PDA usability

Hiser has conducted independent research to evaluate several PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant devices). Presently there are two main platforms used on PDAs – Windows Mobile (formerly Pocket PC and Windows CE) and Palm.

The objective of the research was to evaluate the two main platforms to gain an understanding of the overall user experience and how environmental factors can impact on this experience. This followed Hiser projects in which PDA-based applications were evaluated for industry-specific tasks, and which revealed a range of problems.

Both platforms were evaluated to look at their merits and to discover the benefits of one over the other for various tasks. The devices were tested in a variety of different situations and settings to emulate their context of use in the real world, and were conducted with users who had a range of experience levels.