Interactive Questionnaires on Mobile Devicesetd.dtu.dk/thesis/250862/ep09_63_net.pdf · 2 Questionnaire Theory 9 ... Nokia E51, Apple iPhone, ... how well people like a product, how

Interactive Questionnaires onMobile Devices

Mark Nyqvist Hjarding

Kongens Lyngby 2009

IMM-M.Sc.-2009-63

Technical University of Denmark

Informatics and Mathematical Modelling

Building 321, DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

Phone +45 45253351, Fax +45 45882673

[email protected]

www.imm.dtu.dk

Abstract

Questionnaires have for many years been used in surveys to gather statisticalinformation from respondents. Surveys have made an evolutionary jump withweb based questionnaires that coincided with ready access to the Internet andpersonal computers. The next step was interactive questionnaires that helpedpeople with little or no technical knowledge better understand technical ques-tionnaires.

In this thesis, I will try to reveal if surveys are ready for the next evolutionarystep. Most people in the western world have a mobile phone, PDA or similar.Can questionnaires be optimized for these devices? If so then maybe interactivequestionnaires can also be used to help them better understand.

ii

Resumé

Spørgeskemaer har i mange år været brugt i undersøgelser til at indsamle statis-tiske informationer fra brugerne. Disse undersøgelser foretog er stort spring medwebbaserede spørgeskemaer sammen med, at adgangen til Internettet og person-lige computere steg. Det næste skridt var interaktive spørgeskemaer som hjalpfolk med lille eller ingen teknisk indsigt til bedre at forstå tekniske spørgeske-maer.

I denne rapport vil jeg prøve at afdække, om disse undersøgelser er klar til detnæste skridt. De fleste mennesker i den vestlige verden har en mobiltelefon,PDA eller lignende. Kan spørgeskemaer optimeres til disse enheder? Hvis deter tilfældet, kan interaktive spørgeskemaer måske også bruges til at hjælpe folkmed bedre at forstå.

iv

Preface

This thesis was prepared at the Department of Informatics and MathematicalModelling (IMM), at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in partialfulfillment of the requirements for acquiring the M.Sc. degree in engineering.

This thesis is the result of work carried out between May 5th 2009 and October5th 2009 and is part of a larger project to investigate IT-security awarenessamong the general public in Denmark, in which IMM works in collaborationwith DK-CERT and DPU.

Kgs. Lyngby, October 2009

Mark Nyqvist Hjardings991086

vi

Acknowledgments

First of I would like to thank my wife Angel for her support through this project.I know that me focusing on this project has put extra work on her and forcedher to take some time away from her own studies. I would also like to thank my2-year-old son Patrick for letting me work on this when he wanted to go outsideand play, also I hope he will forgive me for letting the TV babysit him at timeswhen I was too engaged in this project.

I would also like to thank Robin Sharp for coming up with this project. It hasbeen challenging at times but also very interesting and educational for me. Healso provided me with some good help and ideas during the project.

Last but not least I would like to thank my family, my friends and DIBS A/Sfor letting me borrow their phones to try out various crazy ideas.

viii

Contents

Abstract i

Resumé iii

Preface v

Acknowledgments vii

Table of Contents xi

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Mobile Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31.2 Thesis Aim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.3 Report Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 Questionnaire Theory 9

2.1 Questionnaires in General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92.2 Web Surveys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162.3 Interactive Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162.4 Survey Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172.5 Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3 Hardware Technologies 21

3.1 Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213.2 Target Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253.3 Device Operating Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263.4 Devices Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283.5 Wireless Network Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313.6 Device Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

x CONTENTS

3.7 Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

4 Software Platform 35

4.1 Mobile Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364.2 World Wide Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364.3 Flash and Flash Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394.4 Python / Python for S60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404.5 Software Platform Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414.6 Flash Lite Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424.7 Existing Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

5 Design and Analysis 57

5.1 Surveys on Mobile Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585.2 Standard Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645.3 Interactive Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725.4 Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

6 Creating a Test Questionnaire 79

6.1 Creating a Mobile Web Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 796.2 Interactive Flash Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 856.3 Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

7 Test 89

7.1 Functionality Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 907.2 User Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 977.3 Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

8 Conclusion 101

8.1 Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1028.2 Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

Appendices 106

A Screenshots of Test Questionnaire 1 107

A.1 Alternative Version 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112A.2 Alternative Version 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

B Browser Information 117

B.1 Nokia E71 standard browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117B.2 Nokia E71 Opera Mini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118B.3 Nokia N810 standard browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118B.4 HTC Touch Diamond Internet Explorer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

C Screenshots of single question per page 121

CONTENTS xi

D Screenshots of multiple questions per page 127

E CD 131

xii CONTENTS

List of Figures

1.1 Showing the Osborne 1 vs. a modern netbook . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.2 3 of the primary devices used during these thesis. . . . . . . . . . 6

1.3 2 phones that some testing has been done with. . . . . . . . . . . 7

3.1 Comparison of modern mobile phones. Nokia E71, Nokia N96,Nokia E51, Apple iPhone, HTC Hero, HTC Touch Diamond . . . 29

4.1 Flash mouse test on 4 different devices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

4.2 First view of LimeSurvey on mobile devices . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

4.3 Compare of second page in LimeSurvey on two different devices . 50

4.4 IDA survey screenshot from desktop browser. . . . . . . . . . . . 51

4.5 IDA survey screenshot from Nokia N810 browser. . . . . . . . . . 52

4.6 Digium survey using SurveyMonkey on Nokia E71. . . . . . . . . 53

5.1 Difference between radio and submit buttons on the Nokia E71. . 61

xiv LIST OF FIGURES

5.2 Comparison of the standard and improved questionnaire techniques 67

5.3 Compare the rendering of question 4 on a Nokia E71 vs. NokiaN96 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

5.4 Drop down menu on Nokia E71. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

5.5 View of HTML email on a Nokia E71. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

5.6 Comparison of the wireless network selector on 3 different devices. 76

7.1 Difference in the render result between two phones running atdifferent resolutions but close to the same screen size. . . . . . . 91

7.2 Difference between select box on Nokia N96 and N810. . . . . . . 92

7.3 Difference between the Nokia E71’s standard browser and OperaMini running on the E71 showing the same page. . . . . . . . . . 92

7.4 Comparison of the same image shown on two different devices. . 93

7.5 Error message received when using XML.send() on Nokia E71 . . 96

List of Tables

3.1 Different devices and their operating systems . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.1 Price comparison (Prices are in DKK) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.2 Average number images per page [55] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

4.3 Comparison of Flash and Flash Lite versions . . . . . . . . . . . 43

4.4 Flash Lite version distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

4.5 Comparison of some select phones and their features . . . . . . . 46

5.1 Comparison of data transfer prices on mobile devices(in DKK) . 63

xvi LIST OF TABLES

Chapter 1

Introduction

Statistical and informational surveys are commonly used to gain insight intohow well people like a product, how well people understand a subject and soon. Questionnaires are often used as a way to obtain this information.

questionnaire(/kwess-chnair, kess-/): noun, a set of printed ques-tions, usually with a choice of answers, devised for a survey or sta-tistical study.

survey

verb /s@rvay/ 1 look carefully and thoroughly at. 2 examine andrecord the features of (an area of land) to produce a map or descrip-tion. 3 Brit. examine and report on the condition of (a building),especially for a prospective buyer. 4 conduct a survey among (agroup of people).noun /survay/ 1 a general view, examination, or description. 2 aninvestigation of the opinions or experience of a group of people, basedon a series of questions. 3 an act of surveying. 4 a map or reportobtained by surveying.

From Compact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English.

Prior to the introduction of computer based questionnaires, surveys were usuallydone either as a paper questionnaire, a phone interview or an in person interview.

2 Introduction

These techniques are still commonly used today, but the introduction of webbased questionnaires has opened up surveys to a much larger audience. In 200885% of the Danish population had access to the Internet in their home and90% of them had a broadband connection like ADSL [52]. This wide spreadaccess to the Internet and the option to answer a questionnaire when it suitsthe individual person, is probably one of the main reason for the boom in theuse of web based surveys.

A large industry has developed around creating, distributing, and analyzingdata collected from web surveys. Most of these companies have created a largedatabase of respondents that can be accessed according to their customers needsand they provide rewards to those that chose to participate and respond tothe surveys. Some of the larger companies such as E-Miles and E-Rewardspay their respondents with airline loyalty miles and gift certificates to largeonline retailers. A Danish company called Capacent has an e-panel which theyclaim consists of approximately 16,000 Danes chosen to be representative ofthe Danish population through phone interviews. E-Rewards enrolled a smallnumber of panel members using open enrollment and compared the statisticsof the new panel members to the over 2 million panel members enrolled usinginvitations only. The comparison showed mostly similar age distribution anddemographics but two big differences existed. Majority of the open enrollmentmembers were women and percentage wise more than 3 times as many werehomemakers compared to the invitation only members [31]. Some more statisticsin [31] show how open enrollment of panel members can be a bad idea.

The standard questionnaire types most people are familiar with are good for sub-jects that the average respondent knows something about e.g. television shows,food or shopping habits. However, when a researcher needs to ask typical re-spondents about subjects they might not be so familiar with, such as technicalor security issues related to computers, standard questionnaires fall short. Mostpeople use computers without having a very thorough knowledge about com-puter security but are still often presented with situations where they have tomake a security decision based on a yes or no question or decide whether or notthey should click on a link or not. Creating questionnaires to evaluate people’schoices when it comes to computer security can be extremely difficult becausethe nature of the questions are very technical but the people answering them donot have the technical knowledge to answer the questions correctly [25, p. 1].

A possible solution to this problem is interactive questionnaires. If insteadof presenting people with a series of questions that will be hard for them tounderstand and therefore answer correctly, it could be possible to simulate theoccurrences in a software program and then register people’s choices based onhow they proceed through the flow [3], [34] and [44].

1.1 Mobile Computing 3

1.1 Mobile Computing

Ever since the introduction of the personal computer, mobility has been a con-cern. In 1981, the Osborne Computer corporation released the first portablecomputer called Osborne 1. This piece of hardware weighed around 24 lbs (11kg) and had no internal battery. However, an aftermarket battery was availablethat would provide up to 1 hour of operation time. The monitor was a built-in5 inch monochrome CRT display. Compared to modern day laptops, netbooksand smartphones, the Osborne 1 could hardly be considered portable. It didhowever launch a race for companies to create faster, lighter and more portablesystems. Today you can get a netbook with a 10 inch LCD monitor weighingless than 3 lbs (1.4 kg) that has up to 10 hours of battery life or a smartphonethat has more processor power, more RAM and more storage than the Osborne1 did.

(a) Osborne 1 (b) Samsung NC10

Figure 1.1: Showing the Osborne 1 vs. a modern netbook

Mobile devices have become an integral part of our society. It is impossibleto walk down the street without encountering someone using a mobile phone.Even when driving it is not uncommon to notice other drivers holding a mobilephone to their ear even though this is illegal here in Denmark. On the train wesee people working on laptops or using their smartphones to access the Internet,play games, check their calendar or one of the other countless options they haveusing such a device. Today more than 93% of the Danish population has amobile phone [51] and in 2007 there were more than 6.2 million mobile phonesubscriptions in Denmark which is about 114 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants[53].

The wide use of mobile devices provides an interesting platform for question-naires much like the home computer. They are not only interesting because theyare so widely used but also because even many of the simpler mobile phones have

4 Introduction

more processor power and memory than computers did 10 years ago. In addi-tion, the built-in access to networks provides the possibility of readily availableInternet access. This means that it should be possible to distribute question-naires and for a respondent to respond using mobile devices. Mobile devicesare very technical by nature so it seems safe to assume that problems peoplehave with understanding technical questions on a computer would also apply tomobile devices.

This could also prove to be a blessing for surveys if a good technique to createthe questionnaires could be found so that they are easy and simple for peopleto answer on the go. Many people have 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there tosit down and answer a questionnaire if it can easily be accessed. With this inmind, a good system is needed to distribute the questionnaires and for longerquestionnaires it might be useful if people could put the questionnaire on holdand return to it at a later time.

1.2 Thesis Aim

The aim of this thesis is to look at the development and implementation of in-teractive questionnaires on mobile devices. Standard questionnaires do providea strong basis for interactive questionnaires so it is relevant to make sure thatbasic questions like “how old are you?”, “where do you live?” and “what is yourgender?” can be asked and answered in a reasonable manner as well. To coverthis a look into some survey and questionnaire theory is very important and thiswill be covered first.

The term “mobile devices” is very generic and covers many different types ofdevices. First it is necessary to limit which devices are of interest to this project.Then it will be important to categorize the different devices of interest and seehow they differ. Also a close look at their limitations and the possible problemsthat can be encountered will be discussed. After having narrowed down thenumber of devices, it will be necessary to look at what software platforms areavailable and which are most widely supported on the targeted devices.

Once the previous points have been established it will be time to look at ques-tionnaires and interactive questionnaires and how these can be adapted to thetarget devices. Previous projects have dealt with or used interactive question-naires for the collection of information on desktop computers and this thesiswill look at if and how this can be adapted to mobile devices. Also due to thelimitations of the target devices the focus will also be on the ease of use for theend user. If the questionnaires are too difficult for the user to navigate on their

1.2 Thesis Aim 5

mobile device then the purpose for creating them will be lost.

When looking at ease of use there are a couple of very important points toconsider. How can these questionnaires be distributed and how can the resultingresponses be collected? Distribution of questionnaires is important to make surepeople will actually view them and respond to them. Then the responses mustbe collected so that statistical or other information can be gathered as this isthe whole point of questionnaires. It is possible that the choice of platform willmake it easier to gather responses.

Assuming that the above points are possible, this project will then look atwhether it is possible to create an abstract framework for creating questionnairestargeted at mobile devices. Considering the scope of this project it will not bepossible to define a full featured framework but I will discuss if such a frameworkis possible and with what limitations.

The above choices will limit the options for an actual framework but a test im-plementation should show if further research and development will be necessary.Development of questionnaires should be done as abstract as possible so thatthey will work on as many different devices as possible with little or no modifica-tions. A basic framework should simplify the implementation of questionnairesfor a wide range of devices with different specifications such as screen resolution,operating system and user input interface.

Finally a limited test implementation of a questionnaire will be made to testhow well such a framework would work for the devices found to be the target ofthis project. Also this test should determine if the choice of software platformis the right one.

In summary the aim of this thesis will be:

• Explore questionnaire theory.

• Determine target devices.

• Find a software platform.

• Decide if an abstract framework possible.

• Make a test implementation.

• Discuss the feasibility and limitations of an actual implementation.

6 Introduction

As this thesis is part of a larger project investigating IT-security among thepublic in Denmark, the test implementation will be targeted at IT-security andmobile security type questionnaires.

A lot of the assumptions and decisions in this thesis have been made based onthe fact that there is no specific target platform or device. Many of the decisionswould probably have been different had this been a project targeting a companyspecifically using e.g. Nokia mobile phones, maybe even a few select models.This is not the case, so all options are on the table and only platforms thatcover most if not all of the devices that are the targets for this project will beconsidered.

This thesis will not deal with how to interpret the results gathered from ques-tionnaires. The focus of this project is only on development and implementationof the questionnaires.

1.2.1 Devices Available

(a) Nokia E71 (b) Nokia N96 (c) HTC Touch Diamond

Figure 1.2: 3 of the primary devices used during these thesis.

For the purpose of this thesis a limited number of devices have been availableand not all have been available at all times. DTU Informatics has providedme with 2 Nokia devices, a Nokia N96 smartphone and a Nokia N810 Internettablet. More information on these devices can be found at Nokia’s web sitewww.nokia.dk.

www.nokia.dk

1.3 Report Structure 7

DIBS A/S has provided access to a HTC Touch Diamond and a Qtek 9100,both of these phones run Microsoft Windows Mobile. More information on theQtek 9100 can be found at http://www.myqtek.com/europe/products/9100.aspx and on the HTC Touch Diamond at http://www.htc.com/dk/product/touchdiamond/overview.html.

Personally the author’s household owns a Nokia E71 and Nokia 6220. The NokiaE71 has particularly been used a lot since it is the author’s personal phone. Moreinformation on these phones is also available on Nokia’s web site.

Besides these phones which have been available at all times, friends and cowork-ers have been very helpful with lending access to their personal phones. Amongthe more interesting of these have been Apple’s iPhone and HTC’s Hero seefigure 1.3. The Apple iPhone has become very popular in the last few years andApple has gone from having no phones on the market to being one of the biggestsmartphone makers in the world [14]. HTC’s Hero is a brand new Android basedphone.

(a) HTC Hero (b) Apple iPhone

Figure 1.3: 2 phones that some testing has been done with.

1.3 Report Structure

This report is structured into 8 chapters and 5 appendices.

http://www.myqtek.com/europe/products/9100.aspx

http://www.myqtek.com/europe/products/9100.aspx

http://www.htc.com/dk/product/touchdiamond/overview.html

http://www.htc.com/dk/product/touchdiamond/overview.html

8 Introduction

Chapter 2 - Questionnaire Theory - Theory behind creating questionnairesand surveys. Of particular interest is what can be applied to web based surveysand interactive questionnaires.

Chapter 3 - Hardware Technologies - Technology of mobile devices in gen-eral. Different mobile devices and what decisions were made regarding devices.Discussion on some of the features of mobile devices and their limitations.

Chapter 4 - Software Platform - Different software platforms available onmobile devices. Discussion and decision on which are the better choices formobile devices.

Chapter 5 - Design and Analysis - Discussion of design considerations andanalysis of these. Some early design examples.

Chapter 6 - Creating a Test Questionnaire - Discussion of what decisionswent into creating a test questionnaire.

Chapter 7 - Test - Functionality and user test of the test questionnaire created.

Chapter 8 - Conclusion - Final conclusions on this thesis project and futurerecommendations.

Chapter 2

Questionnaire Theory

This chapter discusses some of the theory behind questionnaires, especially fo-cusing on the difficulty of creating questionnaires and the different question typesused. This is very interesting as this is the basis for all questionnaires whetherthe questionnaire is printed on paper, verbalized by an interviewer or viewedand answered on a computer or mobile device. Since web surveys have becomeincreasingly popular in recent year a quick glance at these will be done beforediscussing some of the ideas behind interactive questionnaires. Finally it willbe wrapped up in a discussion about the different error types often encounteredwhen doing surveys.

2.1 Questionnaires in General

Questionnaires are a widely used method to conduct surveys and studies in-volving human beings. Standard text based questionnaires rely on a number ofquestions to gather information about or from the respondents. Typically theyare administered as paper questionnaires, phone interviews or in person inter-views. Wide spread access to and use of the Internet has provided an alternativeway to distribute questionnaires. Targeted information is fairly easy to collectif the Internet is used to distribute the questionnaires and gather the responses.

10 Questionnaire Theory

Typically these questionnaires are easy for the user to respond to as they can re-late to and understand the questions [3, page 13]. A study of people’s shoppingor TV viewing habits can easily get good results because people understand thequestions. They do not need to know how the TV signal is transmitted or howthe their TV works to provide a response about their TV viewing habits.

When dealing with questions of a technical nature, the short comings of standardquestionnaires become apparent. For example a user does not need to knowhow emails are sent or received from the mail server just that it happens whenthey press the send and receive button. But since the user assumes a certainresult from a certain action, changing the user interface of the email clientmay result in confusion for the user. This lead to the hypothesis that manyusers will not understand even the most well written technical questions if theyare presented in a standard questionnaire format [34]. This can be especiallytrue when moving into the area of computer security, where basic conceptsoften get very complicated. Security questions are very technical and the mostlikely outcome is the user might not understand or even worse misunderstandthe question. For example asking users to identify and chose a secure wirelessnetwork is not easy, therefore it becomes necessary to find an alternate method toaid in the selection. Before discussing the potentials of implementation it is firstnecessary to understand some of the techniques used in standard questionnairesto see if and how they can be translated into a new interactive format.

2.1.1 Creating Questionnaires

Creating questionnaires is a difficult process. If several different people are giventhe assignment of constructing a questionnaire based on a single hypothesis, it isvery likely that the content of the resulting questionnaires will differ widely. Theverbiage of the questions, the response choices and length of the questionnairewill all vary. The outcome is that all the questionnaires will be unique. Notonly will they all be different but they will most likely also leave some questionsunanswered so that more research will be required and maybe new surveys doneusing new questionnaires.

