Providing future telecommunication services to naive users

Abstract

The RACE II LUSI (Likeable and Usable Service Interfaces) project has investigated the use of existing and future telecommunications services by the general public. The project has an underlying premise that the requirements of business users in the telecommunications marketplace have been extensively dealt with, however, the particular needs of members of the general public are often overlooked.

The paper will present case studies of two such RACE experiments and compare these evaluations with the experiences of the LUSI project evaluations. The case studies are;

The provision of an expert system and PC integrated videoconferencing facilities for rural farming in Bari in the South of Italy. Making use of CD ROM, the World Wide Web, and the TELES.VISION videoconferencing system. The study was conducted as part of the RACE AREA project.

The installation of a public access multimedia shopping and information kiosk in Basel, Switzerland. This study was conducted as part of the RACE ESSAI project

Recently a great deal has been written about the role of human factors and usability issues in the future of telecommunications, and some commentators have even gone so far as to suggest that usability is not a primary factor in determining the success of a new system. However the reported studies lend strong support to the case for usability in services.

The overriding factor affecting the uptake of new services studied by the LUSI project is that most of the target customers are not aware that they need the service, in fact, some may even be resistant to the service. This is to some extent due to the fact that they are not technology literate, and in some circumstances they are technophobic.

The most startling empirical finding from the evaluations was that the first impressions of the ease of use of a new service is absolutely crucial in the acceptability of that service.