Ten usability principles for the development of effective WAP and m‐commerce services

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) usability study, which consists of a survey, an evaluation of two UK WAP portals and an experiment that was carried out between November 2001 and February 2002. A number of usability issues, which prevented the users from completing basic and common tasks, were identified. For instance, 70 per cent of the users were not successful in searching for a textbook on the Amazon.co.uk WAP site. Additionally, even experienced users were not immune to these problems. The general conclusion of the study is that WAP usability remains poor. We argue that this could have a negative effect on the future of WAP and m‐commerce. Finally, we propose a set of ten principles, which are based on the findings of this study, and we believe will aid towards the development of more usable WAP and m‐commerce services.