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To: Mephisto who wrote (9134)	12/27/2000 1:17:44 PM
From: Kenneth E. Phillipps	Respond to of 14638

Why WAP is whack Web phones are still hard to use ANALYSIS By Elliot Zaret © MSNBC “The users’ overall impressions of WAP were largely negative,” according to the report. “Accounts were dominated by expressions of frustration, of long journeys leading to dead ends and the poor overall quality of data. Fundamentally, connection times were too slow and the data quality too variable for the users to derive much pleasure from WAP.” And Nielsen and Ramsay found that the problems weren’t related to the phones themselves - which they concluded were well designed. The problems, they said were inherent in the service. “One thing that our study did not find was a series of horrible usability catastrophes in the WAP handsets themselves,” according to the 90-page report. “Too bad. It would have been wonderful to simply report that Ericsson and Nokia were guilty of some design stupidity and conclude that WAP would work as soon as the companies started shipping redesigned phones. In fact, people had no trouble using the phone. This means that the usability problems we found were inherent to WAP and cannot be fixed with a new phone design.” To put it more succinctly: WAP is whack. “I’ve got two wireless phones myself and I rarely can get what I want,” said Safa Rashtchy, Internet analyst with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. Rashtchy, who covers many companies that are trying to profit off the expected wireless Web boom, said the main problem facing the industry is the horrible interface. Rashtchy found it took six clicks to find a stock quote and 12 to get the location of a Starbucks - if you knew where to click and didn’t have to fumble around looking through the menus. And every click risks getting a connection error or a long wait. The problem is exacerbated by the tiny screens, which usually can only display three or four lines of info. On the Web, users can get past poor design because the screens are big and it’s easy to scroll. Not so with WAP phones. These inconveniences can have serious repercussions for the companies investing in wireless Internet technology. Rashtchy said the critical mass for WAP to take off in the U.S. would be reached at 5 million users. The total subscriber base is currently estimated to be between 1.5 and 2 million. Only the most optimistic estimates project the user base to reach the critical mass by the end of 2001, and Rashtchy said there’s only a “50-50 chance” that it will. Rashtchy also thinks that content and other media companies should wait on the sidelines until WAP really catches on, before devoting resources to the wireless Web. “I don’t think there’s a big rush yet - I don’t think they will be losing much (waiting),” Rashtchy said. The Nielsen Norman report came to the same conclusion: “Mobile Internet will not work during 2001, but in subsequent years it should be big. We thus recommend that companies sit out the current generation of WAP but continue planning their mobile Internet strategy. Don’t waste your money on fielding services that nobody will use.” And before rushing in, the report recommends companies really take the time to study what works and doesn’t work on the devices. “Very precise task analysis will be necessary for WAP services to succeed,” the report said. “Unfortunately, task analysis is a black art as far as most people are concerned and it is the least appreciated part of usability engineering. The traditional Web also suffers from poor task analysis, with many sites structured according to how company management thinks rather than how users typically approach their tasks.” Nielsen and Ramsay said these studies - or the lack of them - will determine the success or failure of WAP. “Although poor task support is a serious usability problem for a big-screen website, it is a usability catastrophe for a small-screen WAP service. With the big screen, users can see many more alternative options, and thus it is not so critical that designers pick exactly the right ones at each step. For WAP: Be right or be dead.” msnbc.com