iPhone Usability as Perceived by Novice Users

Evanthia Faliagka

1,2

, Maria Rigou

1,2

and Spiros Sirmakessis

Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, Rio Campus, 26500 Patras, Greece

Department of Applied Informatics in Management & Finance, Technological Institution of Messologhi

Nea Ktiria, 30200 Messolonghi, Greece

Keywords: iPhone, Usability, Evaluation, User Testing.

Abstract: Gestural devices have introduced new challenges to the field of user interaction. iPhone, despite the high

intuitiveness of its gestural interface, raises a number of minor and major usability issues that due to its

widespread usage affect a large user population. This study examines the usability of five preinstalled

iPhone applications (Contacts, Clock, Camera, Calendar and Safari) by conducting testing sessions with

users that have no (or limited) prior experience with iPhone, iPad and iPod and can thus be considered

novices. The results of the usability assessment confirm the list of potential usability issues documented in

related sources and stress the crucial importance of gestural interaction devices conforming to established

fundamental principles of usable interaction design.

1 INTRODUCTION

Apple iOS features among the three mobile OSs that

hold roughly 66 percent of the overall market share

(with the other two being Google Android and

Windows Phone 7) (Ziegler, 2011) and as foreseen

(IDC, 2011) by 2015 the collective worldwide

market share of these three OSs is projected to grow

to more than 80%. Accordingly, the development

and sale of native mobile applications (i.e.

applications that users can download and install

directly to their phones) is growing exponentially

and mobile application downloads across all devices

are expected to reach 50 billion by 2012, a sharp

increase from the 7 billion such downloads in 2009

(Schroeder, 2010). iPhone native applications

available at App Store are currently over 500,000

(Apple App Store, n.d.) in categories ranging from

games, lifestyle or social networking to education. In

the 3rd quarter of 2011 Apple sold 17 million

iPhones a number that corresponds to an annual

increase of 21% (Cozza et al., 2011) while iPhone

4S was launched on October 14th, 2011 and Apple

announced having sold over four million iPhone 4S

devices within the following three days (Apple Press

Info, 2011).

In this study we investigate a set of potential

usability problems (as documented in the related

literature) of five iPhone preinstalled applications

namely Contacts, Clock, Camera, Calendar and

Safari. The investigation has the form of a series of

usability testing sessions with users that have no (or

limited) prior experience with iPhone, iPad and

iPod, so that there is no learning effect accounted for

in the test results. Usability is thus assessed on the

basis of how well the applications support and guide

the users in accomplishing the predefined scenarios

addressing typical everyday tasks of a smartphone

owner.

2 USABILITY ISSUES

In this study the focus is set on identifying potential

usability issues in a set of typical tasks executed by

iPhone users and involve the Contacts application,

the Clock, the Camera, the Calendar and Safari.

These built-in applications face (probably among

other) the following problems:

1. Users usually look for a physical button for

shooting a photo in the Camera application

2. In the Calendar application users swipe

horizontally to get to the next/previous month.

3. Users cannot easily find the alarm editing feature

in the Clock application. Instead, they are pressing

on the non-editable time display field.

4. In the Calendar application the next month

112

Faliagka E., Rigou M. and Sirmakessis S..

iPhone Usability as Perceived by Novice Users.

DOI: 10.5220/0003992901120115

In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2012), pages 112-115

ISBN: 978-989-8565-12-9

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

button and the (+) button for adding new events are

side-by-side, resulting in accidental activations

5. In the Clock and the Calendar spinning dials for

setting the time usually cause problems to users as

they tend to start sliding their finger outside the

active dial areas.

6. In the Safari the Go button and "backspace"

arrow are also placed side-by-side resulting in

frequent accidental activations.

7. In the Safari, the button indicated by the arrow in

Figure 1 confuses users as to its operation (some

think it is for opening a new web page or zooming

but it is actually for bookmarking tasks and for

sending the current link by email).

8. Last but not least, a feature that causes confusion

to users is the way to delete an item from a list.

The present study investigates whether these

problems are actually reported during user testing,

which is their severity and whether there are

additional usability issues to report, that were raised

during the execution of the trivial usage scenarios of

the five aforementioned applications.



3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Experiment Design

Experiments were conducted from September 7

, 2011 at the specially equipped e-Business Lab

at the Technological Institution of Messolonghi,

Greece. Participants were given iPhone 4 devices, as

well as a printed sheet with the scenarios to execute

and were asked to think aloud during the tests while

they were video-recorded. Upon completion of the

scenarios they were asked to fill-in an online

questionnaire.

