Technovangelism

The most frustrating part of surfing the web on my iPhone isn’t lack of flash. It isn’t sites that don’t have a mobile optimized version or native interface. It is sites that spent all their time and effort building a great mobile web interface, and not a second of actual user testing.

Often when reading articles, I am force redirected to the mobile-optimized version of a site. I find this perfectly acceptable and appreciated until to I am directed to one of those sites. Those sites redirect all mobile browsers to the mobile version of the homepage. Not the page I was on or want to see, but a page that leaves me completely stranded and helpless. There is a good chance that the page I want is linked to from the homepage, but how I am supposed to know which is the right link? Odds are I arrived there from a direct link via Twitter or RSS and now have close to zero context in helping me find what I was looking for.

What makes my helplessness even more frustrating is knowing how easily this problem should have been caught. Whoever made the site probably viewed it and “tested” it plenty, but never got around to actually using it.