BY PETER taRaSeWICh DESIGNING MOBILE COMMERCE APPLICATIONS EXPLORING THE IMPORTANCE A USABLE INTERFACE TO ANY AND UNTANGLING THE APPLICATION IS CRITICAL FOR COMPLEXITY OF THE NOTION EXAMPLE, PROPERLY DESIGNED OF CONTEXT. WEB SITES HELP ENSURE USERS FIND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING FOR AND SUCCESSFULLY PERFORM ONLINE TRANSACTIONS GIVEN THE UNIQUENESS OF THE M-COMMERCE ENVIRON- MENT II, GOOD INTERFACE DESIGN IS ESPECIALLY DIFFI- CULT TO ACHIEVE [IO. MOBILE DEVICES ARE TYPICALLY SMALLER THAN THEIR DESKTOP COUNTERPARTS, HAVE LESS PROCESSING POWER. AND COMMUNICATE IN LOW- BANDWIDTH ENVIRONMENTS. MOBILE APPLICATIONS MUST BE CAREFULLY DESIGNED TO ACCOUNT FOR THESE LIMITA- tions. But an even greater challenge to I ing dock or in a moving automobile designing successful m-commerce Before mobile devices, computer applications, and their interfaces, is applications had to consider only dealing with context. People can now fairly limited set of contextual con- conceivably be anywhere at anytime cerns. These might include organiza and use a mobile application, unlike tional culture, user characteristics the traditional(wired)Web where a(skills, education), system goals,and Internet connection is the working environment(lighting, required. Applications designed for a noise). But users performed tasks on relatively stable office or home envi- computers that remained stationary. ronment may not work well on a load- Context concerns could be taken into COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM December 2003/Vo. 46. No 12 57COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM December 2003/Vol. 46, No. 12 57 A usable interface to any application is critical. For example, properly designed Web sites help ensure users find what they are looking for and successfully perform online transactions. Given the uniqueness of the m-commerce environ￾ment [11], good interface design is especially diffi￾cult to achieve [10]. Mobile devices are typically smaller than their desktop counterparts, have less processing power, and communicate in low￾bandwidth environments. Mobile applications must be carefully designed to account for these limita￾tions. But an even greater challenge to designing successful m-commerce applications, and their interfaces, is dealing with context. People can now conceivably be anywhere at anytime and use a mobile application, unlike the traditional (wired) Web where a physical Internet connection is required. Applications designed for a relatively stable office or home envi￾ronment may not work well on a load￾ing dock or in a moving automobile. Before mobile devices, computer applications had to consider only a fairly limited set of contextual con￾cerns. These might include organiza￾tional culture, user characteristics (skills, education), system goals, and the working environment (lighting, noise). But users performed tasks on computers that remained stationary. Context concerns could be taken into EXPLORING THE IMPORTANCE AND UNTANGLING THE COMPLEXITY OF THE NOTION OF CONTEXT. DESIGNING MOBILE COMMERCE APPLICATIONS BY PETER TARASEWICH