Proceedings of 8th European Assembly on telework (Telework2001)

90Awareness: For fluent distributed work it is important to know about others: are the colleaguesaccessible right now and if not when, which kind <strong>of</strong> communication mode the customers prefer,etc. Wireless Village is an industry consortium developing an industry standard for compatibleinstant messaging and presence services between wired and wireless terminals. (www.wirelessvillage.org)GPRS, 3G, SynchML, Bluetooth, WAP, and Wireless Village - it really seems that the progressin communication technology is tackling the challenge <strong>of</strong> distributed mobile work. The promises<strong>of</strong> telework can eventually come true: ecological advantages by reduced commuting, humanadvantages by allowing more liberties to match work with personal life, regional advantages bykeeping more peripheral areas populated.Is there still a problem? There is. From user interface design angle the novel promises seemto turn into a ‘wireless usability threshold’. People who have been completely capable <strong>of</strong>managing even complicated terminal based applications seem to fail with the complexity caused bywireless connectivity and service based solutions. Or when they succeed, the ratio <strong>of</strong> technologymanagement vs. productive work may turn out to be too inefficient. The following kind <strong>of</strong>comments can be read from the usability test report summaries. X in the sentences can be replacedby any <strong>of</strong> the techniques listed above.“ X adds a layer <strong>of</strong> hassle and complexity which made many respondents prefer to go back to using…[present solution] rather than X… Managing multiple X … should be <strong>of</strong>fered as an option onlyto very advanced users.”Why are these new technologies so difficult to use? Why are we facing the complexity thresholdright now? At least a couple <strong>of</strong> reasons can be recognized:User interface density. The user interfaces for the second generation <strong>of</strong> communication products,i.e. GSM terminals, have been designed based on a set <strong>of</strong> functions that were considered enoughand were mature for implementation for a couple <strong>of</strong> years ago in mid 90’s. Now the same userinterfaces are being packed with new and new features. If the user interface solutions are flexibleenough, the novelties can be realized in a manner that is reasonably usable, if we look at thenovelties in isolation. However, simply the amount <strong>of</strong> new features adds additional layers to theuser interface. There will be new menus, new settings, etc. The right ones will be increasinglydifficult to find. The overall complexity increases, the old user interfaces grow too dense.Off-line configuring. Many <strong>of</strong> the new systems aim at automated services and seamless userexperience. In basic use, when everything is set as it needs to be, there should be no problems.But, there is the level <strong>of</strong> configuring the services. The services - and their usage scenarios -are unknown to the manufacturers and they find it difficult to define the appropriate systembehavior. Thus, they <strong>of</strong>ten prefer to leave the decision to the end-user. A priori <strong>of</strong>f-line settings aretypically more difficult for the user to manage than real-time control, where the response from thesystem is immediate perceivable. A classical example <strong>of</strong> the difficulty with the <strong>of</strong>f-line use is theprogramming <strong>of</strong> a VCR. The feedback the system gives (if there is any) is artificial. It is far moredifficult to interpret than interpreting the sound when the cassette really starts to wind.