Usable Products Company - Mobile Usability, Delivered

Mobile Usability History
Usable Products Company was an ease-of-use agency focused on usability research and design for handheld products. Our work spanned phones, consumer electronics, and desktop web sites. Usable Products was founded by Scott Weiss in 1996 and closed in 2008.

Scott Weiss, the agency's founder, now works for Human Factors International in London as the Executive Director for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Future Thinking: Desire
These images are from a design exploration Usable Products completed in August, 2007. Our goal was to create desire.



Syndicated Research In addition to client-commissioned research and design projects, Usable Products conducts independent user experience studies. Our research spans benchmarks, usability, behavior and attitudes, and video retrospectives.		Mobile Search Benchmark August, 2007: Mobile Search enables handset users to find everything from global news to local services, anywhere. In Q3, 2007, Usable Products conducted 80 hour-long interviews for a user experience benchmark spanning 4 mobile search solution sets: Alltel's Axcess (JumpTap), Infospace’s WAP search, Yahoo! Go, and Nuance's Voice Control. Our focus was on usability of the search solutions and consumer response to monetization strategies. Read more > Read the press release >

		Celltop Usability Worse than WAP July, 2007: Usable Products Company found that Celltop was harder to use than WAP. Alltel’s Celltop is a mobile widget solution, which Usable Products studied alongside Axcess Web, a WAP portal, on LG’s AX8600 mobile telephone. The study includes background information on seven mobile widget solutions, and a comprehensive usability analysis from ten hour-long usability interviews. Read more >

Handheld Usability by Scott Weiss, is the pioneering text covering mobile telephone user interface design. Read the blog > Find out more about the book >

News

MobileTechNews: Study Reveals How Advertising and Voice Improve Mobile Search Experience more >
Fierce Wireless: Celltop Usability Worse Than WAP more >
Harvard Business Review: Defining Feature Fatigue (Requires paid subscription) more >
The Independent: The Ten Best Mobiles Ever Made (via Ezilon) more >
Interactions Magazine: An Alternative Business Model for Addressing Usability: Subscription Research for the Telecom Industry (PDF) more >