Software Engineering for Internet Applications - Student Community

9.14 The FutureIn most countries the mobile Internet has not lived up to expectationsof wide success. The standout exception is the i-mode system, whichhas become the dominant means of Internet access in Japan. Wethink that two reasons explain i-mode's relative success: always-onconnectivity and revenue opportunities for publishers.Western mobile Internet systems typically involved a dialup andsignon delay of as long as 2 minutes for the first page; with thealways-on i-mode system the user gets consistent performance andrelatively quick results for initial requests. Early Western mobilesystems charged per minute, which was painful for users who typedtext slowly on numeric keypads and received pages at 9800 baud.Always-on systems such as i-mode tend to charge a per-byte or flatper-month rate for access, which greatly reduces the possibility of ahuge end-of-month bill.In most mobile Internet systems, the phone company decides whatsites are going to be interesting to users and places them on a set ofdefault bookmarks. The phone company often charges the sitepublisher to be promoted to its customers. The result? Every earlysystem in the US made it easy to connect to amazon.com and shopfor books, which turned out not to be a popular activity. DoCoMo, theJapanese company that runs the i-mode service, took a differentapproach. DoCoMo decided that they weren't creative enough tofigure out what consumers would want out of the mobile Internet.They therefore came up with a system in which content providers aremore or less equally available. Content providers can earn revenuevia banner advertisements or by charging for premium content. Whena provider wants to charge, DoCoMo handles the payment, taking a5-9% commission.The combination of always-on and non-starvation for contentproviders created an explosion of creativity on the part of publishers.The most popular services seem to those that connect people withother people, rather than business-to-consumer amazon.com-styleecommerce.Is there hope that the mobile Internet will eventually become aspopular as i-mode is in Japan? The first ray of hope was provided byGeneral Packet Radio Service (GPRS). GPRS takes advantage oflulls in voice traffic within a cell to deliver a theoretically maximum of160Kbits/second via unused frequencies at any particular moment.GPRS requires new handsets that are equipped to listenSource: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html, Jakob Nielsen8.11 Exercise 6: The Usability TestAn ideal usability test involves the followingelements:1. a test subject whose experience withcomputers and Internet is comparable towhat you expect for your average user2. a set of tasks that you want the subject totry to accomplish3. a quiet comfortable environment for thetest subject4. no assistance from the product developers5. observation of the test subject through aone-way mirror6. videotaping of the test subject'sexperience for later studyA scientist issomeone whomeasures herresults againstNature. Anengineer issomeone whomeasures herresults againsthuman needs. Acomputerscientist issomeone whodoesn't measurehis results.-- usConduct a usability test of your discussion forum software,incorporating elements 1-4 from the list above. You should find atleast 4 testers from among your friends--do not pick anyone who istaking this course (classmates will have too many subconsciousexpectations). Run your usability test subjects in series, one after theother, with your entire team observing and writing down what184165