Mobile Phone Data Useablity SUCKS

What is acceptable usability for an app you develop? With my work at odeo and also with activist sites like indymedia we’ve always wanted to try and make it as easy as possible. It’s supposed to work. If a user can’t figure it out, then it’s my problem.

What’s amazing to me is that value does not exist in the telephony world. With landline phones there was QOS, Quality of Service, meaning you could pickup the phone and make a call. That part worked. Beyond that it’s painful. You’ve got IVR menu hell and confusion. Just what assumed prefix numbers are required is assumed. It’s nearly impossible to use a phone if you are in another country.

With mobile phones we are seeing new technology. There are interfaces beyond tones, a dial pad, and voice. We’ve got screens, vibration, and the ability to start building up an interface. In theory the phone should be a much more useable device.

But polls are saying that only 23% of people have ever used data services on their mobile phones. Of those people who DO try and use new services, %64 fail after one or two tries and give up.

Imagine this was another medium. If 77% of people couldn’t figure out how to login to your webmail system, or couldn’t get past the first page of a newspaper. Those who did manage to login failed to read or send email. Or failed to read other articles.

I’ve heard it be said by folks like rabble.com that there are mobile users and internet users. But think about the numbers. More people have mobile phones than access to the internet, but not by a lot. Now most folks who are on the internet are able to send email and browse websites. A lot are able to publish using systems like blogger or use social network sites like myspace. On the other hand, in the mobile world only %8 of users are actually able to figure out how to use it. That means there is almost universal failure to use a phone for anything but making calls.

There aren’t mobile users and web users. There is a small minority of people who use their mobile phone for things other than just voice conversations. That’s just an amazing failure.

One thing which i think is interesting. One reason people don’t use mobile phones, is integrated billing. On the web you aren’t accidentally going to do something which costs dozens or hundreds of dollars. On your phone that’s easy. The tactics of the ringtone industry are very similar to spammers and online porn. There is no trust or safety. Just a painful world of things which don’t work, are confusing, and may be really expensive.

That said, the ringtone ‘industry’ is accounting for more sales of music than online music sales of mp3’s. Somehow people think that’s a good thing. If we let aol control the online experience instead of the open web, they’d make lots of money too. But they are making money by killing the platform and bleeding the few users they do have.