3.2 User Sample

The user sample was selected based on the level of

their familiarity with the iPhone, iPad and iPod

devices, so as to investigate the usability of the

devices for users who have no (or very limited) prior

usage experience. Although both genders are well

represented, male users slightly outnumber female

users, with the sample consisting of 34 men and 26

women aging from 19 to 30 years old. Most of the

participants (summing up to 93%) were either

undergraduate students (55%) or had a university

degree (38%). All users had used mobile phones for

more than five years but the majority (73%) had

never used an iPhone before.

Figure 1: This Safari button (that opens the menu to the

right) causes confusion concerning its meaning.

3.3 Scenarios

Users were asked to complete five scenarios, each

one focusing on a specific iPhone application

(namely Contacts, Clock, Camera, Calendar and

Safari). The participants completed 4.2 out of 5

scenarios on average (i.e. 84%). Table 1 contains the

scenarios used to test the iPhone usability and the

percentage of users who completed each scenario

without encountering difficulties.

Table 1: Scenarios for user testing.

Application Scenarios Description Freq

Contacts Create a new contact named “John

Doe” and telephone number

“123456789”

91.3%

Change the contact name to “Mac

Grow”

82.6%

Delete the contact 68.1%

Alarm setting

(Clock)

Set up an alarm for tomorrow

morning at 10:00 a.m.

90.1%

Change the time to 11:00 a.m. 80.1%

Cancel the alarm 31.8%

Photo taking

(Camera)

Take a photo 72.7%

Go to the photo gallery(?) to see

the photo you just took

91.3%

Delete the photo you took 100%

Task setting

(Calendar)

Create a new task with description

“exams” for the 15th of September

at 15:00 p.m.

100%

Create a new task with description

“lab” for the 15th of October at

13:00 p.m.

90.1%

Change the time of your second

task (“lab”) to 15:00 p.m.

86.3%

Delete both tasks 95.5%

Web

browsing

(Safari)

Open the Safari application and

navigate to www.in.gr

100%

Open another Safari window and

navigate to www.google.com

81.8%

Go back to the Safari window

displaying page www.in.gr

77.2%

Store www.in.gr as a bookmark

named “in.gr”

59.1%

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4 RESULTS

In this section we analyze the collected data in terms

of individual tasks. All participants completed

successfully (even if they faced some problems) the

Camera and Contacts scenarios, while only 36% of

users came across difficulties and didn’t manage to

complete the Clock scenario. Some users (14% and

18% respectively) also failed to complete the

Calendar and Safari scenarios but their number is

not as high as the number of those who failed the

Clock scenario.

Figure 2 shows the average time per scenario.

Although the Clock scenario had the smallest

success rate, its average completion time was low

due to the fact that many candidates quit the scenario

when they had difficulties. Unlike difficulties of

type b, the difficulties of type a did not affect the

success rates but both types of difficulties imposed a

penalty to the completion time in Figure 2. Type c

problems did not affect the success rates but in this

case also a penalty has been imposed to the

completion time. From a usability perspective, type

c problems may not have the severity of type b but

reside to a tricky ‘grey area’ of usability problems

that usually remain undiscovered and thus

unresolved.

A thorough examination of the videos led to the

identification of the most frequent mistakes made by

users in each scenario with the results summarized

in Table 2. In an effort to categorize the severity of

difficulties recorded, one ends up with three such

types: (a) the difficulties users managed to

overcome, (b) the difficulties users failed to

overcome, and (c) the errors they made but did not

realize making.

Figure 2: Average time per scenario.

Specifically, even though 13.6% of users didn’t

edit correctly a contact at their first attempt and

22.7% didn’t delete the contact correctly, all users

finally completed the Contacts scenario. On the

contrary, the difficulties users came across in the

Clock scenario resulted in 36% failure. This is due

to the fact that many users (22.7%) couldn’t edit the

alarm, as they were clicking on the alarm they

wanted to edit and finally gave up. In this failure rate

also contributed the 18.1% of the users who didn’t

delete the alarm but deactivated it without realizing

the difference. The same happened in the Camera

scenario where 22.7%

of the users took more than

one picture without realizing it.

The difficulties users had in the Calendar

scenario didn’t significantly affect its successful

completion but users considered this scenario to be

difficult (Figure 3). In the Safari scenario, 31.8%

was very confused with the bookmarks button

resulting in an 18% failure percentage.

Table 2: Frequency of errors observed.

Contacts Freq.

To edit a contact they tapped on the contact 13.6%

To delete a contact they deleted the contact

name using the keyboard

22.7%

Alarm setting (Clock) Freq.