Well designed questionnaires are the foundation of a successful survey but un-fortunately there is no preordained method for creating them. Currently thereis not a theoretical model to help in the design and all the creator has to goon is an extensive list of do’s and don’ts presented by other researchers makingquestionnaire design more of an art than a science [12]

Creating good questionnaires is a difficult process but what happens when aresearcher ends up with a bad questionnaire for their survey? Best case scenario,

2.1 Questionnaires in General 11

they will get meaningless data they are unable to draw a conclusion from. Worstcase they will end up with misleading results that will allow them to formulatethe wrong conclusions. Following the guidelines as presented in [12] would be agood starting point for creating a well defined questionnaire:

First of all it is important that the questionnaire meets the research objectives.This may seem as a no-brainer but good preparation is required for making agood questionnaire. But what makes a good questionnaire? A good question-naire will collect complete and accurate information about the subject beingstudied.

Once the research objectives have been defined, the next step is to define thetarget group. For example a survey studying digital security awareness wouldhave different questions if it was targeted at teenagers as opposed to seniorcitizens. Another important aspect of defining the target group is to determinetiming. Do not send out a survey to a group of students during their examperiod as it may result in a low response rate and poorly completed responses.

Finally the researcher should decide on how to reach the target group. Thiscould be as a paper questionnaire mailed to people, phone/personal interviewor as an electronic questionnaire filled out on a computer. How the question-naire is administered to people may influence response rates and the quality ofrespondents’ answers.

Questionnaires can easily be designed to lead the respondents to respond in aparticular manner which would influence the survey towards the desired results.This can of course be done intentionally or unintentionally but the questionnairecreators must take great care that questions and response options do not leadthe respondents if they want honest results. There have been examples wheremisuse of questionnaires combined with poor or no research have been usedmore as a marketing tool than to obtain good statistical information. One hasto always keep in mind that questionnaires and their results are just a simplifiedmodel of reality [8].

Creating honest questionnaires is a difficult process and deserves much attentionhowever question design and methods are outside the scope of this project. Sincethe basis of this project is the technical creation of interactive questionnaires,it is necessary to review some of the general theory behind questionnaires. Par-ticularly it is worth looking at the different question types and their uses. Laterin the report, a closer look will be made at how well these question types workon mobile devices.


2.1.2 Question Types

In questionnaires there are usually three types of questions, closed-ended, open-ended and open response-option questions. There are different pros and consto these question types and they can be used to extract different information.The types of questions used for a survey that can be analyzed statistically willmost likely differ from an exploratory questionnaire where predefined answersmay restrict the responses and prevent full exploration of the subject. [12]

Closed-ended questions

Typically the closed-ended questions are good for statistical surveys where theresearcher wants to prove or disprove a hypothesis. An example of a closed-ended question would be a question where the respondent chooses one of severaloptions from a list. It could also be a question that asks the person to enter anumber or some text that is not open to interpretation.

Examples of closed-end questions.

• Do you have a digital signature? : yes, no, don’t know

• What zip code do you live in? :

• What is your first name? :

• Are you feeling well today? : yes, no

Close-ended questions where you chose from a list of possible answers may alsoinclude an option called “other” in which case there may be a text field forinputting the answer. Including the text field may help the researcher to deter-mine if one or more important options were left out or the researcher may haveincluded it as an option but not care about the response.

Example of such a question.

What was the brand of your first computer?

• Apple

• Atari

• Commodore


• Dell

• IBM

• Hewlett-Packard

• Other Brand:

• Don’t know

There are several pros and cons to closed-ended question [6], [29], [12].

Pros for closed-ended questions:

• Easy to answer. Respondent doesn’t have to articulate the response.

• Prompts the respondent’s memory. May help the respondent remember.

• Easy to create a statistical analysis of the answers.

• Response rate is higher than on open-ended questions.

Cons for closed-ended questions:

• Suggests answers that the respondent may not have thought of.

• Doesn’t allow for conditional answers. Everything is black or white.

• More than one answer may be correct but the respondent is required tochose.

Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions have different advantages and disadvantages comparedto closed-ended questions. Where closed-ended questions are good for helpingpeople come up with an answer, open-ended questions rely on the respondentsmemory and ability to articulate the response. An example comparing the twoquestion types:

• Are you feeling well today? : yes

• How are you feeling today? I am feeling well even though my head hurtsbecause I had too much to drink last night.


The closed-ended question really limits the respondent’s chance of grading howgood or bad he or she is feeling. The answers “I feel just fine” and “I feel great”provide two different responses. If the same question had been asked with aclosed-ended question the response would have just been “yes”.

Pros for open-ended questions [6], [29], [12]:

• Respondent uses his/her own words to articulate the answers.

• Respondent reveals what is most important regarding the issue.

• Allows respondent to include feelings and opinions to emphasize the re-sponse.

• May allow the researcher to extract more information from responses thanwas originally intended.

Cons for open-ended questions [6], [29], [12]:

• Respondent may have difficulties articulating responses.

• Respondent may forget important points and therefore not give a fullanswer.

• Respondents often have very different ways of answering the same ques-tion.

Open Response-Option

A lot of questionnaire and survey theory only looks at closed- and open-endedquestions as the two main question types. A possible reason is that most ques-tionnaire researchers feel that open response-option questions belong to eitherthe open or closed category and do not address them on their own.

Open response-option is really a combination of the two question types. It keepsthe question open but at the same time it provides the respondent with possibleanswers. They are often referred to as “check all that apply” questions. Anexample of such a question can be seen below.

What features of your current anti-virus software do you value?

• Performance


• Quality

• Effectiveness

• Price

• Other:

In this case the respondent can chose any number of the response options fromthe list. It could be that he or she chooses all options and in the “ other” fieldwrites “because I have always used this program”. This gives more informationthan a list of closed-ended questions but is easier to answer than an open-endedquestion. It also makes it easier for the researcher to compare responses.

One of the problems with response-option questions is they require the re-searcher to have prior knowledge of the subject so they are able to list theright response options [12]. A reason to avoid using this kind of question is thatstudies have shown that respondents will read until they feel they have satis-factorily answered the question and then move on to the next question. Thismay result in a bias against options further down the list [16, p. 6]. Thereforeif these “check all that apply” questions are used the list of possible answersshould be kept short.

Pros for open response-option questions [12]:

• Easy to answer. Respondent doesn’t have to articulate the response.

• Prompts the respondent’s memory. May help the respondent remember.

• Not as limiting as closed-ended questions.

Cons for open response-option questions [12], [16, p. 6]:

• Researcher must have knowledge of questionnaire subject.

• Respondent may not read through all response choices.

2.1.3 Use of Question Types

Most questionnaires will rely on all three of the above mentioned question typesto some extent. If the researcher wishes to test a hypothesis and analyze the


data statistically, the questionnaire will probably rely heavily on closed-endedand open response-option questions. Whereas a researcher doing an exploratoryor comprehensive study will probably use more open-ended questions.

Many surveys today avoid the use of open-ended questions as much as possiblesince answers to them can be very unreliable. Often a focus group is chosenbefore doing the actual survey where open-ended questions are used to determinewhat questions to ask and what answers to present in the final questionnaire.Of course it is impossible to avoid open-ended questions all together but mostsurveys try to keep them to a minimum.

2.2 Web Surveys

The emergence of the Internet and the wide use of it, has made the web an in-creasingly popular medium for conducting surveys. Web surveys have some ben-efits over phone administered surveys as they are self-administered and therebyeliminate interviewer variance. People are also more likely to offer up sensitiveinformation [21, page 371]. Web surveys have some strengths and weaknessesthat are important to address. Some of these general strengths and weaknesseswill be outlined here and then in a later section I will review if they are validfor mobile devices as well.

One of the challenges of web surveys is how to send out invitations. A commonmethod is to send out email invitations that contain a link to the questionnaire.Not only are the invitations easy to send out via email but the ability to sendreminders after 2 to 5 days can have a very positive impact on response rates [13].The cost of email is negligible since it only requires an Internet connection andaccess to an outgoing mail server.

The length of the questionnaire that has to be filled out also plays a role in howmany full responses are received. People are more likely to start a survey lastingonly 10 minutes than they are to start one that last 20 or 30 minutes. It hasalso been found that the completion rate of started questionnaires was higherfor the 10 minute ones than for the 20 to 30 minute ones [22, p. 355].

2.3 Interactive Questionnaires

Standard questionnaires are often fraught with difficulties when they are about atechnical subject matter that is aimed at not very technical people. For this pur-

2.4 Survey Errors 17

pose a new type of questionnaire has emerged which is referred to as interactivequestionnaires. How do these questionnaires differ from regular questionnaires?First they require the user to interact with the questionnaire. This automati-cally rules out the used of paper based or interviewer based questionnaires.

Interactive questionnaires rely on presenting the user with a scenario that closelyresembles the scenario the user is familiar with. A standard questionnaire wouldask a question like “How do you chose the most secure access point in the area?”and then have the user describe the process. With an interactive questionnaire,the respondent would be asked to chose the most secure wireless network from alist and then the user would be presented with a graphical representation of thewireless network chosen and they would then click on the most secure network.This method was described and implemented in a different project [3, p. 23].

Besides being able to help respondents understand and answer questions, abenefit of interactive questionnaires is that they can also be educational. Iffor instance a respondent clicks on the least secure network in the list, thequestionnaire could tell the respondent that he or she made a mistake andshould try again. This could help the respondent to chose a more secure wirelessnetwork in the future.

Another feature described in [3] is an improved questionnaire technique wheremouse-over effects are used to help the user understand either the question oranswers better. This technology can be used to condense questionnaires withoutleaving out important information that may help the respondent answer thequestions correctly.

Several of the ideas and practical experiences from previous projects and studiesregarding interactive questionnaires will be looked more closely at throughoutthis project.

2.4 Survey Errors

Most surveys try to model a population by taking a sample of that populationto represent the whole. Success with such surveys depends on them overcomingfour potential sources of errors (Groves, 1989) [16].

• Coverage error : The result of all units of a population not having a knownprobability greater than zero of inclusion in the sample that is drawn torepresent the entire population.


• Sampling error : The result of only surveying a portion of the surveypopulation rather than all of its members.

• Measurement error : The result of inaccurate answers to questions thatstem from poor question wording, poor interviewing, survey mode effects,and/or the answering behavior of the respondent.

• Nonresponse error : The result of not getting some people in the sample torespond to the survey request who, had they done so, would have provideda different distribution of answers than those who did respond to thesurvey.

The four sources of errors all need to be kept low. Placing special focus onreducing one type of error does not compensate for ignoring the others. The useof the Internet has made it very easy to attempt to reduce the sampling error byhaving questionnaires easily available to the public. The desired outcome is thatthere would be countless responses to the survey. However the problem withthis technique is that it can actually introduce coverage errors instead. Justaccepting answers from a large number of people may mean that some units ofthe population are not represented [16].

Web surveys potentially have problems with coverage, sampling and non re-sponse errors. In the U.S., the demographics of people who do not have accessto the Internet are more likely to be black or Hispanic, poor, poorly educated,elderly, or disabled (NTIA 2000) [21, p. 372]. There are also problems withgenerating a representative sampling of Internet users since there are no com-prehensive lists to chose from [21, p. 373].

Measurement errors may also be larger with web surveys than other surveymodels due to several factors. Web based questionnaires are often designed byuntrained people and Internet users tend to read quickly and are ready with themouse to click on to the next thing. These issues may be very significant in websurveys [35].

2.5 Summary and Conclusion

Questionnaire and survey theory is a fairly complicated matter and this is in noway an in depth discussion of it. Most of what has been discussed here has arelevance for questionnaires and interactive questionnaires on mobile devices.

The discussion of the question types is very interesting as will be discussed later

2.5 Summary and Conclusion 19

in this report due to the target platform. Web surveys are possibly the closestcomparable survey technique in current use to what this thesis deals with.

In theory, interactive questionnaires on mobile devices ought to be a very goodidea if they can be implemented so that they will be easy for any respondentto use. As this is one of the aims for this thesis, implementation of interactivequestionnaires on mobile devices will be looked at more thoroughly in the laterchapters.

All surveys are prone to errors and these errors should not be ignored. Aswill be discussed later some of these are potentially big problems when we areconsidering questionnaires on mobile device.


Chapter 3

Hardware Technologies

Mobile devices are everywhere in today’s modern society. People can be seenusing mobile phones, PDAs and portable computers on the train, on the bus, atthe street side cafe or just walking along the street. I have even seen a personsitting on the floor at the airport using his laptop because he had found anavailable power outlet to plug it into.

This chapter will look at some of the different technologies available and I willnarrow down which are relevant for this project. For the purpose of this study,technologies refers to the hardware platforms available but it is also interestingto note something about the operating systems. After narrowing down whichdevices are truly the targets of this project I will discuss what some of thelimitations for these device are. Finally to wrap it all up I will list some of thecommonly found wireless technologies often found in the target devices.

3.1 Devices

There are many mobile devices currently on the market that fall into severaldifferent categories. They come in various shapes, sizes and weights with someintended to fit in your pocket and others are meant to travel in a briefcase.

22 Hardware Technologies

Some of them provide voice, SMS and MMS service. Others are limited to webbrowsing and basic email functionality. It is also very interesting, that manyof these have the capability to access different types of networks ranging fromwired ethernet and wireless LAN to cellular networks like GSM and UMTS. Tolimit the list of devices some, this report will only deal with devices that werein someway designed to access networks and the Internet.

A few years ago it would have been easy to list the different types of devicesavailable. They were pretty much limited to Laptop or Notebook, PDA andMobile Phone. Today the picture is not as clear and many hybrid devices havecome into existence like the Netbook, Mobile Internet Device, Tablet PC andSmartphone. Some of these are just natural evolution of the devices while otherswere designed to fulfill new user demands.

3.1.1 Mobile Phone

Today’s mobile phones are no longer just phones used to make and receive calls,send and receive text messages and contain a list of contacts. They includecalendars, games and other software to help the user in everyday life. Mostof them come with a built-in camera and a flash memory capable of holdinghundreds of pictures some even come with a cable so that the phone can beconnected to the TV to share the pictures with family and friends. Some phonesalso come with a built-in GPS receiver and navigation software. Most of theminclude a media player and some also include a FM radio. Many of them allowfor the installation of user chosen software and they can access the Interneteither via GPRS/EDGE or 3G/UMTS. People commonly store a great deal ofpersonal information on these devices not to mention all the information theystore about their family and friends. This can include phone numbers, addresses,email addresses, birthdays and more.

Some banks in Denmark are experimenting with online bank access using mobilephones. This technology has great potential and would be a convenience to manyusers. However, it is yet another very sensitive area of our personal life thatcould be accessed using a mobile phone and providing adequate user securityshould be a high priority.

For many, mobile phones have become an indispensable personal assistant andin many homes they have completely replaced the land-line phone. They havegone from something to have in an emergency to providing music, organizationand connectivity to family and friends. I feel the low cost, portability andincreased functionality of mobile phones has helped increase their popularity.

3.1 Devices 23

3.1.2 PDA

PDAs, or Personal Data Assistant, are handheld mini computers that weredeveloped as personal information management (PIM) systems. Who createdthe first PDA seems to be up for discussion but it seems to be either Psion orCasio somewhere around 1983-84 [59] [7]. Some even claim that the first PDAwas released by Apple in 1993. This difference in opinion about which was thefirst may be founded in disagreement about what defines a PDA.

U.S. Robotics (later 3Com)’s Palm Pilot was one of the early PDAs in the formthat they are recognized as today. The words Palm and PalmPilot have almostbecome synonyms for PDA even for models with different names and manufac-turers. PDAs have also commonly been referred to as palm computers. Firstgeneration PDAs only had simple features like a calendar, address book and acalculator. An important feature from early on was the ability to synchronizethese features with a computer so that the users could always have the infor-mation with them where ever they went. Originally there was no networkingcapabilities in PDAs and so there was no option to access the Internet or reademails on the go. The early models were very popular despite their limitedfeatures.

Data entry on most of these devices was either by a style of hand writing recog-nition or a virtual keyboard that could be brought up. The early PDAs fromU.S. Robotics, like the Pilot 1000, introduced a stroke recognition system calledGraffiti which was a predefined set of strokes that the system could translateinto letters and numbers. Some models also supported external keyboards thatcould be connected using IR, Bluetooth or USB.

The PDA has been through many evolutions over the past 15 years. Manyof the devices now have built-in networking capabilities and even though mostretain the ability to connect to computers for certain purposes, they are overallmuch more independent devices. A branch of similar devices known as MIDs orMobile Internet Devices have made an appearance on the market. Some MIDsare closer to devices like the netbook both in size and the operating systemsthey run. Other MIDs are just the next step in the evolution of the PDA.

In modern PDAs, networking capabilities range from wireless LAN to cellularnetworks like WiMAX and UMTS. Data entry relies on a virtual keyboard ora built-in physical QWERTY keyboard. Models like Nokia’s series of Internettablets are good examples of modern PDAs. Despite advances in design andintegration of new technology, PDAs as an individual device are not that popularanymore and many have been merged with the mobile phone to create the hybriddevice known as a smartphone [46].


3.1.3 Smartphone

Smart phones was the generic term used to define higher end mobile phones thatincluded many features not commonly found in regular mobile phones. Todaythe name is used to describe a set of mobile phones that are a hybrid betweena PDA and a mobile phone. The difference between a mobile phone and asmartphone is not as distinct as it used to be. Many mobile phones now includefeatures previously only found in smartphones such as a built in camera andweb browsing capabilities. [5]

Smartphones can be split into two variants. One type is designed around theconcepts of an old fashion mobile phone and then upgraded with PDA functions.These upgrades normally consist of a larger display and more powerful hardwareand software to enable it to fill the role of PDA as well as a phone. Some evencome with a full QWERTY keyboard. The other variant is designed aroundthe PDA. They have large touch sensitive displays and some are equipped witha full QWERTY push out keyboard and/or hand writing recognition. Thesephones have become very popular although a lot of people seem to want themas a status symbol and not for their functionality. Many smartphones are notlimited to access cellular networks but also includes wireless LAN as a connectionoption [46].

According to a report published this year, smartphone sales will soon surpassthe sales of PCs world wide. This is why a lot of the larger PC manufacturerslike Apple and Dell are putting a lot of resources into releasing smartphonedevices [50]. As mentioned in section 3.1.1 many people have become dependenton the mobile phone as a personal assistant. As the line between mobile phoneand smartphone is blurred, the smartphone is filling this role more and moreespecially for businessmen and technology geeks.

3.1.4 Netbook

The netbook is a scaled down version of a standard laptop that has been em-braced by commuters, business travelers and students. It was not originallydesigned to replace the standard laptop/notebook but instead was developedas a way to supply children in developing countries with access to a basic andinexpensive computer. The project was launched by Nicholas Negroponte andcame to be known as One Laptop Per Child or in short just OLPC. Since manychildren in developing countries have no regular access to electricity, it had torun on minimal power which influenced the designers to create a scaled downenergy efficient computer. OLPC project’s laptop came to be named XO-1 and

3.2 Target Devices 25

was produced by Quanta in Taiwan. Asustek which is the world’s seventh largestnotebook maker became inspired by the project, or possibly they just wanteda piece of the pie, and started creating a cheap alternative with a small 7-inchscreen. When Asustek launched the first Eee PC they sold out their 350,000unit inventory in just a few months. What was remarkable was that the EeePC was not sold to poor people in developing countries, but was purchased bymiddle class consumers in the western world. This was the birth of the netbookas we know it today and since the launch of XO-1 and Eee PC many companieshave joined in with their own netbooks. [54]

3.2 Target Devices

I have presented several categories of mobile devices all of which have potentialfor implementation of interactive questionnaires. They can be placed into twomain groups, portable computers and handheld devices. I will examine each ofthe groups to determine which ones best fit the scope of this project.

Laptops, notebooks and netbooks are in essence just portable computers. Theoperating systems running on these devices are much the same as the onesrunning on desktop computers. We may or may not see netbooks that differfrom this trend in the future but so far this is the case. Since questionnaires andinteractive questionnaires on computers have been covered in previous projects[3], [34] and [44] they are not the target of this project. From this point forwardwhenever a reference is made to mobile devices these are not included in thisdefinition.

Mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs and similar devices are much more rele-vant in this project since they have not been covered before. Also these devicesshare many of the same characteristics such as size and how they are used. Theproblem is that they often greatly differ in their capabilities. They run differ-ent operating systems, support various software technologies and have differentconnectivity options. These devices are truly the target of this project and willfrom here on be the focus. These types of devices are often referred to as hand-held devices since they are not just mobile but can be used while holding thedevice in one hand. Any reference to mobile or handheld devices from here onexclusively refers to this kind of devices.


