Mobile & Wireless World: Less can be more

Computerworld - PALM DESERT, Calif -- When enterprises develop mobile and wireless applications for internal or customer use, keeping the applications simple and small is usually the best route to take, according to speakers at Computerworld's Mobile & Wireless World conference this week.
Although mobile devices can mimic most of the capabilities of a desktop computer, such as handling attachments and rich-text documents, Ralph Nichols, service program manager at Pitney Bowes Inc. in Stamford, Conn., said plain text is usually a better choice for sending data. He developed a purely text-based system for the company's 3,500 field service technicians, making it both easy to use and easy to understand, yet integrated with the company's Field Service Management system from Siebel Systems Inc. in San Mateo, Calif.
To make the system easy for any technician to use, Nichols insisted it be completely plain text-based, avoiding the use of abbreviations that could lead to confusion. The result is a system based on plain-text fields and "pick lists" designed to make it easy to dispatch repair calls and report results.
The fields on each technician's mobile device provide customer name, machine type and problem, such as "machine vibration," that mirror the fields in the Siebel system. If the technician uses a part for a repair, he clicks in another field that lists repair parts, sending a message to back-end systems that automatically update parts inventories.
Any enterprise planning to deliver information to users who tote a device smaller than a laptop needs to deliver information "concisely formatted" to fit on a 3-in. screen, according to Justin Hectus, director of information at Keesal, Young & Logan, a law firm in Long Beach, Calif.
Hectus said partners at the law firm use mobile devices hooked into the company's back-end knowledge management system with text fields that are simple but powerful. They allow partners, for instance, to enter key bits of information on the fly that can be immediately shared, as well as accessed later.

Any mobile system should also be designed so that it encourages, rather than discourages, its use, Hectus said.
Travel Inc., a Duluth, Ga.-based corporate travel firm that serves 100,000 business travelers from 1,000 client companies, found keeping it simple a daunting task, according to Linwood Hayes, the company's chief technology officer. It wanted to allow its customer base to access itineraries and Department of Homeland Security alerts while on the road. But since this pool of customers used a myriad of mobile devices with multiple operating systems, Hayes was stumped about how the