really works from a user perspective.

To get even closer to the user, to think like the user, to act like the user, to ‘be’ the user we went one step further. We launched our own User Lab. There is no better way of understanding but seeing users live in action. Our own mobile search test site liquidTM (www.searchliquid.com) allows us to prototype and launch new features at any time with instant feedback from the market.

The mobile interface is small and makes it more complex for users to interact. Our aim is to minimise the learning curve and increase the accuracy and efficiency of task completion, without diminishing the value of useful functionality. This will ultimately lead to higher usage, higher satisfaction and increased paid transactions. Our clear focus is on developing the underlying system to respond to the user’s experience and not the other way around.

Our technical innovation is grounded in the latent needs of the end user, uncovered through observation-based research, user testing, prototyping and involvement of the user as idea generator. Our engineering depth and breadth sets us apart from other mobile search technology providers.

Our culture and team structure facilitate fresh thinking and increase speed to market. Our team simultaneously examines user needs, business requirements for success and technology factors.


We Create a ‘liquid’ Experience

Mobile search is finding its way into everyday life. Usability and user experience are the key factors which determine whether end users will widely adopt or refrain from searching via mobile. Optimal usability is part of providing for a good user experience. But user experience is more than good usability. Therefore we talk about both usability and user experience. User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction. In other words it is the total experience of using the application which is important to us when we develop new applications.

The term ‘Usability’ denotes the ease with which people can employ a particular tool in order to achieve a particular goal. In the mobile search context, usability refers to the simplicity and clarity of end user interaction.  Usability must also take into account the relevance and presentation mode of the results.  We want the user to experience the entire search process as a fluid activity – a ‘liquid’ experience.

 At the same time we want clients to have a ‘liquid’ experience too. You can instantly monetize your assets on mobile with the Ad Network that is part of our solution.


Ask the Right Questions about Usability and User Experience

In order to understand our users we need to ask the right questions. We do ask the right questions – because ultimately we understand the mobile search process. It is not only the action whereby a user types a search term into the search box on a mobile device. It is the contextual setting of the search that needs to be taken into consideration. The questions we need to ask are:

  • What is the motivation for the user to search on mobile?
  • What do users typically search on mobile?
  • How do users typically search on mobile?
  • How long do users search on mobile?
  • What can we do to reduce the click distances?
  • In which context do users search?
  • When do users search (days and time of day)?
  • Why they search and why not on mobile?
  • How often do they search for the same thing?
  • What do the users do when they find?
  • What do the users do when they do not find?
  • Who are the users, what do they know and what can they learn?
  • What do users want or need to do?
  • What is the general background of the users?
  • What is the context in which the user is searching?
  • Can users easily accomplish their intended task?
  • Can users accomplish it within the intended timeframe?
  • How much training do users need?
  • What and how many errors do users make when searching?
  • Can the user recover from errors? What do users have to do to recover from errors? Does the product help users recover from errors?

 
Our Methodology

Usability and user experience have two key components which cannot be isolated from each other: the user interface and the product features/ underlying system. By understanding and researching the interaction between product, interface and user, we can provide insight that is unattainable by traditional market research. After observing and interviewing users, we can identify needed functionality or design flaws that were not anticipated.

Multidisciplinary teams are the heart of our usability work. We believe this is how innovation happens. Our usability experts work in interdisciplinary teams as their tasks require expertise in many different domains, ranging from interaction design and visual design to human factors research and usability to product design, business factors and technology viability.

Mobile search is not a finished product. It is rather a process which needs to be optimised on an ongoing basis. Our work is based on continuous sequences of user experience and usability work. For us a focused and careful design process aiming for the best possible user experience and usability will give the best mobile search solution. It goes hand-in-hand with usability and user experience testing, which allows us to measure ease of use during the end user experiences.


Our Design Process

We apply the same proven usability and user experience methods from the physical world to our work in the mobile world — brainstorming, wireframing, design research, idea and scenario creation, prototyping, implementing, testing and evaluation.

Brainstorming
The first step in our design process is an extensive brainstorming and competitor analysis.

Wireframing
We outline the features and functionality of our mobile search solution in a document known as a wireframe. This is a screen-by-screen detail of the system, which includes notes as to how the system will operate. Flow Diagrams outline the logic and steps of the system or an individual feature.

Design Research
We base our user research on interaction design principles, by first researching and understanding user’s goals, expectations, behaviors and needs.  We then develop designs to meet and exceed these requirements for each designated user group. Using design research techniques (observations, interviews, and activities) our user experience designers investigate users and their environment in order to learn more about them and thus be better able to design for them.

Idea and Scenario Creation
From the patterns of behavior observed in the research, we create scenarios or storyboards, which imagine a future state of the product or service.

Prototyping
Prototyping is the language of innovation and a way of life at mobilePeople. The key element is the idea of iteration, where the aim is to build quick prototypes and test them with the users to make sure the proposed solution is satisfactory. Experience prototyping and user testing let us fail early to succeed sooner.

Implementation
Interaction designers need to be involved during the development to ensure that what was designed is implemented correctly. Often, changes need to be made during the building process and our interaction designers are involved with any of the on-the-fly modifications to the design.

Testing and Evaluation
Once the system is built, we perform another round of testing, for usability, user experience and errors ("bug detecting"). Our User Experience designers will be involved here as well, to make any modifications to the system that are required.


Our Usability and User Experience Testing Approach

Our usability and user experience testing approach is three-fold:

  • Our own mobile search test site searchliquid.com allows us to prototype and get instant feedback from the market.
  • A combination of qualitative research and quantitative user analysis (brainstorming, wireframing, design research, idea and scenario creation, prototyping, implementing, testing and evaluation).
  • Quantitative analysis of all searches across our solutions