Designing Mobile User Experiences

Insights & paradigms from Southern Africa

By Helga Letowt-VorbekJune 2012

Our team:8 consultants

Key services:Product strategyProduct visualisationUser experience designUsability research

Key specialisation:Mobile content channels

Mantaray is a User Experience Consultancy based in Johannesburg.

Our company focus on the creation of digital products that meet the customers' needs and objectives for the African market.

South Africa at a glance

Population 50.6 millionIllegal immigrants 5 millionTax payers 6 million

Official languages 11 Unofficial 8

Most of the population speak more than one language. Many speak more than 2 languages.

Gauteng contribute 33.9% of the South African GDP and 10% of Africa’s GDP.

The computer is not the 1st learnt-behaviour when browsing the internet.

The 1st learnt-behaviour with internet browsing is on the mobile phone.

5 million

23 million

The mobile phone has become essential not only for making and receiving calls, but also for texting and gaining internet access with most users being feature-orientated.

The adoption and consumption of content via mobile is prolific.

Email Entertainment Games

Twitter NewsMxit Facebook

Music

MMS Sport Fun

Banking

Youtube

Radio

Reference

Social networking sites has seen a significant increase throughout Africa in the last year.

Mxit has enabled customers to be in touch constantly with friends and family sharing and chatting in a very inexpensive manner.

This had led to various methods to enable banking with a very strong focus on the mobile platform:

• Mobile money wallets: sending money to other mobiles (MTN Mobile Money, M-pesa Kenya) – unbanked to unbanked

• Sending money via the mobile to various vendors: ATMs, Kiosks, shops and agents (Absa CashSend, M-pesa South Africa, FNB Send Money) – banked to unbanked

Mobile banking takes place on various channels not just Mobile Internet with USSD and WIG playing a significant role.

Africa as a whole has 230 million unbanked households, roughly 75% of the adult population. In South Africa 60% of the population is unbanked.

We have 4 content channels on the mobile phone:

WIG - menu on the phone

USSD –short code menu

Mobile internet& Apps*123#

Currently they use combination of platforms to perform functions:

Mobile Internet & USSD Mobile Internet & WIG Mobile Internet & WEB combinations plays

a insignificant role within the mass market sector.

46%

29%

23%

2%

Mobile Internet USSDWIG WEB

Most customers have learnt to consume content on one of the lesser channels first before migrating to Mobile Internet.

USSD: 4 years or moreWIG: 4 years or moreMobile internet: 0-4 years

Many customers believe they are paying per minute and do not understand the concept of paying per MB.

$$$ MB

Page size is very important to ensure pages load faster.

Competitor with quicker site could win over customers as they are saving their customers money.

Customers are very navigation-orientated they tend to read only copy that is underlined and selectable.

A site’s relevance and offering is judged by navigation offered.

If the navigation is limited or the names are ambiguous they may believe you do not offer enough choice, similarly if you offer too much it may not be read at all and may be too busy.

Most customers skim-read a page performing word-form recognition on links.

The paradigm of being above the fold is not that important on Mobile Internet.

You do however need to entice them to scroll, so use the top of the pages wisely!

Customers tend to move up and down the page very quickly and may go up and down twice or three times before selecting an option.

Some customers scroll down to the bottom of the page very fast and then move up the page performing word-form recognition on the up motion only.

If they find words that meet their need they will investigate the page and site in more detail.

Only when banner ads have a “click here” within the image, users noted that it was a promotion.

All customers only wanted to see imagery that’s relevant to the area they were investigating.

Well placed imagery that aid recognition has been found very effective.

The use of text within images must be kept to a minimum as rendering of these images may impact the legibility of the text.

The banner blindness paradigm is not prevalent on Mobile Internet.

Careful with banner placement; if you sell unrelated info on a page, not only will they not click on it the info on the page becomes questionable.

Images are seen as images something to make the site pretty, even banner ads are seen as images and not a link or something to click on.

This is down to mobiles being such small devices and the keypads requiring the customer to be quite dexterous.

Literacy also plays a part; they may speak and read English easily enough, writing is still a hurdle they avoid.

Rendering of entry fields on some phones is an issue as the field is much smaller than the content required.

We find many use txt language in entry fields or enter word that look similar to what they looking for.

Most customers prefer to use the navigation options instead of the search field.

It is imperative that you default the keypad to alpha or numeric to ease entry, else they will avoid entering.

By testing in the location where site will be launched you gain an understanding of the cultural preferences and customer needs.

You will gain a deeper understanding of word-form recognition.

You will gain a deeper insight into learnt-behaviours; what they have learnt from the previous channel they have used and may still be using.

You will gain insight on what and how customers consume content on their phones.

All of the above mentioned paradigms and insights were gained from performing usability tests on customers using their own phone

All of which will enable you to design a better product that your customer will need and love.

Thank you

Follow me: @hvorbek or @MantarayUX