Mobile Media Download Usability — The Experience Running A Large-Scale Comparative Study

Global revenues for mobile phone media downloads will exceed $5 billion in 2005, and yet the shopping and download process is difficult and prone to failure. Usable Products Company conducted 200 usability interviews spanning ten mobile telephones in 2004-2005. We studied usability of the shopping, download, and installation process for ring tones, wallpapers, and games on mobile telephones. This talk will cover the planning and operations issues for our large-scale comparative usability study, the metrics used, and the challenges we faced. A subset of the results will be presented, along with some best practices for mobile media download service design.