Mobile Interfaces: An End-User Perspective

September 6, 2004 (Computerworld)

Having been a user of laptop computers for more than 10 years now, I continue to be astonished at the lack of progress that has been made in making my life easier.

We've recently seen major enhancements to improving end-user applications to help us quickly and easily use them over a variety of alternative connections, whether it be remote-access service, dial-up, Digital Subscriber Line, Wi-Fi or cellular. Yet improving the user-friendliness of an application from a remote location only partly solves the frustrations of the end user.

First, they have to connect. As a typical business traveler, I've lost count of the times that I've forgotten to pack the correct telephone adapter for the hotel I am staying in or the hours spent trying to work out how to get an external line and how many commas have to go in the access number.

Then came a breakthrough: mobile GSM. Suddenly I could make a connection using a serial cable to my laptop, and I could access my company network. What a price to pay though, when the first bills started to come in!

Then along came General Packet Radio Service and Code Division Multiple Access, but again no one really thought about the end user. How do we connect? Well, let's turn the phone into a modem and use either a cable, infrared or Bluetooth to connect. Did the manufacturers of these devices ever try them out before they launched the services? I think not.

Not only could I not make or receive phone calls when connecting through these methods, but I also needed to be a technical engineer to establish the connection in the first place. Every phone came with a completely different interface, and once I got used to one and then upgraded or changed my phone, I was back to square one.

One problem is that I mainly used a cell phone when traveling, and so each time using it was like starting afresh. Could I remember how this thing worked from the last time I used it? Not likely!

A few user-interface software companies started to emerge, but again they were all developing interfaces based on using a phone as a modem, and when I'm traveling the phone is constantly in use. In the past couple of years, we have started to see operators and manufacturers recognize this problem. They have launched products based on a PC card, which solves the problem of tying up the phone. But they have all produced card-specific user interfaces, which means that I can't use the same connection manager to connect to my Wi-Fi card or my dial-up service, so I'm left with running a different connection manager for each of the modems that I have on my laptop.


When I want to connect to my company network or the Internet when working remotely, I simply want to connect to an application to do some work. The connection process is irrelevant to me. When I click on an application, whether it's e-mail, the Web, CRM or ERP, why isn't it possible for my laptop to work out what connections are possible and based on a profile simply connect to that application?

Enterprise wireless technology is here. It's been here for a while now, and it's not going away. Given the obvious truth of this statement, it may seem surprising that companies on the whole have failed to embrace wireless technologies in more than a cursory fashion. And this is despite the fact that productivity, total cost of ownership and return-on-investment measures are becoming more and more compelling.

Unfamiliarity with any new technology breeds fear among IT managers. And with good reason. Corporate assets worth millions or billions of dollars are at stake. But scare stories such as the cracking of wireless Wired Equivalent Privacy encryption date to early 2001 and are no longer representative of the state of play. And knowledge of new platforms and radio technologies, while not currently in the armory of many IT professionals, can't be avoided forever. Tech-savvy CEOs and other executives are hardly able to put off the encroaching wireless world as they are bombarded by images of and experiences with the technology on their business travels.

Right now, proponents of wireless technology are a little like the great explorers of old returning from distant lands with new tales of weird beasts and people with strange customs. Without the evidence of their own eyes, those left behind may be right to remain skeptical. By providing users with a more intuitive interface that combines connectivity with access to applications, they might start to see that evidence.

It's up to the carriers, service providers and enterprise IT departments to make this happen by adopting white-label, simple, intuitive and effective user interfaces that they can brand themselves. There are companies out there that can create these, and a few forward-looking carriers and enterprises have begun to explore relationships with these companies. It's none too soon.