3.3 Device Operating Systems

Many of the target devices are run by a selection of different operating systems.Some have been developed just for smartphones while others are specific forPDAs and similar devices. Windows Mobile and Palm OS are the two mainoperating systems for PDAs but statistics and more specific usage informationproved difficult to find.

Symbian OS has been a dominating player on the smartphone market and morethan 50% of the smartphones sold in 2008 were running Symbian OS [23]. Themost well known handset manufacturer using Symbian OS is Nokia but Sony-Ericsson also has quite a few devices running this OS. In 2008 Nokia acquiredSymbian Sotfware Limited and created the non-profit organization SymbianFoundation. The goal of this foundation is to promote the Symbian platform asopen source, and royalty free software. The other major players in the smart-phone market are Research In Motion who developed the Blackberry OS for usewith their popular Blackberry devices and the Apple iPhone that runs Mac OSX.

Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems are not tied to a particulardevice and have been adapted for use on many of the smartphones available. Ahost of different operating systems based on Linux have become quite popular.Android is probably the most well know of these. Android was originally cre-ated by Google but today it is developed by the Open Handset Alliance. TheOpen Handset Alliance is a group of 47 companies that are working togetherto develop the completely free and open mobile platform known as Android.Other examples of Linux based solutions are WebOS created by Palm and theplatform created by the LiMo Foundation. Strangely enough Microsoft has beenunable to create and maintain as strong a hold on the mobile device market asthey have on the desktop computer market. But with 12.4% of the smartphonemarket in 2008 using Windows Mobile, Microsoft is still a very active player inthis market [23].

It is interesting to note how many of these platforms have become open and freeplatforms. Even so, three of the major players in this market still rely on closedsource platforms. Apple and Research In Motion are doing in house platformdevelopment and Microsoft Windows Mobile remains a closed source, royaltybased platform. It will be interesting to see how these different approaches todevelopment and distribution will affect the smartphone market in the future.

As mentioned in section 1.2.1 several different devices have been available tovarying extents during this project. Table 3.1 summarizes these devices andtheir operating systems.

3.3 Device Operating Systems 27

Table 3.1: Different devices and their operating systemsDevice Operating SystemApple iPhone Mac OS XHTC Hero AndroidHTC Touch Diamond Windows Mobile 6.1 ProfessionalNokia 6220 Symbian S60 3rd edition FP2Nokia E51 Symbian S60 3rd edition FP1Nokia E71 Symbian S60 3rd edition FP1Nokia N96 Symbian S60 3rd edition FP2Nokia N810 OS2008 (Maemo Linux)Qtek 9100 Windows Mobile 5.0

Research In Motion and their BlackBerry series have not been available for ahands on test of the theories presented in this project. These devices hold aconsiderable share of the market for smartphones and would have been nicefor testing purposes. Also to be noted, not all of the above devices have beenavailable at all times for testing.

3.3.1 Device Security

Handheld devices have recently become a target for viruses, trojans and otherkinds of malware [11]. These devices have just as good or even better connectiv-ity options than most laptops and computers but are typically used on untrustedor open networks. Device security is a very important concern especially consid-ering all the potentially sensitive information people store on these devices. Thearchitectural difference between mobile devices and desktop computers presentchallenges for security designers [39, p. 83].

Who is responsible for the device security? Is it the manufacturer or the user?Mobile devices are typically controlled more tightly by the manufacturer thanpersonal computers. In general, it is not possible to install a different operatingsystem or software created for one device on a different device. Security concernsare therefore unique to the individual device and operating system. The mostcommon security measures consist of questions asking the user if he or shewants to continue with the current action or simply denying the action becauseit violates a security protocol. The problem with this is whether or not the useractually understands these questions and the implications of answering yes orno. There are also some restrictive measures in use such as requiring softwareprograms to be signed using a trusted certificate before they can be installed [41]. Again, does the user understand what this means? Just because a program is


signed with a trusted certificate should the user implicitly trust the software?Some of these security measures can also be disabled by the user. The termjailbreaking has been often used in reference to Apple iPhone and iPod Touchdevices to allow the user to install 3rd party applications on them. So whereis the line drawn between manufacturers protecting the users from themselvesand the manufacturers taking away the users right to use the products theypurchased in whatever way they see fit?

Although manufacturers have taken on much of the security responsibility, alarge part is still left up to the user [33, p. 2]. The use of pin codes andpass phrases, OS updates and connecting to a secure network are some of thesecurity decisions users will face. Users are required to make many of thesesecurity decisions on their own even when they may not fully understand therisks or consequences of their choices. Technology to help the user make betterchoices is not currently available and this is where interactive questionnaires canpossibly fill in the gap. Developers can use the user responses to help them todetermine how well the users understand these problems and if more educationand software changes would help the users understand security better. [18, p. 2]

3.4 Devices Limitations

Modern mobile devices are more or less just scaled down computers. Besidesmaking phone calls and receiving text messages they can be used to access theInternet using a browser and read emails. Often they have more functionalitythan a desktop computer and even though they do not have the same com-puting power as a desktop computer, their increased functionality is based ontheir versatility. They often have a built-in camera to take pictures and recordvideo and in some cases they have a second camera for use in video calls. Allthis combined in a small handheld device comes at a cost and imposes certainlimitations. These limitations include a very compact keyboard, a small screenand in many cases no pointing device. Also the fairly low processing power onthese devices compared to a desktop computer can be a limitation but sincethis project is not dealing with games or large scale applications, the processingpower should be of little concern.

3.4.1 Text Input Interface

One of the biggest costs to increased overall functionality in mobile devices isa limited text input interface. Input of text on many devices is done using a

3.4 Devices Limitations 29

12 key keypad having keys from 0-9 plus hash and asterisk. Many phones haveimplemented a dictionary, or auto-complete, system that helps users by guessingwhich word the user is trying to input. Even with these in use, inputting largeamounts of text on a device like this is slow and tedious for most people. Manymodern smartphones come with either a full QWERTY keyboard or a touchscreen which can provide the user with a keyboard.

Figure 3.1: Comparison of modern mobile phones. Nokia E71, Nokia N96, NokiaE51, Apple iPhone, HTC Hero, HTC Touch Diamond

Of the devices shown above, the 3 Nokia devices have physical keyboards/key-pads for text and number entry. The other 3 rely on a virtual keyboard presentedto the user when text or number entry is needed. The Apple iPhone and theHTC Hero both have full virtual QWERTY keyboards where the HTC TouchDiamond uses a virtual keypad where repeated presses of the same button willmake it cycle through the letter, number and symbol options for that key.

Due to the actual size of most mobile devices, it is not possible to use morethan one or two fingers at a time to enter text. For most people, this will resultin a fairly low words per minute rate. Especially on phones with keypads thatmay or may not rely on a predictive dictionary to guess what the user wantsto input, inputting large amounts of text may take a considerable amount oftime. The predictive dictionary may speed up things considerably but it mayalso guess wrong or a missing letter may result in a wrong word.


This is a message I once received from my wife:

I am waiting for the pain.

Now what that message was supposed to say is “I am waiting for the train”.Not hitting the t-button resulted in the phone guessing pain instead of train.There are many more examples like this of how text input on mobile devicesmay result in completely different words than what was intended.

3.4.2 Pointing Device

Most mobile devices do not have a physical pointing device as is common inthe personal computer world. There are no mice, no touch pads or similarexternal devices found as common accessories for mobile devices. Typicallymost mobile devices rely or either a software cursor that can be controlled usinga 4-way directional input key or the device has a touch screen of some sort.Some touch screen enabled devices rely on the use of a stylus for input whilesome newer devices can be used with a fingertip. Both types of input have theirlimitations. However, the touch screen devices do have an advantage when itcomes to clicking different parts of the screen fast and efficiently. More will bediscussed on some of the difficulties with pointing devices later on.

3.4.3 Screen Size

Another issue that is illustrated in figure 3.1 is the differences in screen size.Some phones have the screen in portrait mode, others have it in landscapemode and some can detect the mode based on how the device is turned. Alsodifferent devices run at different resolutions which adds to the difficulties sincethe size of the screen may make it desirable to use the entire screen and notjust a reduced portion of it. Particularly the difference between landscape andportrait mode screens greatly reduces the maximum available size. This willrequire questionnaires to adapt to the screen so that it maximizes the use ofwhat is available.

3.5 Wireless Network Technologies 31

3.5 Wireless Network Technologies

Since this project deals with a range of mobile devices that all have some kindof wireless networking capability it is interesting to make a quick overview ofsome of them. This list is not extensive but some of the more commonly knowntechnologies will be listed.

3.5.1 GSM

Global System for Mobile Communication is the de facto standard for mobilephones and it is estimated that around 80% of the markets world wide use thisstandard [61]. The data rate on standard GSM is 9.6 kbit/s which with encodingcan be increased to 14.4 kbit/s. Technologies like high-speed circuit switcheddata can use up to 8 time slots providing a transfer rate of up to 8 * 9.6 kbit/sor 8 * 14.4 kbit/s [17, p. 301].

3.5.2 GPRS / EDGE

General Packet Radio Service is an extension to the GSM protocol to providehigher transfer rates for data communication. GPRS is a packet switched tech-nology providing data rate of up to a theoretical maximum of 160 kbit/s butusually less than half of that.

EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution) is a superset of GPRS andthere for backwards compatible with it. EDGE has a theoretical maximum datatransfer rate of 473.6 kbit/s [39, p. 11].

3.5.3 3G / UMTS

The name 3G is often used in Denmark as a technology on its own but 3G is aterm covering a wide range of technologies such as UMTS and EVDO. OriginalUMTS handsets could expect up to 384 kbit/s but technologies like HSDPAcan provide much higher transfer rate [60]. The network provider 3 has justannounced that it supports up to 16 Mbit/s in two major cites in Denmark 1.

1See more on www.3.dk.

www.3.dk


3.5.4 WiMAX

WiMAX is another type of wireless cellular network access. WiMAX has notreally made it big as a mobile technology in Denmark and is mostly marketed asan alternative to fixed Internet connections like ADSL. Dansk Telecom (previ-ously ClearWire) and ELRO’s Skyline have the majority of WiMAX customersin Denmark [30] both have maximum download speeds of 3-5 Mbit/s.

3.5.5 Wireless LAN

Wireless LAN is the standard wireless network used in many homes and offices.It started out providing 2 Mbit/s on the 802.11 standard. 802.11b gave up to11Mbit/s. 802.11g changed the throughput to 54 Mbit/s and finally the newlyapproved 802.11n provides up to 600 Mbit/s [40]. Wireless LAN requires agateway to offer access to the Internet.

3.5.6 Wireless Networks

All of these different wireless network technologies are in use in mobile de-vices. The most versatile being the smartphone that usually provides GSM,GPRS/EDGE, 3G and Wireless LAN access. This wide range of supportedwireless technologies makes many mobile device prime candidates for accessingthe Internet while on the go. This is why these devices are so interesting as testdevices for questionnaires.

3.6 Device Evolution

Mobile devices are constantly evolving and improvements are being introducedto existing technologies. U.S. Robotics released the Pilot 1000 and 5000 backin 1996 and the devices had 128KB and 512KB built in memory. Today devicescome with up to 32GB built in memory and a much faster processor. This moreor less follows Moore’s law which states that the transistor count of integratedcircuits will double every 2 years [38, page 1].

Not only have the devices gained more power in the form of faster processors andmore memory but design and the user input interface are constantly changing.Very few devices today rely on character input systems like the one found in early


Pilot devices. They more commonly use either a physical or virtual keyboardor keypad of some sort. Devices screen sizes are changing constantly and theirresolution is constantly improving. Touch screen devices have been improvedwith multitouch which allows the use or more than one finger to perform morelogical gestures like zooming in/out among other things. But also different touchscreen technologies like capacitive versus resistive can result in different userexperiences. Where capacitive screens are meant to be operated with a fingertipand resistive devices often require a stylus or fingernail to be operated withacceptable results [32]. The different touch screen technologies results in thesoftware being adapted to suit the chosen technology. It is easy to describe thetechnical differences between the two technologies but it is fairly uninterestingsince it in my opinion requires a personal experience with both to realize justhow different they feel when used.

All these changes and improvements make this platform very difficult as a targetfor software development that is meant to work across a wide range of devices.One never knows what tomorrow may bring to this market but developers shouldbe prepared to adapt their products for the “next big thing”. Upcoming develop-ments may affect this project so that adaptations and changes might be neededdown the road to accommodate these new and different technologies.


Many mobile devices are available but I have decided to narrow the focus tosmaller devices that do not run desktop operating systems. Devices like thenetbook and laptop are just portable computers and therefore they have beencovered in other projects and studies. Much more interesting to this project isthe abundance of different mobile phones, PDAs and smartphones. As will beseen throughout this project the focus is more towards the PDA and smartphonethan the standard mobile phone.

During a quick glance at the different operating systems it was easy to see thatseveral different ones exist. Even though the smartphone market is dominatedby Symbian there are competitors with considerable market shares. This isinteresting since it differs from the desktop computer world that is almost com-pletely dominated by Microsoft Windows with a market share of more than90% [4].

Mobile devices are very versatile but also have their limitations. Text entry andthe lack of a pointing device like a mouse on all but the touch screen devicescan prove to be a challenge along with the reduced screen size and resolution


when it comes to creating questionnaires for these devices.

Chapter 4

Software Platform

Every day, it seems as if there is a new “must have” mobile device on the market.Bigger screens, slimmer profiles, faster processors, more accessories, the list ofmodifications and features is endless. All of the constant changes provide signif-icant challenges to the developer trying to keep up with the latest devices. Tosuccessfully develop software that targets a wide range of devices, it is necessaryto find a software platform that is supported by as many devices as possible andthen create a framework that abstracts away from the details of the hardwareof the devices. As the target of this project is to determine if a framework forinteractive questionnaires can be created, these factors need to be kept in mind.

To get an overview of some of the options and possibilities, a closer look willbe made at some of the different technologies available. I have not included allavailable platforms, only those that are the most widely known and used. Theseinclude mobile messaging, SMS and MMS, which are supported by nearly allmobile phones in the world. World wide web, mobile web access and supporttechnologies like Javascript are also well supported on many devices. Java, Flashand even Python are often used in cross platform software development. All ofthese will be discussed more in depth in this chapter as well as the decisionon which technologies will be the best suited for implementing standard andinteractive questionnaires on mobile devices.

36 Software Platform

4.1 Mobile Messaging

Almost every mobile phone has support for sending text messages, often referredto as SMS (Short Messaging System), and the more advanced messages that canalso hold audio, pictures and video are known as MMS (Multimedia MessagingSystem). Creating a system that can send questions in the form of text messagesand receive replies the same way would be possible but also very limiting. Byincluding pictures or video in an MMS, the system could be made more advancedbut would still have some short comings.

SMS is limited to 160 characters, and even though this should be plenty to holdmost individual questions, it would still limit the depth and length of a question-naire. MMS does not have the same text size limitations and the use of picturesand videos would allow for alternative ways to administer the questionnaires.However the user would have to download and open an attachment. In the caseof both SMS and MMS, the replies would have to be typed out and messagessent back. In addition to the size limitations and response time investment,another issue is that some phones default to using a MMS when replying to aMMS which can quickly become expensive for the respondent. A quick look atthe prices for SMS and MMS for some of the larger mobile phone companies inDenmark shows why a system based on SMS or MMS would be undesirable (seetable 4.1).

Table 4.1: Price comparison (Prices are in DKK)Company SMS price MMS price3 0.20 2.00TDC 0.25 2.50Telia 0.20 3.00Telenor 0.25 2.50

Although SMS and MMS provide a potential platform that could be used onalmost all mobile devices they have many drawbacks. Limited questionnaire size,response investment and the fact that the respondent may have to pay to sendresponses, all make these a poor choice for use with interactive questionnaires.

4.2 World Wide Web

Most if not all higher end mobile phones and mobile devices that can access theInternet have a web browser that can render web pages. This could make webpages a good platform for implementing interactive questionnaires. The great

4.2 World Wide Web 37

benefit of using this medium is that it should work with few or no problems onmany different devices.

HTML and XHTML are the most common markup languages in use on the In-ternet. HTML 4.01 from 1999 is the latest HTML specification so even thoughHTML 5 is in a working draft it is still not ready for use. HTML or HypertextMarkup Language is based on the Standard Generalized Markup Language bet-ter known by the acronym SGML. HTML is widely used in web pages todaybut a new standard has emerged from XML with some new benefits. XHTMLor extensible Hypertext Markup Language has come out with several benefitsover HTML [45].

One major benefit of XHTML over HTML is that all tags require a closing tagwhich means that parsing and processing are much easier. All that is requiredto extract information from a XHTML web page is a XML parser. Also strictrules for nesting of tags and such make validation and rendering of such pagesmuch easier.

4.2.1 Mobile Web Access

Originally mobile phones were limited to accessing data networks with a 9.6Kb/stransfer rates. The devices also had small low resolution screens which were un-suitable for viewing regular web pages. A protocol known as WAP was createdfor these devices. Most modern devices use a packet switched network connec-tion like GPRS, EDGE or UTMS with transfer rates on 3G networks going upto several Mbit/second. The user usually pays per megabyte transferred or hasa flat rate subscription that allows free usage up to a certain maximum trans-ferred per month. In Denmark it is not uncommon to see max transfer totalsbetween 5 and 20 gigabytes per month [42].

The mobile web consists of different markup languages but due to the limita-tions of mobile devices the pages also often have very different attributes. Itis interesting to look at and compare the different markup languages used forcreating content for mobile devices.

WML (Wireless Markup Language) was designed for use with the WAP 1.0(Wireless Application Protocol) which is a connection oriented protocol thatrequires the phone to make an active data call to a gateway that provides accessto the network. This technology usually has a per minute cost for the connectionwhether data is being transmitted or not.

XHTML-MP (extensible Hypertext Markup Language Mobile Profile) was cho-


sen as the official markup language for WAP 2.0 by the Open Mobile Alliance. Itis based on XHTML Basic which is a basic version of XHTML without CSS sup-port, some styling, nested tables and some other features. XHTML Basic wasdesigned for web clients like mobile phones and PDAs. XHTML-MP includessome styling tags and CSS support not found in XHTML Basic [43].

C-HTML (Compact HTML) was designed around the same time as WML byNTT DoCoMo. It was designed for the same purpose as WML but is tied to NTTDoCoMo’s devices and is predominantly used in Japan, making it uninterestingfor this project [28, page 2].

Modern smart phones and even several year old smart phones have full supportfor HTML 4.01 and XHTML so relying on a technology like WAP 1.0 is nolonger necessary. That being said it may still be a good idea to use certain basicideas when developing web content to mobile devices. During a study of mobileweb content in 2006, it was found that the average mobile web page had lessthan 10 links and less than 1 image. Over 50% of the mobile web pages had noimages at all [55, pages 2 and 3] see table 4.2. XHTML-MP has potential forbeing a good platform to develop questionnaires.

Table 4.2: Average number images per page [55]Type # Internal # External Pages w/

Images Images No ImagesWML 0.7 0.2 61%XHTML-MP 1.3 0.3 44%C-HTML 0.4 0.04 70%HTML 11.9 3.7 9%

4.2.2 JavaScript

JavaScript is widely used in web pages to serve dynamic content, test input dataand do processing on the user side instead of on the server side. JavaScript issupported on some mobile devices but what versions and to what extent is notfully known. It is worth noting that the Nokia devices used for testing duringthis project had JavaScript support, and according to Nokia’s website they allsupport JavaScript 1.5 or higher. On the other hand, the HTC Touch Diamondrunning Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 seems to have no support for JavaScriptin the built-in Internet Explorer.

On personal computers, it is very common for people to disable JavaScript intheir browser as it can potentially be a security risk but more often people disable

4.3 Flash and Flash Lite 39

it because can be annoying. JavaScript implementations have been haunted byimplementation errors but also the security model has been flawed [37]. It isnot certain if these problems are a major issues in mobile devices but it seemslike a good idea to avoid relying on JavaScript since it should not be required.

