Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
USER EXPERIENCE FINDINGS
that using NFC phones and touching tags was
easy and natural). Participants also described the
experience of touching a tag to access Internet
content to be pleasant (depending on context, 70-
80% of information tag users said that touching
was a pleasant interaction technique). The only
inconvenience reported by the users was related
to using two phones during the trial. Even when
the trial users were allowed to use the trial mobile
phone for their personal phone calls, they usually
preferred to carry both their own and trial phones
with them most of the times. This caused extra
worry, as the users were required to keep track
of and find space for two devices. Also, this fact
probably affected the user experience, as the full
possibilities of mobile convergence (i.e. combin-
ing internet access with normal functionality of
a mobile phone) were not realized. This is well
illustrated by the following user comment from
an interview concerning an information tag user
participating in the parking payment trial:
We offer here a combined presentation of the find-
ings related to the Mobile Internet user experience
revealed through the analysis of user experience
data collected in the field trials described above.
The findings are grouped into five groups discuss-
ing user experience findings related to (1) ease of
use, (2) social acceptance, (3) discoverability, (4)
content and (5) technical problems.
Ease of Use
The trials provided all users with their first experi-
ence of using NFC technology. Therefore, it is not
surprising that learning touch-based interaction
required some practice. As NFC technology is
based on short-range radio technology, the NFC
reader reads a tag not only upon physical touch,
but also from a distance of a couple of centimetres.
Therefore, the users needed some practice to find
the comfortable personal reading distance: some
users preferred to physically touch the tag, while
others preferred a short reading distance. Also,
finding the right contact point both from the phone
and from the tag, and learning the response times
required some practice. However, all users were
able to learn to use touch-based interaction with
a few repetitions. Our observations indicate that
learning NFC-enabled touch-based interaction
requires hands-on practice, but can be adopted
within a few minutes. In the information tag trial,
over 90% of the users stated that learning touch-
based interaction to access Mobile Internet content
was easy. Observation of pupils in the mobile
learning trial showed that none of the pupils had
problems in learning to access Mobile Internet
content through touch within a couple of minutes
of hands-on training.
The use of tags for accessing Mobile Inter-
net content was perceived as extremely easy in
both trials. Users reported that accessing Mobile
Internet by touching tags was very easy (92,6%
of Amazing NFC web survey respondents stated
“I would definitely use this service if it would be
made available. However, the prerequisite would
be that I would not be required to carry two mo-
bile phones with me.” (translated by the authors)
The findings related to ease of use of touch-
based internet access are summarized in table 4.
Social Acceptance
In none of the trials did the users report that
touching tags would feel socially unacceptable,
as has been indicated by some user studies on
similar user interfaces conducted earlier (Riekki
et al., 2006). However, in some cases users did
present concerns on how easy Internet access
might negatively affect social interaction. For
example, in the pub, users expressed concerns
that consuming Mobile Internet content through
a mobile device in a pub would decrease social
interaction between the pub clients, and the clients
and personnel. Pub visitors seemed to value the
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