Mobile search with text messages: designing the user experience for google SMS

ABSTRACT

SMS (Short Message Service) is already a hugely popular communication technology for mobile phones, with users sending billions of text messages to each other every year. The goal of the Google SMS service is to provide this large existing base of users with access to the types of information they are most likely to need when mobile. Users simply send their query as a text message and receive their results in the reply. This enables users to search for information without having to upgrade their phone or subscribe to specialized mobile data services. In this paper we describe how we worked with the Google SMS team on the iterative design of the service's user experience. In particular, we focus on how we attempted to overcome two major constraints: the technical limitations of the SMS standard, and users' current conceptual models of both SMS and Google search.

REFERENCES

• 1: Rebecca Grinter , Margery Eldridge, Wan2tlk?: everyday text messaging, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/642611.642688]
• 2: GSM Association. SMS (Short Message Service). http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/sms/
• 3: Christina L. James , Kelly M. Reischel, Text input for mobile devices: comparing model prediction to actual performance, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.365-371, March 2001, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/365024.365300]
• 4: Matt Jones , George Buchanan , Harold W. Thimbleby, Sorting Out Searching on Small Screen Devices, Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction, p.81-94, September 18-20, 2002
• 5: Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1993

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Interaction styles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, direct manipulation)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
SMS, mobile computing, search, text messaging, user experience design