[.ca] Handheld Usability (ISBN 0470844469)

You'll find better elsewhere, and nowhere.:
I am an experienced interface designer who has never designed for a handheld. So, when I faced a new project that would be deployed on a handheld, I looked here to further my education. This is the only book I could find that is specific to handhelds. When I was considering this book I read seven glowing reviews, and one total pan. The pan got it right. This book may be more useful for someone who knows very little about interaction design, usability testing, prototyping, and all that, and who isn't interested in gaining more than a superficial understanding of these topics. (If you are new to usability design, you'll find a much better place to start with Mayhew's "The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design.") If, however, you are a usability professional looking for insight on how you need to think differently now that your screen is the size of a Post-it note, wait for the next book to be written. I could have written this book, and the sum of my handheld experience is that I own a Palm and a cell phone.

Too bad:
Don't buy this book. I cannot find any usabiltiy testing technique in this book. Just explain what PDA and Palms are and all thing we already knew. Alsom appendix is too long. I don't want to know Palm history. Why author explain detail about each funtion of Palm or PDA? Save your money!

Was helpful for my final year dissertation:
This was the only book specific to handheld/mobile devices that discussed usability testing. It is divided into short, concise sections that are easy to read and understand. The sections form a good basis on how to approach designing and testing a system. It has some very good pointers. The only thing was that it was too short! The book was very, very helpful but it wasn't long enough and doesn't provide working examples. It just tells you the points that you should be considering when you are building a usable system. It doesn't go too in depth on any of the sections either.

Essential:
Zipf's law states that common words are very common, and that uncommon words are combinations of uncommon words. For example if you start typing the letters 'th' then you are probably trying to write the word 'the' rather than 'theologian'. Applying this simple insight to mobile phones gave us predictive text entry, where a small dictionary allows the phone to guess the word that the user is most likely trying to enter. For example if you press the keys '82' while entering a text message on a modern phone, the phone will predict 'the' as your word. This invention allows QWERTY-snobs like me to approach the speeds of Finnish teenagers in tapping text messages on a mobile phone. Such innovation is just amusingly clever on a PC, but on the small screens of handheld devices, it is essential. A good user interface converts a small device from a limiting gadget to a useful tool. European consumers' 'wapathetic' response to WAP-enable phones was due to over hyping by the telecommunications industry, but also poor usability of the devices. So a textbook on the topic is certainly appropriate. Handheld usability defines handheld devices as highly portable machines that can operate with no cables and can be operated within one's hand. In addition, they must either allow the addition of applications or support internet connectivity. So the book's focus includes handheld computers (such as Palm-powered machines and Pocket PCs) and mobile phones (with WAP, i-mode or email connectivity) but excludes devices such as music players. Naturally the discussion includes details of devices that are obsolete. Such is usually the case with any discussion of the details in information technology. But the principles are timeless and the practices will remain practical. Perhaps the most useful chapter is the one on prototyping. Weiss' advice is that this should be done with a pen and several pieces of paper. For example the designer would draw the first screen on the paper. The user would then say what he or she expects to see on interacting with each element of the "screen". During this feedback, the designer would draw the next screen, and again ask the user what he or she expects. This technique is of course cheap but I was surprised by its effectiveness. No doubt Weiss' clients also found it useful. If your team is designing applications for handheld devices, consider hiring Weiss. If you cannot afford that, buy his book. You cannot afford not to. Review appeared in British Medical Informatics Today, Issue 41

A thorough approach to practical mobile usability:
There's been an explosion of handheld devices in recent years. Some manufacturers are more guilty than others of creating unusable interfaces for their users. This volume from usability practitioner Scott Weiss provides a timely and hands-on guide, concentrating on helping designers address practical issues in designing for handhelds. You may find Weiss's style dry, but he's packed a lot in by cutting the prose. Handheld Usability highlights the particular challenges of designing for smaller mobile devices (he doesn't cover held devices such as tablet PCs), making a great companion to the standard works on general interaction design.