To edit an alarm they tapped on the alarm 22.7%

They didn’t delete the alarm, they deactivated

18.1%

Photo taking (Camera) Freq.

They took more than one picture without

realizing it

22.7%

Task setting (Calendar) Freq.

They didn’t use the month view 18.1%

To set the hour they clicked on the hour

option instead of using the spinning dials

13.6%

They didn’t add a second appointment but

edited the existing one

13.6%

Web browsing (Safari) Freq.

They didn’t open an additional webpage but

edited the address field of the existing one

18.1%

They had difficulties with the bookmarks

button (did not find it easily)

31.8%

Returning to the numbered list of potential

usability issues recorded prior to this study (in

section 2), it is important to notice that they were all

confirmed. More specifically, issue no. 1 has been

confirmed by the 6.7% of users (even though all

managed to locate the non-physical button), issue

no. 2 by 10% of users, issue no. 3 by the 22.7% of

users, issue no. 4 by 8.3%, issue no. 5 by 18.3%,

issue no. 6 by 20%, issue no. 7 by 31.8% and issue

no. 8 by 22.7% for the Contacts application and by

0.00

50.00

100.00

150.00

200.00

250.00

300.00

averagetime(sec)

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18.1% for the Clock.

The remarks collected by the questionnaire were

also quite significant. Users were asked to evaluate

the difficulty of each scenario. All questions were

scalar with 5 possible answers each, ranging from

“very easy” to “very difficult”. In Figure 3, we can

see the evaluation of users for each scenario, as well

as the overall evaluation (i.e. for all scenarios). It is

easy to observe that the Photos and the Contacts

scenarios were evaluated as the easiest ones, while

the Safari scenario considered the most difficult.

Figure 3: Users’ evaluation for each scenario.

5 DISCUSSION AND

CONCLUSIONS

This study investigated the case of iPhone, one of

the most widespread gestural devices currently

marketed, and focused on identifying potential

usability problems in five iPhone preinstalled

applications namely Contacts, Clock, Camera,

Calendar and Safari. The investigation had the form

of a series of usability testing sessions with users

that had no (or limited) prior experience with

iPhone, iPad and iPod, so that there is no learning

effect accounted for in the test results. Usability was

thus assessed on the basis of how well the

applications support and guide the users in

accomplishing the predefined scenarios

corresponding to typical everyday tasks of a

smartphone owner.

Based on a set of usability issues reported in the

literature and referenced in numerous online sources,

the study investigated whether these problems

actually occurred during user testing, which was

their severity and whether the tests revealed

additional issues. Overall, the study confirmed the

list of potential usability issues and also the crucial

importance of conforming to established

fundamental principles of usable interaction design.

REFERENCES

Apple App Store, n.d. Apple – iPhone 4S – Find more

than 500,000 apps on the App Store. Available online

[http://www.apple.com/iphone/built-in-apps/app-

store.html, retrieved: 15/12/2011].

Apple Press Info, 2011. iPhone 4S First Weekend Sales

Top Four Million, 17 October 2011 [Online] Available

at: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/17iPhone

-4S-First-Weekend-Sales-Top-Four-Million.html,

[Accessed 14 December 2011].

Cozza, R., Milanesi, C., Zimmermann, A., Glenn, D.,

Gupta, A., De La Vergne, H. J., Lu, C. K., Sato, A.,

Nguyen, T. H., Shen, S., 2011. Market Share: Mobile

Communication Devices by Region and Country,

3Q11, Gartner, 14 November 2011. Available online

[http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=client

FriendlyUrl&id=1847315, retrieved: 14/12/2011].

IDC, “IDC Forecasts Worldwide Smartphone Market to

Grow by Nearly 50 Percent in 2011”, 29 March 2011.

Available online [www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?

containerId=prUS22762811, retrieved: 10/12/2011].

Schroeder, S., 2010. Mobile App Market to Surge to $17.5

Billion by 2012, 17 March 2010. Available

online:[http://mashable.com/2010/03/17/mobile-app-

market-17-5-billion/, retrieved: 11/12/2011].

Ziegler, C., 2011. Visualized: US Smartphone Market

Share, by Manufacturer and Platform, Made Pretty, 3

March 2011. Available online [www.engadget.com

/2011/03/03/visualized-us-smartphonemarket-share-

by-manufacturer-and-plat/, retrieved: 10/12/2011].

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Calendar Clock Photos contacts browser overall

verydifficult

difficult

medium

easy

veryeasy

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