More usability blunders on MMS...

Apparently, the crowds at 3GSM are talking about usability. They've realised that there's a connection between how much a service is used and how usable it is.

Duh!

I've lost count of the posts and articles I've written on this topic. Fellow mobilist Barbara Ballard is now blogging on this topic alone. She recently posted on "Mobile Usability Challenges for 2005".

Today I was playing around with the MMS composer on the NEC 338 on Three's network. I uncovered several usability problems in the whole experience.

Each time I tried to send the MMS from the device, it complained "Message size too large". What it didn't tell me is how big, or small, the message should be. The MMS composer didn't complain either. So I had to play around with the message elements until it worked. That's not very usable.

I sent the message to my Nokia 6600 on Voda. No problems.

Then I sent it to my Blackberry 7230, also on Voda. The BB doesn't support MMS, so I got a text message telling me where to go collect my MMS. This turned out to be a totally unusable possibility.

I clicked the link and was directed to a massive web page, not at all designed for mobiles, where I had to enter my mobile number and some obscure password, which I couldn't see because I now had my browser open, not the inbox.

Now, why can't the site detect I'm accessing it from a mobile device and format the page accordingly? Why are such blunders still taking place? Why? Why? Why?

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