4.2.3 Java and Java Micro Edition

For a long time Sun Microsystems has promoted Java as being platform inde-pendent. This makes Java a very strong contender in a line up of platforms fora project that targets many different devices. Java is also designed to developanything from very simple applets to games and large scale applications. Javaapplets integrated in web pages have been used a lot. In Denmark both banksand many sites using the Danish digital signature rely on a Java applet for theuser to chose a key and enter a passphrase. Java applets have also been used forgames and other similar applications but have in many cases been replaced byFlash since Java requires programming knowledge and creating Flash does not.

Since Java was designed for use on desktop computers, Sun devised a morecompact version designed to run on mobile devices. Sun actively promotesthat their Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) provides a robust, flexibleenvironment for applications running on mobile and other embedded devices.MIDlets is the name for applications developed for the Mobile Device Informa-tion Profile MIDP using Java ME. One very limiting factor of Java ME is thatall MIDlets have to be installed on the mobile device. This may pose somesecurity concerns for a lot of people since they may not trust the supplier ofthe interactive questionnaires software or have other qualms with installing 3rdparty applications on their devices.

Few if any mobile devices have the necessary Java plugin in the integratedbrowser that will allow for the execution of Java applets found on some pagestargeted for desktop computer users. This means that the choice for Java isbetween creating a MIDlet application or not using Java at all.

4.3 Flash and Flash Lite

Macromedia Flash was first released in 1996 and since then it has gone throughmany versions to become what it is today [24]. According to a Millard Brownsurvey [10] done on behalf of Adobe, Flash content reaches 99% of Internetviewers in mature markets. Mature Markets include US, Canada, UK, France,


Germany and Japan so it seems safe to assume that similar numbers are truefor Denmark.

The Flash platform has changed from providing feature rich media animationon the Internet, to providing a framework for creating cross-platform Internetapplications. With the introduction of the Flex open source framework, it is nowalso possible to develop Flash animations and applications on other operatingsystems besides Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS. Previously Flash con-tent could only be developed using Flash Professional which is a fairly expensivepiece of software for none professionals.

After the great success of Flash on the Internet for desktop computers, FlashLite was created as an implementation of the Flash runtime for mobile devices.It is lacking some of the features of the full Flash runtime but is not as limited ordifferent from the full Flash as e.g. Java Mobile Edition is from Java StandardEdition. Most older Flash videos will run just fine on Flash Lite enabled devicesif they are created for a supported version.

It is interesting to look at Flash Lite versions since there are different capabilitiesin the supported devices. Especially in the change from Flash Lite 1.x to FlashLite 2.x where the version of ActionScript, which is the script language used inFlash, was upgraded from version 1 to version 2.

Strategy Analytics forecast of devices with Flash Lite installed is over 1 billionworldwide in 2009 [2]. Even though this includes everything from Flash Lite 1.0to Flash Lite 3.1 devices it gives a good idea of how well supported the platformis on mobile devices.

One major drawback for development with Flash Lite is that it requires thepurchase of Adobe Flash Professional CS4. Unfortunately is not possible to usea free tool such as Flex 3.3, since Flash Lite does not support ActionScript 3.

4.4 Python / Python for S60

Python is a programming language that has become increasingly popular inrecent years. Python runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux/Unixsystems so it is cross platform just like Java and Flash. Python is easy to learnand a good introduction for people new to programming.

Currently, Python is not a widely used platform on mobile devices but Nokia hasmade it available on Symbian S60 and it is often referred to as PyS60. PyS60 is

4.5 Software Platform Decision 41

very powerful but does not have the steep learning curve that is usually involvedwith developing for a mobile platform [49, p.5].

This project aims at more than just making a prototype that runs on selectNokia phones which is a major drawback for the use of PyS60. PyS60 appli-cations also suffer from not only having to be installed but also relying on aruntime environment which is not currently included in Nokia phones.

4.5 Software Platform Decision

There are pros and cons for many of the platforms and technologies discussedhere and not all are suited for the same purpose. Some are cost prohibitive andothers aren’t supported on all devices. First we need a means of delivering ques-tionnaires to a survey group. The choices are via Mobile messaging, installinga software program on the participants mobile device or through Mobile webaccess.

Mobile messaging is not a good choice for many reasons but mostly because ofthe limitations a system relying on this would suffer from. It could be used todeliver a software program that the respondents installed on their mobile devicebut getting people to do that may be very difficult and in some cases peoplemay not even know how to do it.

Which means using the world wide web seems to be the obvious choice as ameans of delivery for questionnaires. It would be very similar to the way webbased questionnaires are done on desktop computers so it is a tested method thatis known to work. That being said, the mobile web does have some limitationsand even though it may not be required to follow the XHTML-MP standard, itmight be beneficial to create mobile questionnaires specifically for use on mobiledevices. This will be dealt with more closely in chapter 5.

Now that a way to deliver the questionnaires has been decided upon, an imple-mentation platform for interactive content must be chosen. Java and Pythonare not good choices because they rely on programs that have to be installed onthe device which requires the user to make a security decision they may not becomfortable with or understand. Flash Lite then becomes the only true optionto create these interactive questionnaires across a wide range of mobile devices.As I will discuss in the next section, it does introduce some difficulties since notall mobile devices support all features. A list of some of the limitations andproblems encountered during the development of the prototype implementationwill be included in this report.


4.6 Flash Lite Limitations

Flash includes a scripting language called ActionScript which is in essence theprogramming language that will be used to try to implement the proof of conceptinteractive questionnaire. Since there are several versions of ActionScript it isnecessary to look at the different versions to see which version is best suitedfor implementing this framework. When considering the different versions it isimportant to look at not only number of supported devices but also how easythe framework will be to maintain and expand upon.

ActionScript 1.0 was the first version available. It has some simple class struc-ture to it and is referred to as an object-based programming language. There isno point discussing in depth what differences there may be between object-basedand object oriented programming. [48]

ActionScript 2.0 followed with a restructuring of the language to make it an ob-ject oriented programming language that conforms with ECMAScript 4 which isa standard for Internet scripting languages. JavaScript 2.0 is also based on EC-MAScript 4. This provided ActionScript with full support for classes, privateand public functions/variables, templates and more. All of this gave Action-Script programmers the necessary tools to make programs that are modular,scalable and maintainable.

ActionScript 3.0 is now available for Flash Player versions 9.0 and above. Thisversion uses a new virtual machine that is said to be able to execute ActionScriptcode up to 10 times faster than previous versions. So where version 1.0 and 2.0shared the virtual machine AVM1 version 3.0 now uses the new AVM2. Thereare more differences between ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0 but these are not thatinteresting as ActionScript 3.0 is not yet supported by Flash Lite.

Flash Lite is available in 3 major versions. Specifically these are version 1, 2and 3 and each have somewhat different characteristics. The major differenceis between version 1 and 2. Version 1 only supports ActionScript 1.0 whereversion 2 supports ActionScript 2.0. This would lead many people to assumethat version 3 supports ActionScript 3.0 but this is not the case.

All this talk about different versions of Flash Lite and ActionScript may betterbe presented when compared with Flash Player 9 see table 4.3.

Considering the above, it is in my opinion desirable to base a framework likethis on Flash Lite 2.0. The strengths of ActionScript 2.0 over 1.0 are many,especially the strength in good OOP which is probably the most importantwhen developing a framework that should be easily extensible. But what is the

4.6 Flash Lite Limitations 43

Table 4.3: Comparison of Flash and Flash Lite versionsFeature Flash Lite Flash Lite Flash Lite Flash Player

1.1 2.1 3.1 9ActionScript FlashScript ActionScript ActionScript ActionScriptVersion 1 and 2 1 and 2 1,2 and 3Flash Version 4 or earlier 7 or earlier 8 or earlier 9 or earlier

consequence of excluding Flash Lite 1.x devices from executing these interactivequestionnaires? To determine that, it is necessary to look at some numbersregarding how many devices support which versions of Flash Lite.

Table 4.4: Flash Lite version distributionVersion #devicesFlash Lite 1.0 10,143,000Flash Lite 1.1 163,098,000Flash Lite 2.0 281,552,000Flash Lite 2.1 314,648,000Flash Lite 3.0+ 285,225,000

[2]

From this forecast, Flash Lite 1.x devices are less than 20% of the installeddevices. Since these are in most cases the oldest devices and therefore less featurerich, excluding them from being able to execute interactive questionnaires isprobably not a big loss. Therefore from this point on focus will be on Flash Lite2.0 and the above compatible devices.

Flash Lite implementations are usually either vendor or operating system spe-cific. This means that not all Flash Lite specific options have been implementedfor all device.

4.6.1 Pointing Device

Flash Lite has an option to check what kind of pointing device is available for thedevice since some implementations use a software enabled pointer that can bemoved around using a directional button on the phone. Other implementationsmay support the use of a stylus. If neither is supported then the implementationreports no pointing device available. If no pointing device is available then itmay be possible to implement one through the software instead.

Since I have several different devices available, some with a pressure sensitivescreen that use a stylus and some without, it will be interesting to have these


variations for testing purposes. A small Flash Lite program will be used to testthe availability of a pointing device.

The two Nokia phones, E71 4.1(a) and N96 4.1(b), both report a Mouse enabledand the cursor is also clearly visible on both. The cursor can be navigatedaround using the directional keys as intended. Neither of these devices have atouch screen. On the other hand both of the touch screen devices, Nokia N8104.1(c) and HTC Touch Diamond 4.1(d), report “No pointing device” and arenot stylus enabled as expected even though the touch screen works to mark textin the Flash video. Granted the Nokia N810 is not a Flash Lite device, it isactually running a full version of Adobe Flash 9. The problem with this is thatwhat is reported by the device can not be used to determine the device’s mousecapabilities.

4.6.2 Screen Size

Flash videos are created at a certain resolution and even though it is possibleto resize and scale the videos this presents certain difficulties. To create Flashor Flash Lite sequences for multiple screen resolutions and layouts, a video foreach resolution is required. It is possible to create Flash videos larger than thescreen size and then rely on the browser’s capabilities to navigate it.

Of the available test devices the lowest resolution is found on the Nokia phonesthat either have a resolution of 240x320 pixels (Nokia N96 and 6220) or 320x240pixels (Nokia E71). This means that the Flash content will be made to targetthese two resolutions. It will be interesting to see if this works well on the higherresolution devices or it becomes too small.

4.6.3 Device Comparison

In the previous sections there have been a lot of mention of different Flash andFlash Lite versions and ActionScript Versions, but I have also discussed mousesupport and screen size. Table 4.5 will try to list some of the devices used fortesting along with what features they support and so forth.

From this comparison it is interesting to see that the Nokia N810 and HTCHero both run a full version of Flash 9 and not Flash Lite. This is most likelythe reason why they report no pointing device when testing for mouse support.Another surprise is that the Apple iPhone has no Flash or Flash Lite support.It is said that Apple and Adobe are working on a resolution for this [15]. Last


(a) Nokia E71 (b) Nokia N96

(c) Nokia N810 (d) HTC Touch Diamond

Figure 4.1: Flash mouse test on 4 different devices.


Table 4.5: Comparison of some select phones and their featuresPhone Flash ActionScript Mouse Screen Screen TouchModel Version Version Support Size Resolution ScreenNokia N810 9 1,2 and 3 No 4.13” 800x480 yesNokia E71 8 1 and 2 Yes 2.36” 320x240 noNokia N96 8 1 and 2 Yes 2.8” 240x320 noApple iPhone - - - 3.51” 480x320 yesHTC Hero 9 1,2 and 3 No 3.2” 320x480 yesHTC Diamond 7 1 and 2 No 2.8” 480x640 yes

but not least the HTC Touch Diamond runs Flash 7 and not Flash Lite 2 asone might expect.

With so much confusion about what devices run which version of Flash, it isvery hard to draw any reliable conclusions. Due to all these differences andlack of good supporting documentation, it will be necessary to assume for thepurposes of testing that simple Flash videos whether marked as version FlashLite 2.0 or Flash 7 should work all of the above devices except the iPhone.

4.6.4 Data Transfer

Flash Lite supports loading in variable from external sources such as a URL.This can be done in one of two ways. The first is in the form of a text filecontaining a text string similar to the following.

� �manufacturer=Nokia&model=N96&r e s o l u t i o n =240x320

� �

The second model uses XML in which case the above could look something likethis.

� �<?xml ve r s i on ="1.0" encoding="UTF−8" ?><values>

<manufacturer>Nokia</manufacturer><model>N96</model><re s o l u t i on >240x320</r e s o l u t i on >

</values>� �

This is just a simple example. To really show the strengths of XML a more indepth look is required. So even though use of XML makes the implementationmore complicated and leads to more data transfer, it has many strengths whichmakes it a good choice for transferring data.


XML Basics

XML or Extensible Markup Language is an open standard defined by theWorld Wide Web Consortium most commonly referred to as W3C. See moreat http://www.w3c.org/XML/. The goal of XML is to make a structuredtext based way of storing and exchanging data on the world wide web. Whenit is said that XML can be used to store data, it can actually be used as adatabase and queries can be made against the stored data. XML in itself is nota replacement for a relational database and SQL but is a good supplement to arelational database and many of them have ways of storing and even validatingXML documents. So XML does not do anything on its own [58]. A programmust send, receive and parse it and this is done very easily. The real strength ofXML is the exchange of data between different systems. Seemingly very differ-ent systems in different domains can exchange data information as long as theyagree on the schema [27].

� �<?xml ve r s i on ="1.0" encoding="UTF−8" ?><phone l i s t >

<phone manufacturer="Nokia" model="E71">My Phone</phone><phone manufacturer="Apple" model="iPhone">Your Phone</phone>

</phone l i s t >� �

The XML document in listing 4.6.4 has all of the typical parts of a well-formedXML document. It has a root element in this case “phonelist” is the root element.The “phone” elements are child elements. A requirement is that all elements havea closing tag as well in the case of “phonelist” “</phonelist>” is the closingtag. The second important thing is that all attributes like “manufacturer” and“model” are correctly quoted. A valid XML document is a well-formed documentthat also conforms to the DTD included in a “DOCTYPE”. DTDs can be definedeither in the XML document or as an external DTD file. An alternative toDTDs is XSDs which is also XML based so XML can be used to describe XMLdocuments.

XML documents are written in plain text and are easily formatted to make themhuman as well as machine readable. In the example in listing 4.6.4 all the whitespaces and line breaks between the elements are not required and are only thereto make the document more readable to humans.

There is a lot more to XML than described here but an in depth discussionof XML, DTD and XSD is a project all in itself and beyond the scope of thisproject. The built-in support for XML in Flash Lite makes it a fairly goodchoice for exchanging data with a server side application.

http://www.w3c.org/XML/


4.7 Existing Solutions

Several different survey applications exist for creating, administering and an-alyzing questionnaires. An exhaustive comparison of the different solutions isirrelevant but a closer look at solutions used in a previous project is worthwhile.In a project from 2009 [44] LimeSurvey was used to create a major survey. Twoprevious projects dealing with interactive questionnaires [34] and [3] have bothused Adobe Captivate for use on desktop computers.

4.7.1 LimeSurvey

LimeSurvey the open source survey application...refreshingly easy and free

http://www.limesurvey.org

LimeSurvey is a free software and licensed under GNU Public License 2 makingit a great choice of implementing questionnaires. LimeSurvey also offers to hosta solution where people can create and perform the surveys. This service isfree and therefore will be used for testing how well LimeSurvey actually workswith mobile devices. To test this, a brief questionnaire was created using thefollowing questions. Please note that this is not a formal questionnaire but justa simple test run.

Question group 1 will contain the following questions.

1. Are you using a mobile device? Yes/No answer

2. How old are you? drop down list

3. What brand of mobile device are you using? short list answer

4. Please enter what model you are using? short text answer

Questions 3 and 4 are conditional of a yes in question 1. This means that theyshould not be shown if the respondent answers no to question 1.

Question group 2 will contain the following questions.

1. Is this working on your mobile device? Yes/No answer

http://www.limesurvey.org

4.7 Existing Solutions 49

2. How well does this questionnaire work on your device? 5 point list

3. Describe what could be improved? long text answer

This is a very small example of a questionnaire but it reveals some of the prob-lems and limitations when using LimeSurvey with a mobile device. When testingthe survey on the Nokia N96, it is quickly apparent why this is not a good so-lution for this phone. The page is rendered with both horizontal and verticalscroll bars see figure 4.2(b). On the Nokia E71 it renders quite nicely but stillwith a vertical scroll bar and the header and progression bar take up about halfof the screen when the page initially loads see figure 4.2(a). After answering yesto the first question and thereby unlocking questions 3 and 4 a horizontal scrollbar appears on the Nokia E71 as well. Scrolling around on the page takes timeand even these short questions with Yes/No answer options take up considerablespace on the screen. Navigating the mouse cursor around on the page to getto the answers is slightly annoying. The drop down menu for question 2 doeswork well on both devices and so does the radio button in question 3 althoughthe list is too long to fit on the screen along with the question. In figure 4.3it can be seen how the HTC Touch Diamond unlike the Nokia N96 renders theprogression bar in a slightly unfortunate way.


Figure 4.2: First view of LimeSurvey on mobile devices

Some of these problems show that LimeSurvey was clearly not designed for useon mobile devices and especially not devices with low resolution screens likethe Nokia phones and HTC Touch Diamond. It is possible that some of the


(a) Nokia N96 (b) Nokia N96

Figure 4.3: Compare of second page in LimeSurvey on two different devices

problems could be solved using a different style sheet but this will not beenresearched any further. This simple test reinforces that questionnaires for useon mobile devices should be specifically designed and created for mobile devices.

4.7.2 Real Life Questionnaire Examples

During this thesis project I have received several invitations to participate insurveys by answering questionnaires. The design varied between them but acouple stood out as flawed. There are two that I will point out just to showwhat problems they present. One of them gets a bad grade due to poor designand the other of them completely fails to be able to be filled out properly on amobile device.

IDA Questionnaire

When viewing the questionnaire on my desktop computer the little arrow buttonI had to click on was all the way at the right side of the screen while the answeroptions were on the left side. This design did not seem like it had been testedproperly when running at higher resolutions see figure 4.4. On the other handthe design worked fairly well on the Nokia N810 where the reduced size along


with the touch screen made it fast and easy to fill out see figure 4.5. Anotherflaw in this questionnaire was that weighted scales, where different subjects wereto be given a grade between 1 and 5, used checkboxes instead of radio buttons.This resulted in respondents being able to give multiple grades for each subjectwhich is probably not what the researcher intended. Overall the questionnairetook around 5 min to fill out but had it been much longer I would probablyhave abandoned it due to the flaws and poor design.

Figure 4.4: IDA survey screenshot from desktop browser.

The design was a very simple design following the principle of using black text onwhite background. Personally I feel that the design could easily have been savedby having the next and previous buttons right under the answer options insteadof at either end of the progression bar. It was most likely unintentional thatthe design worked fairly well on a smaller screen device like the Nokia N810 andwith few modifications it would probably have worked well on a mobile phonelike the Nokia E71 as well.


Figure 4.5: IDA survey screenshot from Nokia N810 browser.


Digium Questionnaire

Digium sent me an invitation to participate in a survey regarding PBX tele-phone solutions. The design was like the previous one, black text on a whitebackground. I pulled the questionnaire up on both the Nokia E71 and N810and it seemed to work very well on both so I decided to continue filling it out onthe Nokia E71. It flowed and worked fairly well although the multiple questionsper page was slightly annoying and resulted in quite a bit of scrolling around attimes. The problems arose when I came to a multiple response-option or “checkall that apply” question. I was unable to select any of the options on the list.Finally I just continued on to the next question. After several of these questionswithout being able to answer them properly, I gave up and tried on the NokiaN810 instead. As can be seen from the title bar in figure 4.6 the survey wasdone using www.surveymonkey.com.

Figure 4.6: Digium survey using SurveyMonkey on Nokia E71.

SurveyMonkey is an online survey tool that, like LimeSurvey, can be used forfree. To access all the features of SurveyMonkey does require a pro subscriptionthat costs either $19.95 per month or $200.00 per year. No further testing was


done regarding SurveyMonkey.

4.7.3 Adobe Captivate

Both of the previous projects [3] and [34] which implemented interactive ques-tionnaires in some form decided to use Adobe Captivate. Adobe Captivate isa program for creating interactive e-learning experiences. The way it works isthat it takes a screen shot of a running program on the desktop and lets theuser add functionality to this screen shot and in the end exports it to a flashmovie. Both previous attempts at using this software for creating these imple-mentations seemed to work well for the desktop computer. After quick glanceat it, it was decided against for use with this project. First off it would requirethe use of Adobe Captivate to make videos for each screen resolution, secondlyit seemed too rigid for this project. Here we want to test if a framework forimplementing interactive questionnaires on mobile devices is possible not justtell people to go use Adobe Captivate to create them.

