T. Kivikangas and A. Kaarna (Finland)
Mobile phone, user interface, mobile interaction, text input
During the last few years the complexity of mobile phone services has increased notably due to rapid developments in lower level technologies. These developments are highly anticipated, but they have also affected the usability of both graphical and physical mobile phone user inter faces. In this paper we present information about strengths and weaknesses of current graphical and physical user interfaces of mobile phones. Also technologies which can be used to overcome some of the weaknesses are pre sented. The data for this study was acquired using a survey which was directed to mobile user interface and usability professionals working within the industry and the acade mia. From the results of this paper it can be seen that graphical user interfaces currently offer a relatively good basis for more complex services. Physical user interfaces can, however, be seen as a more notable bottle neck. Still most of the respondents did not consider the replacement of current mobile phone keypad and text entry mechanism during the next 10 years as likely; new mechanisms would rather support the current mechanism. In the near future mainly multimodal interaction technologies and new dis play technologies affect the usability of physical and thus also graphical user interfaces.
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