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There
are several Usability issues emerging with respect to delivering
content to wireless devices. By far the most important of these
is the recommendation that User Interfaces must be consistent in
order to promote Usability. Consistency relies on standards or guidelines
and the presentation of a coherent guideline compliant application.
However, with current portal and content aggregation strategies
Usability is being sacrificed in order to facilitate time to market.
Right
now if you work at an eCommerce vendor, you are being pressurized
to start producing your website output in WML format, so that it
can be served up to wireless devices. You are probably getting perplexed
by the number and variety of these devices and the number of versions
of the WML that will be required. This initial trend for content
providers to go WML is wrong and it will lead to long term Interaction
problems. XML is the answer, content aggregators and service providers
need to do the hard work and serve the WML to the devices. Why?
There
are two key reasons why content aggregators have to do the WML presentation
and not the content providers. The first is a sound business reason
- Branding. The second is a Usability reason - Consistency. Both
reasons are mutually dependent.
The
Current Model
Diagram1.
Internet Content Providers doing the WML, Content Aggregator is
just a portal and conduit to the client wireless device
In
the current model, the Content Providers such as Amazon.com,
Weather Channel, CNN,
Reuters, etc. have to do the
hard work and configure output in WML format. This highly modal,
conversational format needs to be tailored for the many different
devices and needs to be optimised for various screen sizes or voice
browsing.
The
content aggregator is responsible for operating a portal and knowing
what device the end user is using to connect to the service. Content
aggregation services are appearing almost daily. Some are traditional
portal providers, some are new portals provided by wireless technology
companies such as Phone.com,
others by storage or database vendors such as Oracle with Portal-to-Go,
and yet others from wireless carriers such as Sprint
PCS. The aggregators offer a "myPortal" service to the end user.
They allow search and menu options, just like established internet
portals. They use location based services such as ZIP code search
very heavily. However, they are usually picking up these services
from other vendors and content aggregators such as Vicinty.com
who provide location based searching.
The
Content Aggregator is simply providing a conduit for the end user,
through to the actual service provider. This is the established
web model for internet browsing from PCs. You visit Yahoo, the portal,
then you surf off to the content providers site, which is branded
by that provider. It has its own look and feel and its own idiosyncratic
interaction. This model works in large screen, a-modal applications
such as Web Browsers on PCs. It won't work for WAP.
A
Better Model
Diagram
2. ICPs providing XML, XML delivered to the Carrier and the wireless
carrier portal providing a Presentation Layer converting it to device
specific format.
In
this second, more advanced model, the Content Providers are merely
outputing XML. They simply serve their data content in a single
XML format, over and above the current HTML for Web Browser presentation.
This XML output is aggregated by the wireless carrier who is responsible
for converting it into suitable WML for the appropriate end user
device.
This
second model provides for carrier branding and consistency in the
UI, at least within a single carrier service. However, it loads
the carrier with a big IT task massaging all that content into appropriate
WML output.
A
future Content Aggregation Model
Diagram
3. ICPs providing XML, XML being aggregated by an XML aggregator
and served up in consistent look and feel to a Carrier, but still
unbranded
XML
Aggregators are companies specialising in providing solutions for
data and content providers to get their data served as XML in an
agreed DTD. There are several of them already including Object Design
/ eXcelon, and The
eContent Company. There are new ones every week, especially
as vendors such as Iona are providing
a "XML portal in box".
In
this third model, the content providers provide XML e.g. MDML (Market
Data Markup Language) and the XML aggregator is responsible for
delivering device specific output using WML data encoded in a new
XML DTD. This will be delivered in an "un-branded" XML DTD format
which is device neutral e.g. UIML to the wireless carrier who in
turn will convert the content to WML from the interim XML, whilst
they do this they will add their own Brand and any additional Interaction
Look and Feel filtering. This will then be pushed out to the end
user's wireless device.
This
third model provides for a more optimal use of IT resources. It
reduces the load on the Wireless Carrier's IT people and provides
for a level of code re-use at the XML aggregator. The XML Aggregator
is essentially composing the Content Provider Data only once and
then serving it to multiple carriers.
Summary
The
limited modality of small wireless devices whether voice or screen
& keypad driven means that the existing Web content aggregation
and content provider models need to change. However, this won't
be happening this year. The first and second generation of wireless
services will be going to market with the original content providers
providing a large amount of the user interface WML or HDML content.
It will take some time before they get tired of this effort and
push back on the carriers to take up development of the Presentation
Layer.
The
need for Wireless Carriers to provide a branded and consistent service
will dove tail with this and the result will be Content Providers
moving to XML rather than WML. The need to "brand" and control the
end-user from the carriers perspective will have the additional
side-effect of improving usability for the end user, by simplifying
interaction and providing consistency.
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