4.7.4 Summary and Conclusion

This chapter presented various platforms and runtime environments for creatingquestionnaires and interactive questionnaires. All of the technologies had somepros and cons so it was important to find the right ones for the two differentways of presenting questionnaires.

The world wide web was chosen for delivering standard questionnaires to re-spondents but a support technology like JavaScript was decided against. Thelack of available documentation on how well supported JavaScript is on mobiledevices in general was the reason for this. The two Windows Mobile devicesavailable for testing did not support JavaScript which was enough reason torule out the use of it.

Flash Lite was chosen for creating a framework for interactive questionnaires. Abrief glance at both Java and Python found that both were poor choices for thisdue to the fact that they create installable applications and not something thatcan just be executed from within a browser window. Also the wide availability ofFlash Lite capable devices made it seem like a really good choice. Only Apple’siPhone was unable to play Flash videos and hopefully this will be rectified inthe future.

Finally a brief glance at some of the solutions used in previous projects in-


vestigating the use of questionnaires. In [44], the project relied on the use ofLimeSurvey to do a large security awareness survey in a company. To see ifLimeSurvey was suited for use on mobile devices it had to be tested and eventhough it worked it was far from perfect. What this test did show was that somethings had to change to make standard questionnaires easy to access and answeron mobile devices. In [3] and [34] the focus was interactive questionnaires andboth used Adobe Captivate to create and test these questionnaires. AlthoughAdobe Captivate can be used to design and create something that would workon mobile devices it was not what was wanted for this project.

In the following chapters the decisions made here will be tested and used tocreate a more optimal way to design and create web based questionnaires onmobile devices. Mobile devices have some limitations but are also very powerfuldevices with many strengths and capabilities. Questionnaires, whether interac-tive or not need to rely on these strengths and capabilities without being heldback and bogged down by their limitations.


Chapter 5

Design and Analysis

As mentioned in chapter 2 creating questionnaires is a fairly complicated processand something that should be done with care. The purpose of this project isnot how to create the perfect questionnaire for mobile devices but more if it isactually possible. Many previous projects have explored different theories andideas for questionnaires on the desktop computer. In this chapter I will try toaddress some of these ideas to see how and if they can be applied to mobiledevices.

The main areas I will focus on are platform, questionnaire design and adaptingweb questionnaires to mobile devices. I will also address some general issueswith surveys on mobile devices such as distribution, coverage and samplingerror. Some theory exists about how to design questions for web surveys andit will be interesting to see how much of this can be reused on mobile devices.A few simple questions will be created that will be used to assess how wellthese questionnaires work on mobile devices. I will also look at the improvedquestionnaire technique suggested in [3] which is used to help respondents betterunderstand the questions and answers. This is a technique that works well ondesktop computers but can it be used on mobile devices? Then I will look atinteractive questionnaires and define how their use in previous projects can beapplied to mobile devices.

58 Design and Analysis

5.1 Surveys on Mobile Devices

In this section I address some of the challenges that come with conducting sur-veys on mobile devices. In many ways, mobile devices are experiencing someof the same problems that were seen in desktop computers 10 years ago. Ofparticular concern for questionnaire design on mobile devices are the varyingscreen sizes and processing speeds on each of the different devices. These prob-lems have mostly been eliminated on desktop and laptop computers, or so itcan be assumed due to larger screens and considerably faster processors, butthat is not the case with mobile devices. More flexible web page design thatcan automatically adapt to changing screen sizes has also helped in the case ofdesktop computers however as discussed in previous chapters, there are manylimitations to design for mobile devices.

5.1.1 Adapting Web Questionnaires to Mobile Devices

Adapting web questionnaires to mobile devices should not pose too many prob-lems in general although there are some points to remember when creating them.Most people do not have full size keyboards on their mobile devices, the screensize and resolution is very limited compared to a desktop computer and manydevices do not come with a pointing device like a mouse. Due to some of theselimitations, I have come up with some alternate suggestions that can be tested.

Platform

Since the focus is on web based questionnaires, the platform should be theInternet. On desktop computers this usually means that web pages are deliveredas HTML or XHTML web pages to the browser. Several different platformsexist that can dynamically create this content and many Internet users willhave encountered names or acronyms like PHP, ASP, JSP and others. Howthings are implemented on the server side is of little interest to the user andas long as the web browser can render the pages users probably do not carewhether it is HTML or XHTML either.

To the people implementing questionnaires the server side language may play abig role but this is a matter of preference for the developer creating the frame-work. The choice of markup language when targeting desktop computers is amatter of preference for the developer. Similar results can be achieved usingeither markup language.

5.1 Surveys on Mobile Devices 59

Examples of this could be LimeSurvey which uses PHP on the server side andSurveyMonkey which uses ASP. Both of them deliver pages in XHTML andaccording to the doctype the standard used is XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

As mentioned in chapter 4 I have decided that mobile web access will be usedfor delivering standard questionnaires to mobile devices. The mobile web ispart of the Internet and yet as mentioned it is considerably different due to thetarget platform. Originally, the mobile web was developed in WML which isvery different from HTML and XHTML found on desktop computers. Todaymany devices support XHTML Mobile Profile or just XHTML-MP which is anextension of the original W3C standard XHTML Basic.

XHTML-MP provides support for style sheets through WAP CSS also known asWCSS a standard created by Open Mobile Alliance. W3C also have a standardknown as CSS Mobile Profile and according to [56] W3C and OMA are workingtowards aligning the mandatory compliance items of the two standards.

Although it has been hard to find much documentation on which mobile devicessupport what versions of the different standards I do believe that using XHTML-MP and WCSS is the best choice. A bonus benefit is that XHTML-MP andWCSS pages should render just fine in a desktop browser.

Text Input Interface

As discussed in section 3.4.1 mobile devices often come with small and notvery practical text entry solutions therefore it would be a mistake to rely onopen-ended questions in questionnaires targeted for mobile device. That beingsaid, open-ended questions may still have a place in questionnaires for mobiledevices but answers to them may often be short or incomplete. This leads to theconclusion that questionnaires for mobile devices should rely heavily on closed-ended and open response-option questions. Both of these should be very easyto implement and respond to on mobile devices.

Pointing Devices

There are two scenarios for pointing devices typically found on mobile devices.Either there is no real pointing device and one is emulated in software for usewith a 4-way directional button or it is a touch screen device. I made a quicksurvey of several of the top mobile device manufacturers and came to the as-sumption that there are currently very few models available with a touch screen.


Therefore I think it is safe to assume that most mobile devices do not feature atouch screen. This reinforces the idea that it is important to keep content fairlycompact on the screen and make it easy to navigate on devices without a touchscreen.

Whether the device is with or without a touch screen I think users will appreciateit if scrolling around on the page is kept to a minimum. This can be done bytrying to keep the number of response options low. Also on devices without atouch screen I believe it will be appreciated if content that has to be clicked onwith the software emulated cursor is kept close to each other.

Screen Size

When implementing questionnaires on mobile devices it is a good idea to bemindful of the screen size discussed in section 3.4.3. The small screen willquickly become crowded and difficult to navigate if there is too much on eachscreen. Where a standard questionnaire may have a title area with a pictureidentifying the software solution used, a progression bar and other information,there is ample room for this information on a desktop computer monitor. Thesame questionnaire on a mobile device will quickly become crowded and result inunnecessary scrolling to view the entire question and answer options. There willbe times when scrolling cannot be avoided but it should be kept to a minimumso that it is easy for the respondent to get an overview of the question andpossible answers. The small test in section 4.7.1 of LimeSurvey and the examplespresented in section 4.7.2 are examples of some of the things to be aware of whencreating questionnaires for mobile devices.

Submit vs. Radio Buttons

Up until this point, answer techniques for closed-ended questions have beenbased on the same theory that standard web based questionnaires are based on.This means that the focus has been on choosing an answer and then clicking ona submit button. Instead an alternative could be suggested of using a combinedclick and submit button. This would simplify the time spent on each page andnot force the respondent to first click on the desired answer and then move onto find the submit button often located at the end of the page. On non-touchscreen devices this would simplify things quite a bit. On touch screen devices,it may result in some erroneous clicking and it may also be a good idea to letthe respondent return to the previous page to correct errors. An example of thisidea can be seen in figure 5.1. It is even possible to add an access key so that the


user does not have to navigate the page with a software cursor but can directlyclick on a keyboard key to activate a specific button or link if supported by thebrowser. Sadly it didn’t work on any of the Nokia phones I used for testing.

(a) Standard (b) Improved

Figure 5.1: Difference between radio and submit buttons on the Nokia E71.

From a user perspective I believe this technique is preferable to the radio but-ton method in most situations but from a researcher perspective it may resultin more errors which is not desirable. One of the benefits of the radio buttonapproach is that the user has time to think or read on after selecting the optionand before clicking on to the next question. Making a recommendation for oneapproach over the other is difficult. On one hand it is important to make it aseasy and fast for the users to respond to a questionnaire but on the other handgetting good and correct responses is important to be able to draw good con-clusions from the questionnaires. This technique is of course useless when thereare multiple questions on the same page or a question that requires multipleanswers.

5.1.2 Distribution

One of the most important issues to address is how to distribute the question-naires on mobile devices. On many of the target devices, it is possible to sendand receive email but email on mobile phones is still somewhat limited to thetechnology savvy people out there. I conducted an informal survey among 15friends and family who have good technology experience. The survey revealedthat only 5 people actually had their mobile phone configured to access theiremail and only 3 of them used this on a regular basis. I later surveyed a groupof less tech savvy people which revealed that none of them had email access con-figured on their phones and most of them did not see a need for it either. Emails


may in time become much more used on mobile devices but currently they donot seem to be used widely enough to be the only method of distribution.

Another possibility is to use SMS to deliver invitations to participate in a survey.SMS is mostly limited to devices with phone capabilities like mobile phones andsmartphones. This is somewhat of a drawback since it will not be able to deliverinvitations directly to PDAs or similar devices. A benefit to SMS is that it comesenabled on all phones from all known carriers and it provides some amount ofdelivery guarantee. Most service providers will store a SMS for several days ifit for some reason is unable to deliver it to the phone. A downside to the use ofSMS is that sending messages has a price. I made a quick check of a couple ofproviders with Internet SMS gateways like CoolSMS and OnlineCity. Both haveprices starting at DKK 0.25 per message. Their prices do decrease as the numberof monthly messages sent increases but sending out text messages instead ofemails does have a price. It would have to be up to the individual researcherto determine whether it is worth the price. When taking into consideration theprice for researching, designing, creating and analyzing a survey, the price forsending out text messages is probably negligible.

A last option is to use one of the many instant messaging solutions available.As Google talk, Skype, MSN and other messaging solutions enter the mobilemarket more and more users can be reached using these services. It could bedesigned so that the users can send a message to the survey provider to requesta link to the latest unanswered questionnaire.

All of the above solutions require a user base. How to create such a user baseis a problem in and of itself. A solution to this problem is beyond the scopeof this project and is completely dependent on who the target audience of thesurvey is.

5.1.3 Coverage, Sampling Error and Functionality

Conducting surveys on mobile devices may result in coverage error and sam-pling error. Although many people may have a mobile phone that supports thetechnology for answering questionnaires, how willing will they be to participate?Of particular concern is the population that did not grow up with these devices.I conducted an informal survey with 10 people over the age of 55. When theywere asked if it was possible for them to fill out a questionnaire on their mobilephone, not a single one replied that they would want to. Out of the same 10people, none of them had ever used their mobile phone to access the Internet.The same question was asked to a group of 10 people between 20 and 30 theresult was that 5 of them would be interested in trying it out. Out of those 10,


8 of them used their mobile phone for accessing the Internet on a regular basis.It should be noted that both of these samples may suffer from both coverageand sampling error since the number of respondents is so low. It does howeverseem very indicative that results from surveys targeting mobile devices may notbe representative of the population.

This may not pose a major problem if the surveys are targeted at the rightgroups. This is part of good questionnaire design. First define the target au-dience of the questionnaire, then chose the best method to reach that demo-graphic [12].

Being able to put down a questionnaire and then return to it later has alwaysbeen considered a strength of paper based questionnaires over web based ones[44]. Today such functionality also exists in many web based survey solutions. Ialso believe that for questionnaires designed for mobile devices to be successful,such a feature would be very important as well. Since many people wouldprobably use their mobile device to answer a questionnaire when they havesome free time, I feel being able to suspend and then continue the questionnaireat a later time would help lower the non-response rate.

5.1.4 User Cost

One problem with questionnaires on mobile devices is the amount of data thatneeds to be transferred. Table 5.1 shows a comparison of some of the majorDanish mobile service providers’ prices for data transfer.

Table 5.1: Comparison of data transfer prices on mobile devices(in DKK)Company Price per MB Flatrate subscription3 10.00 399.001

TDC 12.00 229.00Telia 10.00 259.00Telenor 10.00 199.00

Although the price for the 3 flatrate subscription cannot really be compared tothe other prices, it is clear that the price of a flatrate subscription plan is agood amount of money. I was not able to find data to support this, but I believethat they have a relatively low number of subscribers as flatrate subscriptionsare often an add on service. This means that many people could end up payingup to DKK 12.00 per megabyte transferred when answering a questionnaire.This can be avoided if people are connected to a free access wireless LAN butit cannot be assumed that everyone has access to such.


5.2 Standard Questionnaires

Standard questionnaires are simple self administered questionnaires known bothin the form of a paper questionnaire and web questionnaire. They usually onlycontain text questions and text response options. Some may rely on the use ofstatic graphics like images or pictures but no interactive elements requiring theuser to perform certain actions. Other self administered questionnaire forms areknown e.g. automated voice response systems, but these are of little interesthere. The focus will primarily be on web questionnaires since these are theequivalent of what I intend to implement on mobile devices. I will discuss thedelivery platform, questionnaire design and so on that is tied in with thesestandard questionnaires.

5.2.1 Questionnaire Design

Design of web based questionnaires should be split into two parts: Questiondesign and visual design [44, p. 68]. The question part will consist of how tophrase and order the questions and the visual part will cover how visual effectslike graphical representation can encourage the respondent. A good design com-plemented by useful explanations will increase response rates [9, p. 1314]. Theseparts are well supported by research for web based questionnaires on computersbut little to no research has been done on how this translates to mobile devices.Therefore the following sections will look at the theory as it exists today and ifand how it can be applied to mobile devices.

Question Design

The first part of creating questionnaires is to decide on the topic, narrow itdown, do a whole lot of background research and then formulate the questions.Once a long list of questions has been created, it is time to create the actualquestionnaire. Several question types were discussed previously and their usein questionnaires will be discussed here. I will also present a concept called im-proved question design to see if it has any application to mobile questionnaires.

Question Types

When looking at questionnaires, most questions can be presented in severalways with a variety of response choices. However most all questions can be

5.2 Standard Questionnaires 65

categorized as either closed-ended, open-ended or open response-option whichwere discussed in section 2.1.2.

I previously mentioned that some questions like “how old are you?” are a closed-ended question since the answer is not up for interpretation. However in regardsto implementation, it can be argued whether or not it is treated as a closed-ended question. Technically when implemented on a computer, it resembles anopen-ended question if it is implemented as a text field where respondents caninput their age. Often answers to this type of question are limited to a shortlist of answers where each point is an interval.

For each question type there is a definite set of answer types.

Typical answers to closed-ended questions:

• Yes/No

• Yes/No/Don’t know

• list of items

• list of items, including don’t know

• list of items, including other

The Yes/No with or without Don’t know answer are very typical answers toencounter in questionnaires. They are a quick way to gather information aboutthe respondents. Questionnaires could ask questions like:

• Do you own a mobile phone?

• Can your mobile phone send emails?

Where the first question would typically be a Yes/No answer option and thesecond would most likely be a Yes/No/Don’t know, since people may not knowif their mobile phone can send emails or not. The other types of answers arejust variations of these. Technically the answers are very much alike except forthe “other” option if it includes a text field for people to describe their answer.In most situations, studies should be done so that the list of possible answersis short but also includes the most common answers. Too many answers in the“other” category may mean that the list of possible answers was poorly chosen.

Answer types to open-ended questions are pretty much limited to a field wherethe respondent can input his or her answer. As mentioned in section 2.1.3, these


types of questions are usually kept to a minimum. Another reason for avoidingthem on mobile devices is that a lot of people will not have the patience totype out a fulfilling answer because of the limitations of text entry on mobiledevices3.4.1.

The last type of question is the open response-option where multiple optionscan be selected to form an answer. Typically this would be presented as a listwith selection boxes but it is also possible to introduce a valued list where therespondent has to enter a number to grade how important each chosen optionis. The final solution to this is the select box where multiple rows are shown ina box and multiple entries can be selected.

Finally, one of the things encountered in a lot of questionnaires is that somequestions are dependent on the response to a previous question. Once the list ofquestions is created, adding a note to the individual questions that are depen-dent on specific answers to previous questions would give the person actuallyimplementing the questionnaire a good insight to how each step should flow.

Improved Question Design

The improved questionnaire technique discussed in [3, p. 19–20] shows a coupleof improvements to the standard question format. Both help to improve thequality of the data collected but use different approaches. The first offers moreanswer options and the second takes it one step further and tries to help therespondent understand the question and answer options better.

The first technique describes how a list of check box options can be improvedby changing it into a list of individual radio button options. When asking moretechnical questions it may be very beneficial to have a “don’t know” option. Infigure 5.2 is shown an example of how the same question can be asked usingthe standard and improved technique. In the standard technique a uncheckedbox can mean both “no” and “don’t know” where the improved technique hasan option for each. This could improve the quality of the data collected sinceit gives more knowledge about the respondent. It could also be that differentfeedback was provided to the respondent depending of whether “no” or “don’tknow” was chosen.

On touch screen devices, the improved method works very well since it is easyto tag each line. On devices with a cursor that is controlled using a keypad, thestandard method is easier and faster to use. There is a trade off with this andit is up to the individual researcher to decide which input method they prefer.When using short lists, the improved method may get better and more accurate


(a) Standard (b) Improved

Figure 5.2: Comparison of the standard and improved questionnaire techniques

results but on long lists it may get tedious for the user to navigate around andclick for each of the items in a list. A bored or frustrated respondent is less likelyto provide accurate answers and might even be tempted to end the questionnairewithout finishing it.

The second part of the improved technique is to use mouse over effects to presentthe respondent with a pop-up box containing more information about a subject.A quick test showed that none of the devices available for testing supportedmouse over effects. On the cursor enabled devices, it was possible to move thecursor to the text area but no pop-up box was shown. On the touch screendevices, there was no way of interacting with the text without clicking on it andthat did not show the pop-up box either.

An alternative method is to use JavaScript and enable a click effect on eachitem to provide extra information in a separate area of the screen. This unfor-tunately is not a very good solution either. Due to the screen size of most mobiledevices, this would most likely result in the respondent having to scroll aroundon the screen to find the help area. Also the possible lack of JavaScript supportcould prevent the respondent from accessing the additional information. It ispossible that some devices may support a pop-up information box created usingJavaScript but this has not been tested.

A different solution could be to only have one question per page as recommendedin section 5.2.1 and then include a detailed description on the page as well. Thissolution is not very elegant as the reduction to one question per page may resultin quite a few page loads and may reduce the respondent’s perceived correlationbetween questions.


Neither of these improvements seem to work well when used with mobile de-vices. Over time as the devices change, get higher resolution screens and morecommonly support JavaScript some of these improvements may become rele-vant. Increased use of touch screen devices may also increase the relevance ofthe first option.

Visual Design

Visual design plays a big role on the web and web pages are constantly beingchanged to please users. This theory is also applied to web based questionnaireswhere graphics have been used to lower the non-response rate and keep respon-dents motivated by keeping the survey fun and satisfactory [35]. However, thisconcept conflicts with the mobile web idea where the markup languages havelimited styling options and images are kept to a minimum on pages. Manymobile customers, in for example Denmark, still pay per megabyte transferreddata on their mobile phones. This may actually lead to the opposite of advancedgraphics on mobile devices not to mention that what would be considered a smallpicture on a computer may take up a considerable portion of the screen on amobile device.

This does not necessarily mean that visual design cannot play an importantrole on mobile devices. With the support of XHTML and CSS, many of thesedevices can render some spectacular looking pages. This may help with theentertainment aspect of web based questionnaires on mobile devices mentionedin [3] which may help captivate the respondents.

