Media: IBM looks at the Fully Mobile Wirelessly Connected World.

Lada Gorlenko and Roland Merrick of IBM in Warwick, UK, share their thoughts in "No wires attached: Usability challenges in the connected mobile world", a paper in the IBM Systems Journal that addresses the usability of the fully mobile wirelessly connected (FMWC) world. (It's not the latest issue, but the paper has lost none of its timeliness in the last year.)

'Mobile computing platforms combining small, lightweight, low-power devices with wireless network connectivity enable the performance of familiar tasks in new environments and create opportunities for novel interactions. Since mobility imposes significant cognitive and ergonomic constraints affecting device and application usability, ease of use is central to devices in the fully mobile wirelessly connected (FMWC) world.'

In this paper, they consider mobility as an attribute both of the computer and the user. They seek to explain the differences between transportable and fully mobile devices, and contrast applications that are essentially FMWC applications, those that can be adapted to the FMWC context, and those that are unsuitable for it.

They discuss the unique challenges to usability for mobile users and devices and their interaction, and point out the increasingly critical role of usability in the mobile environment.

Associated Link: IBM: No wires attached: Usability challenges in the connected mobile world

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