The video was originally posted on YouTube this week by the students who made it, as part of a project for a Harvard University summer course, "." It was later made private, but then from cache by Surur at WMPoweruser.com. His had almost no details on the video's background.

SMARTPHONE COMPARISON:

The class is taught by , who is a professor of business administration at University of Pittsburgh. His main research areas are, according to his biography page, "human-computer interaction, with specific attention to user attitudes, behavior, and performance," and his teaching interests include human-computer interaction and electronic commerce. He's been an adjunct professor for the Harvard summer program for several years.

The six-week summer course focused on human factors and corporate website design. Galletta gave the students a menu of related class projects, including a usability comparison of the four smartphone platforms. That's the one they chose.

The result, and intent, of the project was a "fun initiation into usability testing but NOT a definitive or reliable test of the platforms," Galletta says. His project requirements were to "compare the usability of the four platforms in an objective way, with points taken off for being subjective" and "squish it into 10 minutes or less [on video]."