Previous projects relied on images to help the user understand the question orin some cases, the question may relate to what is seen in the image or images.It is very possible that such images can be used in questions on mobile devices.The problem again is the limitations of many of these devices. An image on onephone might take up the entire screen while on other devices it may only takeup a fraction. Testing how the use of images as interactive content could workto complement questions will be included in the test process.

Plain vs. Fancy

Creating a framework for making questionnaires targeted at mobile devices intheory could be a fairly simple process but experiences from web based ques-tionnaires show that this might not be the case [9]. Computer literacy variesgreatly among people [16] and it seems safe to assume that the same goes for


mobile devices. A test was done where surveys were defined as plain or fancy.Plain questionnaires only contained black text on a white background, wherefancy questionnaires included bright colors and graphics. They found that theplain questionnaires had a higher completion rate than the fancy version [16].Some of the problems encountered with the fancy test may not be valid any-more as browser crashes are not as common of a problem with modern daybrowsers as they were in the late 90’s. However there is a potential problem ofload time that might be experienced on mobile devices since not all areas haveperfect 3G coverage or wireless LAN that provides access to a high speed Inter-net connection. Also the varying screen sizes and processor speeds may affecthow fast and how well graphics in a fancy designed questionnaire might workon mobile devices. In some ways this may be in contrast to what is proposedin [44] and [35] which say that the use of visuals can help motivate respondentsand lower non-response rate.

Single vs. Multi layout

Another important decision in questionnaire design is whether to use a single-page design or multiple-page design. Single-page design has all of the questionsand response choices on one page. A multiple-page design is composed of twoor more pages with a varying number of questions per page.

Single-page design on a mobile device could frustrate the respondent sincescrolling and access to individual questions and response options may be limiteddepending on the device. On larger touch screen devices, this may not be asbig of an issue. On devices with a small screen, a question with answer optionscould take up the entire screen requiring the respondent to constantly scrolldown to the next question. This would actually apply to both single-page andmultiple-page designs where there is more than one question per page.

The extreme version of multiple-page design is a single question per page. Hav-ing only one question per page may result in a lack of context between questions.The big picture may be lost but having multiple questions on one page may makerespondents view them as related entities [35].

However, single questions per page may be a better choice for mobile devicesas buttons can be used instead of a multiple click page where first the optionis selected and then the submit button pressed. Especially on devices wherea software cursor is navigated using a 4-way key only having to navigate toone input area may considerably lower the time spent on each page. Of coursesubmit buttons cannot be avoided in the case of open-ended and open response-option questions.


If only one question can fit the screen, then it is my theory that this will givethe respondent the exact same experience and possible loss of context as a singlequestion per page design would. In that case it seems like a much better idea toprovide the respondent with a fast and easy way to answer each question. Thismay be done by the use of buttons as mentioned in section 5.1.1. The down sideto a single question per page is that it may increase the load time and thereforeit may take longer to respond to the entire questionnaire. Choosing a techniquebased on this may require more research to test some of the above theories. Itmay be that the same theories that apply to regular web based questionnairesalso apply to web based questionnaires targeted for mobile devices.

All of the different devices available with varying screen sizes and ways of click-ing on page elements, may result in different wishes for a preferred method ofinput. On touch screen devices with a large display, it may be preferable for therespondent to have multiple questions that can be answered before proceedingto the next page. Also the difference between capacitive and resistive touchscreen devices may make for completely different wishes. However, it seemsimportant not to use different techniques based on the device used since thiscould result in different perceived context and therefore give different stimulito the respondents. Questionnaires should ensure that each respondent receivesthe same stimuli [12].

5.2.2 Early Analysis Example

To illustrate each of the question types and their use on mobile devices, a smallquestionnaire has been implemented in XHTML-MP as this is my recommen-dation for use on mobile devices. This questionnaire was not created to collectdata but simply for demonstration purposes and therefore it just submits to thenext page without collecting responses.

The questionnaire consists of 7 pages with 5 of them actually containing ques-tions. I decided to create it as close to what I have seen when it comes tostandard web questionnaire. That means that none of the optimizations likebuttons were used in here. Screenshots of each page can be found in the ap-pendix A but one page stood out as troublesome on the Nokia N96 namelyquestion 4 and a comparison with the E71 is shown in figure 5.3.

The Nokia E71 renders the page so everything fits on the screen. This alsoworked very nicely on the HTC Touch Diamond so no scrolling was needed.However, on the Nokia N96 the table was too wide to fit the screen so scrollingwas needed to view the entire page. This created a great deal of problems tar-geting some of the radio buttons on the page as the cursor steps combined with



Figure 5.3: Compare the rendering of question 4 on a Nokia E71 vs. Nokia N96

the automatic scrolling resulted in some of the fields being missed. This problemcould be resolved by zooming out on the phone to 75% but still something thatis likely to annoy most users. As I expected, the text area for use in question 5renders to the width of the screen even though the number of columns is set tomore.

To avoid the problem encountered in question 4, two different solutions can berecommended. The first is to only ask for the quality of one phone brand at atime. This solution will make it easy for the user to click through it but if thenetwork connection is being slow for some reason this solution requires manynew page loads and may for that reason alone not be the preferred way. Theother solution is to ask the respondent to rate the phone with a grade between1 and 5 where 1 would be the lowest grade and 5 the highest. 0 could thenreplace the “Don’t know” option. This solution has its disadvantages as well asthis requires the user to switch to a new text field each time to input data. Bothmethods would probably be preferred by most users over the way it works onthe Nokia N96. Both options were implemented for testing and both work asintended. I personally think Option 1 is preferable over option 2 because it ismore intuitive, even if it requires more page loads and therefore will result in amore network traffic.

Certain functions have been adapted by the device manufacturer to how thedevice is operated, like the drop down menu and how it works on the non-touch


screen Nokia phones see figure 5.4.

Figure 5.4: Drop down menu on Nokia E71.

5.3 Interactive Questionnaires

In this section I will look at adapting interactive web based questionnaires tomobile devices. This will include platform choice and various interactive ele-ments.

The use of interactive media content in questionnaires has been covered in acouple of previous projects [3] and [34] with pretty good results. Modeling realscenarios in a software program increases the understanding and may not onlyserve as a good survey tool but can also be used as part of an e-learning expe-rience. Other studies show that the use of multimedia may both be good andbad. Three important points were identified in a previous study of interactivequestionnaires [47, p. 4].

• The multimedia must match the question, otherwise the respondents willnot know how they should answer the question or ’answer the multimedia’.

• The multimedia must match reality, otherwise the respondents will notknow if they should base their answers on the multimedia or on ’real life’.

5.3 Interactive Questionnaires 73

• The respondent (and the researchers) must understand what roles themultimedia have in relation to the questions, otherwise they will not knowif the multimedia should be viewed as essential or as illustrative only.

This study does vary in the way the interactive element was implemented com-pared to the projects [3] and [34]. In this study the answers altered the appear-ance and price for a seat on a bus as features were added and selected. Since itmay be hard to compare the presentation of computer security with the seat ona bus, there may be many differences but the above points seem very relevantstill.

A big challenge with designing interactive content in questionnaires for mobiledevices will be to model reality. Reality on different devices may be very differentand therefore the results may be prone to error. Targeting a specific set ofdevices may be needed to achieve the same goals as in [3] and [34]. For example,Nokia phones running S60 3rd edition could be targeted.

5.3.1 Platform

In section 4.5 it was decided to use Flash Lite for representation of interactivecontent in questionnaires. The two main reasons for this are the ease of im-plementing things in Flash and the wide availability of Flash or Flash Lite onmobile devices. In previous projects Adobe Captivate has been used but as wasconcluded in section 4.7.3 this is not a good solution for use with mobile devices.Instead the focus is to make a framework using ActionScript 2.0 to show if thisis possible. To show this, it might be interesting to define some case whereinteractivity can be used to either improve the respondents understanding ofthe question or implement a question type that cannot easily be implementedin XHTML.

5.3.2 Interactive Elements

There are several elements that have been suggested to add as interactive com-ponents to questionnaires. Many have been tested and work well on a desktopcomputer, but how well they will work on a mobile device is still to be tested. Inthis project, I specifically look at mouse over, clickable images and word games.


Mouse Over

In [25] a test was done where a design was used to get the respondents tounderstand the question better. In the example, an email was presented in away close to what the respondent would normally see in his or her email reader.For the user to actually be able to answer the question, he or she would have tomove the cursor over the link in the email and see what the link pointed to. Therespondents in the two focus groups used in this study agreed that this form ofquestioning helped them understand the questions much better which could alsobe seen by the low amount of “Don’t know” answers, in this case about 1-2%.

As much as this way of implementing questionnaires helped improve responses,it relies on the use of a mouse over effect which is generally not available onmobile devices. A test with sending a HTML email and reading it on the NokiaE71 can be seen in figure 5.5.

Figure 5.5: View of HTML email on a Nokia E71.

The email includes the text of the HTML email but there are no active links.To see the HTML email and be able to access the links, the user had to clickon the attachment “Attachment.html” which will open the attachment in thebrowser. In the browser, the links are then active and can be clicked upon butthe user has no way of knowing where the links are going before clicking onthem. On the Nokia N810 the email is rendered within the email reader butagain there is no mouse over effect as this is a touch screen device and thereforethe only way of testing where the link points to is by clicking on it. Links

5.3 Interactive Questionnaires 75

can be included in a text message by just typing out the URL, for example“http://thesis.hjarding.dk” and the Nokia phone will transform the URL into alink that can be opened in a browser. Of course this link is then visible in themessage window and the user can decide based on that without the need formouse over effect.

This is once again a design that works very well on PCs but fails on mobiledevices because of the lack of mouse over effect. It is possible to implement amodified mouse over effect in Flash to simulate the behavior of a PC. This isnot that interesting as it would not really work on the touch screen devices andit would not simulate reality of how it works on mobile devices. This wouldbreak with the recommendations found in [47].

Another problem with this design is the difference in the mobile devices’ operat-ing systems. A file ending in “.exe” is not actually a threat to a Nokia device asit cannot execute Windows executable files. Actually it is most likely not evenpossible to execute a file designed for a desktop version of Microsoft Windowson a Windows mobile device. This would therefore make the exercise pointlesson mobile devices.

When it comes to interactive questionnaire design, we have to find completelydifferent scenarios that are relevant. Two different interactive questionnairescenarios will be considered. There are many other possible solutions for im-plementations and their designs could be altered to fulfill completely differentgoals.

Clickable Images

For this project, I will define clickable images as pictures or screenshots whereinvisible buttons are put over parts of the image and when the image is clickedon, the program performs an action. The idea for clickable images comes from [3]where Adobe Captivate is used to take a screenshot of the wireless networkselector and functionality is added so that the user can click on the most securenetwork. The idea is a really good one in my opinion but unfortunately ispretty useless on mobile devices targeting anything but specific models. Figure5.6 shows a comparison of the wireless network selector on 3 different devices toillustrate the differences between them.

As can be seen in the figure there is a big difference between the 3 devices and itcan therefore not be assumed that they will spark any sort of recognition for theusers unless they are presented with a screenshot from the device they typicallyuse. It is therefore possible that such a scenario would end up confusing some


(a) Nokia N96 (b) HTC Touch Diamond

(c) Nokia N810

Figure 5.6: Comparison of the wireless network selector on 3 different devices.


users more than it would help them.

Another issue is that a screenshot taken from the Nokia N810 would be muchwider than the native resolution of the Nokia N96 requiring the image to eitherbe scaled down to fit the screen or have to user scroll horizontally to view theentire image.

I still think the idea of clickable images is a good one and I feel it would bea good proof of concept for interactive content. Here is an example of how Ithink this could be a useful implementation. Take a screenshot of a Firefox orInternet Explorer window from a desktop computer and ask the user to click onthe area of the picture which shows that this is a secure connection web site.This would either require some scrolling around the page or just include a smallportion of the window but it is in theory possible. Also using an example like adesktop browser may very well be something most users recognize even if theyhave to scroll around on the page.

Word Games

This idea was developed by my thesis adviser Robin Sharp. It was somethingwe discussed via personal communication as an idea that could be explored inthis project.

Word game defines a game that has X boxes containing different words and Ytarget boxes or areas. The user is then asked to drag words that have similarmeaning to the same target box or area. This should be fairly easy to implementand adapt automatically to different screen sizes and layouts. A more specificdescription of the game and how it can be created can be found in chapter 6.


In this chapter, I have analyzed many of the elements that have previouslybeen used to create web surveys and looked at them more in depth to see ifthey can be adapted for use on mobile devices. I have also looked at someother problems and issues that are unique to mobile devices, such as screen sizedifferences, user input interfaces and distribution, and tried to see if the currentsolutions available would work. I feel from this analysis I can conclude thatinteractive questionnaires should be possible on mobile devices but achievingthe same results as seen on PCs is probably not feasible. That does not mean


that the use of interactive questionnaires will not be useful or successful, onlythat the results might be different from those seen on PCs since the scenariosmay be different.

Chapter 6

Creating a Test

Questionnaire

In the previous chapters I have presented a range of ideas found in other projectsand I have presented some of my own ideas as well. I have of course tried toimplement some of these in a questionnaire as a proof of concept. I have triedmany different ways of presenting answer options to try to get a feel for howwell they work.

This chapter is split up in two major parts. The first part deals with creating astandard questionnaire and the second part deals with creating some interactiveelements to test out. I will not go into detail with the actual implementationsince this is not really that relevant for this project.

6.1 Creating a Mobile Web Questionnaire

Many different survey solutions exist for creating questionnaires, so defining aframework for this purpose is not relevant. What is relevant is to implementand create a test questionnaire that can test some of the theories presented inthe previous chapters. Here is a gathered list of some of the things discussed inprevious chapters.

80 Creating a Test Questionnaire

• Keep it simple.

• Make it visually pleasing.

• Keep bandwidth utilization low.

• Ability to suspend and resume.

• Make it easy to answer.

Some of the elements like keep it simple and keep bandwidth utilization low mayseem redundant but including images in a web based questionnaire might stillkeep it simple but will quickly affect the bandwidth used. As presented earlier,there are some disagreements over whether black text on white background ispreferable to more fancy layouts. More recent studies do conclude that a nicevisual design may have a positive affect on the nonresponse error especiallyon technical questionnaires [44, p. 119]. Studies have also shown that lowresponse rates can be due to the fact that respondents have problems readingthe questions and following the questionnaire [9, p. 1314].

Allowing the respondent to suspend the questionnaire and then continue it ata later point can be very useful. When people are operating a mobile deviceon their lunch break, on the train or similar, they are easily distracted and itwould be unfortunate if these interruptions resulted in people not answeringbecause they could not continue the questionnaire at a later point. This ideahas already been implemented in other solutions so I see no need to waste timeon implementing it in this proof of concept questionnaire.

Making the questionnaires easy to answer is probably one of the harder require-ments to fulfill since this may be very dependent on the device used and theactual respondent. In general, the single-page design seems like a poor choicefor mobile devices and will therefore be discarded at this point. That leaves themultiple-page design with multiple questions per page or a single question perpage. It seems important to test both of these and do a small user test to get afeel for which is preferred by the users.

Each questionnaire will have 15 identical questions in the same order. In thesingle question per page design some questions can be skipped when providingcertain answers, this will not be implemented in the multiple questions perpage design. Since the focus here is to test out how well ideas work the actualquestions are of little interest, most are some I have come up with that arerelated to mobile devices. Originally I wanted to include the Flash componentsin here as well but due to some technical difficulties they have been moved to aseparate part, more on this in chapter 7.

6.1 Creating a Mobile Web Questionnaire 81

6.1.1 Choice of Markup Language

As discussed in section 4.2.1 there are different options for the choice of a markuplanguage. WML and C-HTML were quickly discarded as options due to theirlimitations. WML is an old technology targeted for use with WAP 1.0 and C-HTML, which is about as old as WML, is only really used in Japan. That leavesXHTML-MP the Open Mobile Alliance standard. It would also be possible touse the XHTML Basic standard published by W3C but that would limit themarkup language even more.

All of the devices used for testing here have had no problems rendering pagesbased on XHTML 1.0 Strict but full support specifications for which standardsare supported are not easy to find. It therefore seems like the safe choice is touse XHTML-MP. XHTML-MP documents can use style sheets for styling. AWAE1 user agent must support WCSS if it supports styling documents withstyle sheets [20, p. 12].

WCSS specifies a subset of CSS2 with some added WAP extensions. Since theyare either valid CSS2 style sheets or use the WAP extensions which are valid CSSsyntax they can use the media type ’text/css’. All this does not mean that alldevices supporting WCSS will render the page the same way. The specificationsays nothing about how for example a dotted line or solid line should look butonly what should be implemented to be compliant with the standard [19, p. 8].

Creating questionnaires based on these technologies should mean a fairly broadsupport on devices. The problem is that it is difficult to find out which tech-nologies are supported by which devices. For example Nokia often just listsXHTML and CSS support on their website without specifying which versions.Also, as will probably be shown in the test, basing an implementation on thesetechnologies does not mean that things will look the same on different all devices.

6.1.2 Presenting Questions

The standard presentation of questions should be reconsidered in regards totheir use on mobile devices. Many questionnaires includes some kind of headerfor each question. Finding some sort of progression identifier either in the formof a progression bar or a XXX out of YYY questions. It is my theory thatincluding a progression bar will only annoy the user since it tends to take up aconsiderable portion of the page. Instead I will try to use a design with xxx/yyyin the top right corner. This should not take up much space on the page and

1Wireless Application Environment as specified by Open Mobile Alliance.


the respondent can easily follow their progress through the questionnaire. Beloweach question and the answer options I will include a small description on whatthe user should do and how to progress to the next question.

Since it is hard to know how well a technology like CSS is supported on mobiledevices, it seems important to make sure the device will render pages and presentquestions in a somewhat acceptable way even without such support. To achievethis all parts of the questionnaire is just put in individual div blocks. CSS canthen be used to style each block separately. If CSS is not supported each divblock should just appear one after the other with no styling to them. Since Ihave no devices that does not support CSS I will not focus too much on this.That being said I believe that most modern mobile devices designed to accessthe Internet have support for CSS. How well it is supported is a different matterbut it should be there.

As mentioned earlier several studies show that visual effects like images cangreatly help people understand technical questions. I will therefore attemptedto include such visual aids in some of the questions to see if the effect is the sameon mobile devices. The images used will be screen shots taken from a NokiaN96 presenting some questions when trying to connect to a secure website.

Presentation of questions can be very important but also something like questionlength can play a huge role. Generally it has been found that keeping questionsshort and to the point is beneficial. The recommended length for a question isaround 12 words or less except for personal or sensitive questions where shortsentences may be perceived as abrupt or threatening [9, p. 1314]. This isactually something that should go well with questionnaires on mobile devicessince the short questions should work well on a mobile device.

Using Images

As mentioned previously, images can play a role in helping people understandquestions. It may also be possible to ask questions related to an included imagethat would otherwise have been very hard to articulate. A small flow relying onimages will be used to present how a connection to a secure website, that has anuntrusted, expired certificate, flows on a Nokia phone. The flow is very similaron the HTC Touch Diamond but here it only involves one step from enteringthe address.

Testing how images work on a couple of different devices is interesting. Are theimages actually helpful? It is possible that images are handled differently bythe different devices. Are the images scaled to fit the screen or do the browsers

6.1 Creating a Mobile Web Questionnaire 83

follow the height and width parameter that can be given with the image tag?

6.1.3 Presenting Answer Options

Layout of the answer options on a regular web based questionnaire is usually notsomething a designer has to be very mindful of. This often results in one answerper line with some kind of check box or radio button to check the answer. Itis my theory, that in contrast this is something to be particularly aware of onmobile devices. Again trying to reduce the amount of scrolling around on thescreen can be important but keeping the question and the answers within thescreen so that the respondent does not have to scroll at all to see all the answeroptions seems important.

Questions that have few answer options like a “Yes/No/Don’t know” questionshould be very possible to have all the answer options on the same screen evenwith one answer per line. In other situations with many more answer options itmay be beneficial to let the device do the ordering so that space is preserved,this may on the other hand result in an uneven distribution of answer optionsover the screen which many not be desirable either. A few different ways willbe presented to see how well they work.

As mentioned in section 5.2.1 there are different question types. Each of thesequestion types have their own possible ways of presenting answer options.

