Abstract
User centered design and usability evaluation of mobile devices are becoming important activities in the development process of mobile products. This paper presents a case study and introduces different techniques to support the process of designing a menu system embedded into a mobile phone. These techniques facilitated a systematic user needs analysis in the early stages of the development life-cycle, to formulate a navigational structure for designing prototypes, to identify usability problems for iterative prototype design, and to develop design guidelines. The introduced techniques involve laddered grid methods to elicit users' mental models, focus groups, usability testing, and expert reviews. The advantages and disadvantages of each method used during the design project were summarized, and usability practitioners in the real environment of the mobile devices industry are advised to be selective the combination of items they incorporate to suit their purposes.
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