Different mobile user experiences of twitter on the iPhone

This user experience research evaluates three different methods of interacting with the micro-blogging service Twitter (twitter.com).  By choosing a standard mobile platform, interaction method, and a relatively simple service, we remove many of the variables of mobile user experience and focus on investigating the differences in user experience of Twitter.  Specifically we will be comparing Twitter via the mobile web and two different native iPhone applications.

This research involves a usability review of a number of Twitter applications for iPhone, and usability testing of the applications and mobile web application.  Participants are Twitter members who use an iPhone but are new to the specific application.

A few of the core features of Twitter include: post a micro-blog, view a list of posts you have subscribed to, send direct private messages, and request permission to subscribe to a specific users posts.  Our research compares the user experience of these and other features.

Although there is a finite number of features made available by Twitter, there seems to be an ever increasing number of different ways of interface & interaction design. There are over 20 iPhone Twitter applications in the iPhone Application store, ranging from basic functionality, to analytics and an attempt to create a user interface for cats.

This presentation will talk through our aims, method and research findings, which are a little longer than 140 characters…

Presentation audio