Open-ended questions are limited to the text field. From the simple testing donein chapter 5 it was found undesirable to use text or number input using thekeyboard or keypad unless there was no other option. As open-ended questionscan be important, one will of course be included in this test questionnaire butgenerally it is my opinion that they are a bad idea on mobile devices. There aretwo different ways of presenting text fields in web pages. The first is the inputtype text which is a one line input text field and hitting enter on the keyboardusually results in submitting the form the field is part of. The second is a textarea which can hold multiple lines of text. Both kinds can be given a lengthand the text area can also be given a height. I will include both to test howwell they work on a mobile device.

Closed-ended questions can typically have their answer options shown in 3 dif-ferent ways. The first one is the standard radio button where only one optioncan be selected at a time. This type is often found in standard web based ques-tionnaires along with the drop down list. The drop down list is also commonlyfound when all the options on the list are somewhat related. Particularly thisis common for listing things like age groups as demonstrated in chapter 5. Also


it is possible for drop down lists to be very long without using up a lot of spaceon the page. The last option for closed-ended questions is the submit button.This one will only work in the case of one question per page design. A user testshould show which one is preferred by respondents.

Open response-option is the last question type but as mentioned in section 2.1.2these should be used with caution. Long lists of options should be avoided ifpossible due to the possible bias against options further down the list. Againthese questions have their place and answer options can be done in 2 ways. Thefirst is the standard check box where each option has a little check box andmultiple responses can be checked. The other is the select box where severallines from a list can be shown simultaneously. It is then possible to scroll upand down in the list and select multiple entries. Again each option will beimplemented to text how well they work on mobile devices. And as mentionedwith the other option a user test is required to show how well each of these workfor users. I assume that the check box list is most likely the better one as thisis the one most commonly encountered in standard web based questionnaires.

6.1.4 Feedback

Combining e-learning with filling out questionnaires can have several benefits.First of it can motivate the respondent to take part in the survey but also be usedas an instructional tool. Immediate feedback can be given to the respondenttelling them about their choices which can keep them interested and motivatesthem to take part in the survey [25, p. 571].

Technical questionnaires are fraught with many difficulties but several projectsand studies have shown how some of these can be overcome by using visualaids in the form of pictures and interactive elements [25], [44], [34] and [3].Helping people understand the questions by presenting them with a situationthey may have experienced before does not necessarily mean that they knowthe right answer. If such questions are always followed by a instant feedback itcould help people learn as well. Providing the respondent with a reason why ananswer is correct or incorrect is a good way of doing this.

This may or may not be such a good solution on mobile devices due to thelimited screen size. Since explanations to technical questions can be quite longand include graphical aids that may take time to read, it is also likely to increasethe data amount transferred. Once again this is something that should be testedto see how users feel about it.

6.2 Interactive Flash Video 85

6.2 Interactive Flash Video

As mentioned in chapter 5 interactive elements have been used in many ways tohelp users understand questions but also in situations as a requirement for therespondent to be able to answer the question. An example of this is presentedin [25]. They used a mouse-over effect which as was concluded earlier is notavailable on either of the mobile devices used for testing.

It may have been possible to implement such a mouse-over effect in Flash butsince this is not something available in the regular browser or email client, thiswould hardly make much sense. It may even completely remove the intuitivepart by presenting respondents with something they are familiar with. Insteadof trying to implement such scenarios, it has been decided to try and implementtwo different solutions that can test whether or not Flash Lite interactive videosor games can be useful for questionnaires on mobile devices. To do that twodifferent scenarios have been designed, clickable image and word game.

6.2.1 Clickable Picture

The idea of this scenario is very easy. Ask the respondent to click on theimportant or specific part of a picture. Such a picture could be a screenshotfrom a computer or a mobile device. Using a screenshot from a computer willmost likely result in some scrolling around but it may be easier to find somethingthat most respondents can recognize on a regular computer.

As an example for this attempt, a screenshot of a browser window will be used.The two most commonly used browsers on desktop computers are Internet Ex-plorer and Mozilla Firefox. There are many different statistics showing varyingnumbers but most agree that Internet Explorer is the most popular browser inthe world [57]. Since this is the case using a screenshot of an Internet Explorerwindow displaying a secure connection website will be used. The user will thenbe asked to click on the place in the browser where it can be seen that this is asecure website.

If the click is correct then it will be accepted and a feedback page will bepresented to let the respondent know that it was correct. It the click was notcorrect then a feedback page will be shown letting the respondent know whereto find the right information.


6.2.2 Word Game

The word game is very simple to describe. There are X boxes containing wordsthat from now on will be referred to as word boxes. There are also Y emptyboxes and these will be called target boxes. When the game starts, the wordboxes will be aligned on the left side of the screen and the target boxes will bealigned on the right side.

The goal of the game is then to move each of the word boxes on the left to oneof the target boxes on the right. Boxes containing words related to each othershould be placed within the same target box.

Such a little game may be able to give a different insight into what meaningpeople associate with different words. In this game there will not necessarilybe a right or wrong way of filling it out but theoretically it could be possibleto ask the respondent afterwords why two words were grouped together if theresearcher felt they are unrelated.

6.2.3 Reusable Design

Both of the above mentioned implementations will hopefully be created in sucha way that the code is easily reused. One of the principles of object orienteddesign, is that modules should be written so that they can easily be extendedwithout having to change the modules [36, p. 4].

I have tried to design these small applications for testing purposes so that theycan easily be reused. Most elements have been created as classes so that theycan be inherited from or extended to new classes. ActionScript 2 is a class basedscripting language which supports inheritance, interfaces and so on making it agood object oriented language. It does have some difficulties that can be chal-lenging to deal with. Everything that is shown on the screen is a MovieClipobject. These objects are fairly easy to keep track of when they are createdusing the graphical interface in Flash CS4 but once they are created dynami-cally in ActionScript it can start getting really confusing. Creating overlappingMovieClips with click responses may very well result in both objects click func-tion being activated.

Going into a deeper discussion about all of the problems encountered duringimplementation of the two scenarios is irrelevant. Creating Flash or Flash Litecontent using Adobe Flash CS4 is fairly easy and probably also the reasonwhy Flash has been adopted by so many people. Even people with little or


no programming experience can easily create interesting Flash videos withouthaving to worry much about ActionScript. Once I started trying to createFlash and Flash Lite content completely dynamically some weaknesses wereencountered. Also getting help from tutorials or other Flash developers is arather difficult since most of them assume that you create your objects usingthe design tool and not using ActionScript.


In this chapter I have focused on some of the decisions that went into creating aproof of concept questionnaire. I have mentioned some ideas like being able tosuspend a questionnaire and return to it later and argued why it is not relevantfor this test. Choosing a markup language for creating this test questionnairewas fairly easy since XHTML-MP seems to be a better choice than most of theother options.

Finally I discussed the two different interactive Flash scenarios I have created.Also I briefly mentioned how I have tried to modularize the code so it is reusable.This seems like an important concept to prove if it should be possible to createa more generalized framework using Flash or Flash Lite.


Chapter 7

Test

Testing the two test questionnaires and the interactive Flash content has beeninteresting. I decided to split it up in two major parts. The first part is afunctionality test and the second is a user test. Each of these have also beensplit into two parts. One part dealing with the web questionnaire and the otherdealing with the Flash interactive content.

During the functionality test I have tested that each part works on the devicesavailable for testing and I offer up some personal observations. I round it offwith a small conclusion.

During the user test I asked friends and family members to sit down with meone at a time and go through the questionnaires with me. We then talked abouthow the questionnaires worked and how they felt about them.

All the material created for testing can be found and tested at http://thesis.hjarding.dk. There are links to the two test questionnaires and the interac-tive Flash content.

http://thesis.hjarding.dk


90 Test

7.1 Functionality Test

Since the programming has been divided into two parts, the testing will be splitas well. The first part will deal with the text based questionnaire and the secondpart will deal with the interactive elements. The functionality will be tested on5 of the different devices available. The Nokia phones 6220, E71, N96 and theHTC Touch Diamond. The Nokia N810 will also be used as this device is veryinteresting due to its screen size and resolution. Unfortunately the Qtek 9100will no longer turn on and therefore cannot be used for testing which is sad asthis was by far the oldest device in the line-up. On this device we might haveseen reduced support for some of the technologies used.

Opera Mini is an alternative browser for use on mobile phones. Since it is aJava MIDlet it requires a phone that can run Java mobile applications 1. TheOpera Mini browser was also used for testing on the Nokia E71 and HTC TouchDiamond along with the browsers supplied with the phones. I felt that trying adifferent browser could be beneficial and it might bring some new elements tothe table.

7.1.1 Web Based Questionnaire

All of the above mentioned devices had no problems displaying the single ques-tion per page questionnaire and all rendered it well with a few exceptions. Theuse of cascading style sheets to do all of the layout like background color andborder worked as intended. The problems showed when it came to the multiplequestions per page questionnaire.

The use of XHTML-MP and WCSS worked reasonably well on all devices al-though the Nokia phones did not render the pages correctly for the multiplequestions per page when the CLASS attribute was used on DIV tags. A quickfix was reusing ID attributes instead although that violates the XHTML stan-dard which says, what makes attributes of type ID special is that no two suchattributes can have the same value [56]. I have not researched this problem morebut it is possible that this is a flaw in the Nokia phone’s browser implementa-tion although that would be a rather serious flaw and problem for CSS on Nokiaphones. It could also mean that the Nokia phones I tested are not in compliancewith WCSS where the attribute CLASS is mandatory to implement [19, p. 10].The Nokia N810 had no problem with the class attributes but it also renderedthe page correctly using multiple identical id attributes.

1See more at www.operamini.com.

www.operamini.com

7.1 Functionality Test 91

As foreseen in section 6.1.1 the use of XHTML-MP and WCCS does not meanthat the output is identical on the different devices. The Nokia phones 6220and N96 showed very similar results but they also run the same resolution andOS so not a big surprise. The HTC Touch Diamond looks somewhat differentsince it runs at a higher resolution and therefore can show more data on thescreen. The Nokia E71 and N810 look very similar to the 6220 and N96 butthey utilize the wider screen resolution. A comparison of the 6220 and the HTCTouch Diamond can be seen in figure 7.1.

(a) Nokia 6220 (b) HTC Touch Diamond

Figure 7.1: Difference in the render result between two phones running at dif-ferent resolutions but close to the same screen size.

The higher resolution of the HTC Touch Diamond makes everything seemsmaller on the screen and it does not help with navigation. Even when us-ing the stylus it requires a good amount of accuracy to hit the fairly smallbuttons. The usability on the Nokia N810 also suffers a little due to the highresolution but the large screen makes up for the difference. Both devices arequite capable of showing and navigating the questionnaire.

Only one device had problems filling out one of the questions. The Nokia N810really had problems with the select box in question 13. This was very surprisingas the this device seemed superior when it came to ease of use. It was possible tofill out the select box but it took me several tries to get it right. See a compare

92 Test

of the select box on the Nokia N810 and Nokia N96 in figure 7.2.

(a) Nokia N96 (b) Nokia N810

Figure 7.2: Difference between select box on Nokia N96 and N810.

Up until now the testing has been done using the standard web browser suppliedwith the devices. Both of the devices running Opera Mini had no problemsshowing the pages. On the Nokia E71 Opera Mini greatly sped up answeringthe questionnaire since navigation was not done using a virtual mouse pointeroperated using the 4-way button but instead the 4-way button was used toquickly cycle through input options on each page. See figure 7.3 for a comparisonof the two browsers on the Nokia E71.

(a) Standard browser (b) Opera Mini

Figure 7.3: Difference between the Nokia E71’s standard browser and OperaMini running on the E71 showing the same page.


Images

For this part of the test, three screenshots were taken on the Nokia N96 andused in the test questionnaire. All three screenshots have a resolution of 240x320pixels. The image tag included both height and width.

� �<div id="image">

<img a l t="e s t a b l i s h i n g secure connect ion " he ight ="320" width="240"s r c="/images/n96_secure_connection . png" />

</div>� �

All of the Nokia devices present the picture at the specified resolution. Thisresults in image being slightly too big for the N96 and 6220 and therefore intro-ducing horizontal scrolling due to the presence of a vertical scroll bar. The HTCTouch Diamond does it differently. Instead of the image taking up just part ofthe screen the image is scaled to the width of the screen. It works very well butit results in vertical scrolling where none would probably have been needed ifthe image had been kept at the specified size. See figure 7.4 for a comparisonof how it looks on the Nokia N96 versus the HTC Touch Diamond.

(a) Nokia N96 (b) HTC Touch Diamond

Figure 7.4: Comparison of the same image shown on two different devices.

94 Test

Improvements

The high resolution on the Nokia N810 and HTC Touch Diamond, present somechallenges to the user. Both could really benefit from the use of larger fonts butthat is not desirable for the lower resolution devices. If the font size is increasedin the style sheet it will affect all the devices. It is possible to deliver differentstyle sheets to different devices based on the user agent but this would have tobe implemented on the server [26, p. 36]

The different browsers send user agent information to the server when con-necting to fetch a page. In appendix B can be found the information avail-able on the server for some different browsers. Unfortunately only one browsergives information that could possibly be interpreted as the resolution. Thebrowser doing that is Internet Explorer on the HTC Touch Diamond. It reports“HTTP_UA_PIXELS: 240x320” but this is actually wrong since the deviceruns at a resolution of 480x640. It is therefore not possible to base this on theuser agent as mentioned above.

As can be seen from the server information the Nokia E71 and the HTC TouchDiamond both have a variable called “HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE” containinga URL pointing to what seems to be a device specific XML document.

� �HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE: "http :// nds1 . nds . nokia . com/uaprof /NE71−1r100 . xml"HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE: "http ://www. htcmms . com . tw/gen/diamond −1.0. xml"� �

From both of these documents it is possible to extract information about thescreen resolution. Therefore if this information is given to the server is shouldbe possible to know what resolution the device is running. But knowing whatresolution a device is running will not tell anything about the actual screen size.The actual size of a character on a device with a small screen running at a lowresolution may be smaller than on a device with a larger screen running at ahigher resolution. Often when talking about screens on devices like these theterm pixels per inch (PPI) is used to describe the pixel density. The higher thepixel density is the smaller a given character will be on the screen.

The conclusion therefore is that it is probably preferable to find a font size thatworks well on a wide range of tested devices. More testing and research willhave to be done in order to find out what that is.


7.1.2 Interactive Questionnaires

As described in section 6.2 two different scenarios have been implemented totest the use of interactive content on mobile devices. As some problems wereencountered during testing when they were part of the test questionnaire, it hasbecome necessary to test each of them on their own. Neither of the Flash testscould be executed using Opera Mini as it seems this browser has no native Flashor Flash Lite support.

Word Game

Two different versions were created, one for landscape mode and one for portraitmode devices. It has been possible to start this questionnaire on all 5 devices.Moving each of the boxes with words from the left to the target boxes on theright worked as well. There is however a great difference in how easy and fastthey are to use.

On the Nokia phones without a touch screen it was very slow to move each ofthe boxes as they are moved in very small steps. It is very likely that it wouldbe possible to speed up moving the boxes but this has not been investigatedfurther.

On the touch screen devices (Nokia N810 and HTC Touch Diamond) it waspretty fast and easy to move the boxes using the stylus included with the devices.No problems were actually encountered on these devices during this test.

When it came to submitting the results by clicking send, all of the Nokia phonesfailed with an error on the screen see figure 7.5. Some effort was put into findingout why this problem occurred and generally it seems that the Nokia phonesproduced this error if submitting to window “_self” with method “POST”. Ifthere is a fix or solution to this problem it is unknown but XML.send() inActionScript 2 uses “POST” according to the documentation [1, p. 682]. It maybe possible to use method “GET” but this is not described for XML.send().

Sending the XML document and viewing the feedback page on the Nokia N810and HTC Touch Diamond worked without any problems.

96 Test

Figure 7.5: Error message received when using XML.send() on Nokia E71

Clickable Image

Testing Clickable Images was straight forward. Instead of relying on method“POST” for sending the result to the server it uses “GET”. The test worked wellon all of the devices. Since the test image is 536x595 pixels and it seemed like abad idea to scale it down to fit the screen, so some scrolling around was requiredon all devices to view the entire image. On the Nokia phones, which are alsothe lowest resolution devices, it was somewhat harder to get a good feeling forthe image due to the amount of scrolling required.

7.1.3 Conclusion

The test questionnaires created work on all of the mobile devices. There aresome kinks that need to be worked out before a final implementation can bemade. The Word Game showed how the same code can be used to createsomething that can easily be adapted to different screen sizes. The ClickableImage was more of a design test to show how an image from anywhere could beused on a mobile device to present the user with something familiar.

What did not work so well was navigation of the questionnaires on the Nokiaphones. This goes for both the standard web questionnaire and the interactiveparts. The current way that these devices work will most likely not be satisfac-

7.2 User Test 97

tory for most users. More on this in the next section. Using Opera Mini in myopinion greatly improved the web questionnaire but since it lacks Flash supportit cannot be used for the interactive part at all.

7.2 User Test

Now that it has been shown that questionnaires and interactive questionnaireson mobile devices are not only theoretically possible but also practically possible,it would be nice to ask some people who may actually become users of this whatthey think. For this purpose some friends and family members were once againused for an informal study. 3 people between the ages of 20 and 30 were testgroup 1, 3 people between 30 and 50 group 2, and last but not least 3 peopleabove 50 were group 3. All of the users personally own fairly new phones. Eachuser was asked to complete the survey on 2 devices, one with and one withouta touch screen.

They were ask not to pay too much attention to the content of the questionnaireor if their responses were right or wrong. What was more important was forthem to get an idea of what they liked and did not like. Also any suggestionsto improvements would be greatly appreciated.

7.2.1 Without Touch Screen

All users were asked to use the Nokia N96 for this part. The fairly large screenmay be helpful for people to read and understand questions but it also seemsthat the portrait mode screen type is far more common than the landscapemode found on e.g. the Nokia E71. Nokia for example only has 4 deviceswith landscape mode displays in their product lineup of around 80 current andupcoming devices found on their website.

Web Based Questionnaire

Generally people preferred the single question per page when using the NokiaN96. They felt that finding and accessing multiple questions on the same pagerequired too much scrolling around. It was also generally agreed upon that textentry like name and model should be avoided if possible due to the lack of akeyboard. Group 1 was an exception here and when asked why, it was due

98 Test

to their experience with writing text messages on similar devices. This helpedthem though they would prefer not to have to enter large amounts of text.

They all agreed that the images presented were too large. They felt that crop-ping the image and only including the actual message box would have beenenough. Group 3 was generally insecure about the questions that used imagessince they had not ever used a phone to access the Internet before.

The last important point was the choice of how to respond to questions. Therewas once again a general consensus that submit buttons should be used whereverpossible when using devices like this. Someone in group 1 did mention how allradio buttons could be replaced with an empty submit button and then havethe response text next to the button. This was something I had not considered.

Interactive Parts

The Word Game was very frustrating to most of the participants and most ofthem gave their opinion about it before having moved all of the boxes withwords to the target boxes. It was especially the slow movement of the boxesthat annoyed people but in group 3 the rather large steps of the cursor whenmoving around the cursor outside of word boxes was confusing. 2 of the peoplein group 1 figured out how to use the larger steps when outside word boxes tomake a faster return to grab another word box.

Clickable images were unproblematic. All of the participants had seen an In-ternet Explorer window before or at least knew what they were looking for.All were able to click on the little padlock icon and received the feedback pagewithout problems. A couple of the people from group 1 and 2 suggested thatthis had been used instead of the images with the response options afterward.But when they considered that this would effectively eliminate the option for a“Don’t know” response and maybe force some people to guess.

7.2.2 With Touch Screen

Each of the participants were offered to use either the Nokia N810 or HTCTouch Diamond for this part. Everyone chose to use the Nokia device due tothe larger screen and the presence of a real keyboard.

There were some problems that occurred that were unrelated to the question-naires. Members of group had some issues with how to get the keyboard to

7.2 User Test 99

write numbers but they were solved with a little assistance from me.

Web Based Questionnaire

Once again people preferred the single question per page but most of themagreed that 2 or 3 questions could be accepted on the same page if they werestrongly related. Text entry on this device went much more smoothly and ingroup 1 and 2 there was a general consensus that they could accept filling outopen-ended questions on a device with a keyboard like this.

The use of images was also better received since it required less scrolling to seethe entire image. Again cropping the image to only hold the message box wouldhave been preferred.

