Browsing and Navigating Web Applications with Mobile Devices

Hyvärinen, Tuuli Päivikki Browsing and navigating web applications with mobile devices Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2004 115 p. Master’s thesis This master’s thesis considers browsing and navigating web applications with mobile devices. The thesis has been commissioned and sponsored by Nordea Bank Finland. It is a theory-testing research consisting of two parts. The first part forms the frame of reference for the empirical theory-testing experiment. By reading the conceptualtheoretical background research one can form a general picture of the current mobile browsers and the recent research considering browsers and navigation structures in mobile environment. The second part of this thesis describes the controlled laboratory experiment, which is comparative usability testing of two different mobile banking applications. The purpose was to find out, whether the placing of the links has an impact on the usability of mobile web applications. Also, the effects of the possibility to cross-navigate were tested. When analysing the results it was noticed that the placing of the links must aim to clearness of the layout. The application, where a navigation bar was placed on the upper edge of every page, suffered from severe usability problems. The other application, where navigation happened through separate menu-pages where links were placed beneath each other, was preferable in all evaluated aspects: learnability, errors, efficiency of use, subjective satisfaction and the user’s awareness of her/his current position in the application. The results are exploitable in mobile web application development in general, and especially when considering the further development of Nordea Bank’s mobile banking applications. Nokia, as well, benefits from the results, when generating their guidelines for mobile application developers. KEY TERMS: navigation, usability, mobile device, mobile browser, mobile web application