The use of radio buttons and check boxes went much more smoothly using thetouch screen and even though it took some people a few tries to learn it, itworked well. The submit buttons were not as big of a wish in this situationalthough they were still preferred.

The only part where everyone seemed to struggle was the select box on theNokia N810 as mentioned in section 7.1.1. None of the participants found agood way of filling out this box.

Interactive Parts

The Word Game worked well for everyone and all participants preferred usingthe touch screen device over the other. One unintentional feature was foundby one of the participants that decided to place a word box so that it touchedtwo target boxes at the same time. This actually resulted in the word beingsubmitted in both groups. Fixing this would be easy by just increasing the spacebetween target boxes but it may also be a feature that could be interesting todescribe and include in the game info.

Clickable Images were also very interesting. Two participants made erroneousclicks by being a little imprecise with the stylus. This may indicate that aslightly larger margin around the little padlock should be considered correct.

100 Test

7.2.3 Other User Notes

Everyone agreed that having a touch screen device would make them much morelikely to respond to a questionnaire on a mobile device. Generally they all agreedthat the length of questionnaires should be kept to a minimum. Some even feltthat the option to suspend it and return to it later was of very low importanceas there was a high probability that they would forget to do so. They all likedthe idea of interactive elements in the questionnaires. Not only were they a helpbut they also made it more interesting and fun.


Most of the test group shared my opinion that the intuitive touch screen onthe Nokia N810 was the easiest to use of the two devices tested. The slow andcumbersome way the Nokia N96 filled out questionnaires is far from optimal andI feel was the reason this was the least preferred device. It is possible that theusers might have been more positive toward the Nokia N96 had they been usingOpera Mini instead of the standard browser. Since Opera Mini does not supportthe interactive content I decided against having the users try this browser.

The interactive content showed some minor issues such as a couple of erroneousclicks in the clickable image and that words could be part of two target boxes inthe word game, these were not very important to the overall experience of howwell interactive questionnaires worked. The issues found were interesting to seeas they revealed something I had not thought to test for.

Chapter 8

Conclusion

In this thesis I have examined how standard and interactive questionnaires canbe adapted to, distributed to and filled out on mobile devices. An importantfocus has been platform independence and ease of adapting it to a wide range ofdevices. All the elements for creating and using questionnaires on mobile devicesare there but that does not mean that creating them is without difficulties. Soin short:

Is it possible to create a framework for standard and interactive questionnairesfor use on mobile devices? Yes it is possible. The challenge as it turns out isnot only in creating interactive content for mobile questionnaires. It is also increating the standard questionnaires which the interactive content is added to.I have shown how XHTML-MP and WCSS can provide a solid foundation forthe standard questionnaires. I have also shown how Flash Lite can be used tocreate interactive content that is easily adapted to different screen resolutionsand layouts. But I also feel that interactive questionnaires on mobile devicesare faced with a range of difficulties. The biggest problem is how much securityand usage differs between devices. Interactive questionnaires will therefore haveto be tailored to a narrow set of devices with similar specifications and operat-ing system or individual questionnaires will have to be created for each of thedifferent devices in the line up.

102 Conclusion

8.1 Difficulties

In the desktop world of computing, old and new computers are all commonlyoperated with a standard size keyboard and a mouse. It does not really matterwhether the operating system is Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft WindowsVista, Mac OS X or Linux since in general they are very much alike. A browserwindow on a 17 inch monitor looks very much like the browser window on a30 inch monitor so it is easy for people to recognize scenarios and programs.This is not the case on mobile devices as we have seen. The devices are verydifferent, the operating systems are different and the software running on themis different.

The list of problems, difficulties and challenges for creating questionnaires onmobile devices is quite long but I will list some the major ones I have encounteredand try to reason if and how thy can be resolved.

• User Input Interface

• Varying screen sizes and layout

• Standards support

• Flash and Flash Lite

8.1.1 User Input Interface

This term covers both text entry and pointing device. There is a big differencein how a modern touch screen device is operated compared to how a moreconventional mobile phone with a keypad is operated. Where the users in theuser test found that filling out questionnaires on a touch screen device was veryeasy and fast, they found it slow and frustrating to do it on the non-touch screendevice.

I feel confident that this problem will resolve itself in the future. I have no doubtthat the future is devices like the Nokia N810, Apple iPhone and HTC Hero.I am also fairly confident that the resistive touch screen found on for instancethe Nokia N810 will be replaced with capacitive touch screens or maybe evensomething better or different in the future.

Sadly I did not have full access to a capacitive touch screen device during anal-ysis, creation and testing of my proof of concept questionnaires. I was very

8.1 Difficulties 103

pleased though that a quick test with an Apple iPhone and a HTC Hero re-vealed no major problems.

8.1.2 Screen Size, Resolution and Layout

The variation in screen size, resolution and layout did not prove to be as bigof a problem for the standard questionnaires as I had personally expected. Ofcourse some of the early testing done in section 5.2.2 showed that it wouldbe beneficial to be mindful of the platform they are being developed for andnot create content that would be very wide on the screen. Especially verticalscrolling caused some issues on the Nokia N96.

The layout caused some problems and required for example the Flash exampleWord Game to be exported in two formats. I am fairly sure that this will notbe a problem in the future. Several devices like Apple’s iPhone, HTC’s Heroand Nokia’s 5800 ExpressMusic automatically changes the layout of the screendepending on how the device is held.

The resolution is something that will cause problems for many years to come Iam afraid. Just because two devices have the same size screen does not meanthat they are running the same resolution on them. This is a big problem forFlash content but more on that later. A much more immediate issue is thata font size that is large and clear on one device will be very small on anotherdevice. This was clearly seen in the comparison of the Nokia 6220 and HTCTouch Diamond in figure 7.1. This may not be as big of a problem in the futureas modern devices provide very good zoom capabilities in the browser.

8.1.3 Standards Support

The choice of XHTML-MP and WCSS seemed like an obvious choice for cre-ating the standard questionnaire and therefore it was also very surprising toencounter the problems where the Nokia phones would not use the CLASS at-tribute correctly. Both the CSS file and the XHTML file were reported as errorfree when run through the W3C Validators on http://www.w3.org althoughthat just makes sure syntax is correct.

Also the problems encountered with the Nokia phones being unable to postvariables from Flash to a website was surprising. There may be a way aroundthis problem but if I had not had a Nokia phone to test with I would not haverealized that this was a problem.

http://www.w3.org

104 Conclusion

The lack of proper support for some very well documented features is a bigproblem. Also the lack of readily available documentation for which standardsare supported by which devices is problematic, this is a very common way forNokia to report Supported markup languages: HTML, XHTML MP, WML,CSS. There is usually no mention of what versions are supported. There arethousands of different mobile devices out there and it will be almost impossiblenot to mention impractical to get a hold of and test content on all of thesedevices.

8.1.4 Flash and Flash Lite

As decided in chapter 4 Flash is the best platform for interactive content onmobile devices but that does not mean that Flash is the perfect solution. Flashand Flash Lite suffer from a range of limitations when it comes to using themon mobile devices. Flash videos are created at a specific resolution when theyare exported. If multiple resolutions are to be supported then multiple Flashvideos will have to be exported. Since it is difficult to find out which resolutiona device is running at it makes it hard to determine which Flash video to sendto a device.

Flash is constantly evolving and even though ActionScript 3 and Flash 10 donot bring resolutions to the aspect of how to determine screen size and adaptcontent to a screen size it may bring such features in the future, who knows.

8.2 Future

So has all this research and testing been just to conclude that questionnaires,whether standard or interactive, on mobile devices is a bad idea? Not at all. Thedevices are getting there. As more and more of the old fashioned mobile phonesare replaced with fancy new touch screen multipurpose devices, I believe thatthere will definitely be a market for surveys targeting mobile devices. Also ifFlash and Flash Lite support could be more consistent across devices I really dobelieve that interactive questionnaires is the way to go. I would not be surprisedif future questionnaires on computers and mobile devices were more a type ofgame than a computer representation of paper questionnaires.

What is the perfect mobile device for this? This is much harder to say becauseit is a matter of personal preference. The Apple iPhone and HTC Hero havebecome very popular devices but in my personal opinion the lack a physical

8.2 Future 105

keyboard is a major drawback. I am a much bigger fan of the Nokia N810 In-ternet Tablet but I do really prefer the capacitive touch screen over the resistivevariant. I am very much looking forward to Nokia releasing the N900 which isbasically a N810 with phone capabilities in a slightly smaller case. Again thisis a personal preference and by no means the definitive solution for everyone.

8.2.1 Future Research

I feel that this topic should be revisited sometime over the next couple of years.I think the devices are almost there but it is difficult to say how long it willtake for enough customers to upgrade their current devices to ones that willbetter support mobile surveys. I also think it would be very interesting to seean actual implementation of a survey done targeted at a much larger user basethan the few users I had in my user test.

106 Conclusion

Appendix A

Screenshots of Test

Questionnaire 1

This appendix shows screenshots of each page of simple analysis test done inchapter 5. These are all screenshots taken on a Nokia E71. It seemed pointlessto include screenshots from all available devices. Important differences betweendevices are shown in the actual report.

108 Screenshots of Test Questionnaire 1

109


111


A.1 Alternative Version 1

The following are screenshots of the alternative version 1 of question 4 or page5.

A.1 Alternative Version 1 113


A.2 Alternative Version 2

The following is a screenshot of the alternative version 2 of question 4 or page5.

A.2 Alternative Version 2 115


Appendix B

Browser Information

Listing of some different phones and the server side environment information.This includes some user agent information describing the browser.

B.1 Nokia E71 standard browser

DOCUMENT_ROOT: / usr / l o c a l / n e t s i t e / t h e s i s /wwwGATEWAY_INTERFACE: CGI/1 .1HTTP_ACCEPT: text /html , t ext / css , mul t ipart /mixed , app l i c a t i on / java−archive , app l i c a t i on / java , app l i c a t i on /x−java−arHTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET: i so −8859−1, utf −8; q=0.7 , ∗ ; q=0.7HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING: gzip , d e f l a t e , x−gzip , i d e n t i t y ; q=0.9HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: en ; q=1.0 , da ; q=0.5 , no ; q=0.5 , i s ; q=0.5HTTP_HOST: t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dkHTTP_REFERER: http :// t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dk/HTTP_USER_AGENT: Moz i l l a /5 .0 (SymbianOS /9 . 2 ; U; S e r i e s 6 0 /3 .1 NokiaE71 −1/200 .21 .118 ; P r o f i l e /MIDP−2.0 Conf igurat ionHTTP_X_NOKIA_MUSICSHOP_BEARER: WLANHTTP_X_NOKIA_MUSICSHOP_VERSION: 1 . 0 . 0HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE: "http :// nds1 . nds . nokia . com/uaprof /NE71−1r100 . xml"MOD_PERL: mod_perl / 2 . 0 . 4MOD_PERL_API_VERSION: 2PATH: / usr / l o c a l / bin : / usr /bin : / binQUERY_STRING:REMOTE_ADDR: 86 . 4 8 . 5 4 . 8REMOTE_PORT: 59667REQUEST_METHOD: GETREQUEST_URI: / p e r l /env . p lSCRIPT_FILENAME: / usr / l o c a l / n e t s i t e / t h e s i s / p e r l /env . p lSCRIPT_NAME: / pe r l /env . p l

118 Browser Information

SERVER_ADDR: 84 . 16 . 252 . 191SERVER_ADMIN: webmaster@hjarding . dkSERVER_NAME: t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dkSERVER_PORT: 80SERVER_PROTOCOL: HTTP/1.1SERVER_SIGNATURE: <address>Apache /2 . 2 . 9 ( Debian ) PHP/5.2.6−1+ lenny3 with Suhosin−Patch mod_ssl / 2 . 2 . 9 OpenSSL /0 . 9 . 8 g m

SERVER_SOFTWARE: Apache /2 . 2 . 9 ( Debian ) PHP/5.2.6−1+ lenny3 with Suhosin−Patch mod_ssl / 2 . 2 . 9 OpenSSL /0 . 9 . 8 g mod_perl / 2 .

B.2 Nokia E71 Opera Mini

DOCUMENT_ROOT: / usr / l o c a l / n e t s i t e / t h e s i s /wwwGATEWAY_INTERFACE: CGI/1 .1HTTP_ACCEPT: text /html , app l i c a t i on /xml ; q=0.9 , app l i c a t i on /xhtml+xml , image/png , image/ jpeg , image/ g i f , image/x−xbitmHTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET: i so −8859−1, utf −8, utf −16, ∗ ; q=0.1HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING: de f l a t e , gzip , x−gzip , i d en t i t y , ∗ ; q=0HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: en , en ; q=0.9HTTP_CONNECTION: Keep−Alive , TEHTTP_HOST: t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dkHTTP_REFERER: http :// t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dk/HTTP_TE: de f l a t e , gzip , chunked , i d en t i t y , t r a i l e r sHTTP_USER_AGENT: Opera /9 .60 (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini /4 . 2 . 14320/960 ; U; en ) Presto / 2 . 2 . 0HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR: 86 . 4 8 . 5 4 . 8HTTP_X_OPERAMINI_FEATURES: advanced , f i l e_system , f o l d i n gHTTP_X_OPERAMINI_PHONE: Nokia # E71HTTP_X_OPERAMINI_PHONE_UA: Moz i l l a /5 .0 (SymbianOS /9 . 2 ; U; S e r i e s 6 0 /3 .1 NokiaE71 −1/200 .21 .118 ; P r o f i l e /MIDP−2.0 Conf igMOD_PERL: mod_perl / 2 . 0 . 4MOD_PERL_API_VERSION: 2PATH: / usr / l o c a l / bin : / usr /bin : / binQUERY_STRING:REMOTE_ADDR: 94 . 246 . 126 . 170REMOTE_PORT: 44035REQUEST_METHOD: GETREQUEST_URI: / p e r l /env . p lSCRIPT_FILENAME: / usr / l o c a l / n e t s i t e / t h e s i s / p e r l /env . p lSCRIPT_NAME: / pe r l /env . p lSERVER_ADDR: 84 . 16 . 252 . 191SERVER_ADMIN: webmaster@hjarding . dkSERVER_NAME: t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dkSERVER_PORT: 80SERVER_PROTOCOL: HTTP/1.1SERVER_SIGNATURE: <address>Apache /2 . 2 . 9 ( Debian ) PHP/5.2.6−1+ lenny3 with Suhosin−Patch mod_ssl / 2 . 2 . 9 OpenSSL /0 . 9 . 8 g m

SERVER_SOFTWARE: Apache /2 . 2 . 9 ( Debian ) PHP/5.2.6−1+ lenny3 with Suhosin−Patch mod_ssl / 2 . 2 . 9 OpenSSL /0 . 9 . 8 g mod_perl / 2 .

B.3 Nokia N810 standard browser

DOCUMENT_ROOT: / usr / l o c a l / n e t s i t e / t h e s i s /wwwGATEWAY_INTERFACE: CGI/1 .1HTTP_ACCEPT: text /xml , app l i c a t i on /xml , app l i c a t i on /atom+xml , app l i c a t i on / r s s+xml , app l i c a t i on /xhtml+xml , t ext /html ; q=0.9 ,HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING: gzip , d e f l a t eHTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: enHTTP_CONNECTION: keep−a l i v eHTTP_HOST: t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dkHTTP_KEEP_ALIVE: 300HTTP_REFERER: http :// t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dk/HTTP_USER_AGENT: Moz i l l a /5 .0 (X11 ; U; Linux armv6l ; en−GB; rv : 1 . 9 a6pre ) Gecko/20080828 F i r e f ox /3 .0 a1 Tablet browser 0

B.4 HTC Touch Diamond Internet Explorer 119

MOD_PERL: mod_perl / 2 . 0 . 4MOD_PERL_API_VERSION: 2PATH: / usr / l o c a l / bin : / usr /bin : / binQUERY_STRING:REMOTE_ADDR: 86 . 4 8 . 5 4 . 8REMOTE_PORT: 51779REQUEST_METHOD: GETREQUEST_URI: / p e r l /env . p lSCRIPT_FILENAME: / usr / l o c a l / n e t s i t e / t h e s i s / p e r l /env . p lSCRIPT_NAME: / pe r l /env . p lSERVER_ADDR: 84 . 16 . 252 . 191SERVER_ADMIN: webmaster@hjarding . dkSERVER_NAME: t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dkSERVER_PORT: 80SERVER_PROTOCOL: HTTP/1.1SERVER_SIGNATURE: <address>Apache /2 . 2 . 9 ( Debian ) PHP/5.2.6−1+ lenny3 with Suhosin−Patch mod_ssl / 2 . 2 . 9 OpenSSL /0 . 9 .

SERVER_SOFTWARE: Apache /2 . 2 . 9 ( Debian ) PHP/5.2.6−1+ lenny3 with Suhosin−Patch mod_ssl / 2 . 2 . 9 OpenSSL /0 . 9 . 8 g mod_per

B.4 HTC Touch Diamond Internet Explorer

DOCUMENT_ROOT: / usr / l o c a l / n e t s i t e / t h e s i s /wwwGATEWAY_INTERFACE: CGI/1 .1HTTP_ACCEPT: ∗/∗HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING: gzip , d e f l a t eHTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: daHTTP_CONNECTION: Keep−Al iveHTTP_HOST: t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dkHTTP_UA_COLOR: co l o r16HTTP_UA_CPU: ARMHTTP_UA_OS: Windows CE ( Pocket PC) − Vers ion 5 .2HTTP_UA_PIXELS: 240x320HTTP_UA_VOICE: TRUEHTTP_USER_AGENT: HTC_P3700 Moz i l l a /4 .0 ( compatible ; MSIE 6 . 0 ; Windows CE; IEMobile 7 . 11 )HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE: "http ://www. htcmms . com . tw/gen/diamond −1.0. xml"MOD_PERL: mod_perl / 2 . 0 . 4MOD_PERL_API_VERSION: 2PATH: / usr / l o c a l / bin : / usr /bin : / binQUERY_STRING:REMOTE_ADDR: 86 . 4 8 . 5 4 . 8REMOTE_PORT: 1169REQUEST_METHOD: GETREQUEST_URI: / p e r l /env . p lSCRIPT_FILENAME: / usr / l o c a l / n e t s i t e / t h e s i s / p e r l /env . p lSCRIPT_NAME: / pe r l /env . p lSERVER_ADDR: 84 . 16 . 252 . 191SERVER_ADMIN: webmaster@hjarding . dkSERVER_NAME: t h e s i s . h ja rd ing . dkSERVER_PORT: 80SERVER_PROTOCOL: HTTP/1.1SERVER_SIGNATURE: <address>Apache /2 . 2 . 9 ( Debian ) PHP/5.2.6−1+ lenny3 with Suhosin−Patch mod_ssl / 2 . 2 . 9 OpenSSL /0 . 9 .

SERVER_SOFTWARE: Apache /2 . 2 . 9 ( Debian ) PHP/5.2.6−1+ lenny3 with Suhosin−Patch mod_ssl / 2 . 2 . 9 OpenSSL /0 . 9 . 8 g mod_per

120 Browser Information

Appendix C

Screenshots of single

question per page

This appendix shows screenshots of each page of the 15 question single questionper page test questionnaire created. These were all screenshots taken on aNokia N96. It seemed pointless to include screenshots from all available devices.Important differences between devices are shown in the actual report.

122 Screenshots of single question per page

(a) Question 1 (b) Question 2

(c) Question 3 (d) Question 4

123

(e) Question 5 (f) Question 6

(g) Question 7-1 (h) Question 7-2


(i) Question 8-1 (j) Question 8-2

(k) Question 9-1 (l) Question 9-2

125

(m) Question 10 (n) Question 11

(o) Question 12 (p) Question 13


(q) Question 14 (r) Question 15

Appendix D

Screenshots of multiple

questions per page

This appendix shows screenshots of each of the 15 questions from the multiplequestions per page test questionnaire created. These were all screenshots takenon a Nokia N96. It seemed pointless to include screenshots from all availabledevices. Important differences between devices are shown in the actual report.

128 Screenshots of multiple questions per page

129

130 Screenshots of multiple questions per page

Appendix E

CD

The CD included with this report contains the following:

• A copy of all screenshots taken in PNG and EPS format.

• A copy of all elements created for the website http://thesis.hjarding.dk.

• All source code in ActionScript files. The .fla files are not included.

• A PDF version of this report.



132 CD

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