Mobile usability
Ben Logan - Published: 19th Feb 2009 18.14 GMT
What are the key considerations for mobile and handheld usability? What should you be doing to improve the end user experience?
Mobile web users
Today's mobile devices are multi-functional devices capable of hosting a broad range of applications for both business and consumer use.
People are rapidly changing the way they view and consume websites and the time spent on mobile and handheld devices has dramatically increased.
The challenge designers now face is that the mobile and handheld market is more varied than ever before.
- There are about 2500 phone models
- With around 500 different operators
- More than 25 browsers
- About 14 different screensizes
Mobile designers will need to consider:
- Different handset designs and vendors, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Apple, LG, HTC, Motorola etc
- Different browsers e.g. Opera mini, Android, Blackberry, Safari, Openwave, Internet Explorer
- Different operating systems e.g. Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm, Mobile Linux etc
- Different screensizes e.g. 128x128, 176x220, 128x160, 240x320 etc
- Different markup languages e.g. WML (x)HTML
- Different interaction techniques e.g. scroll wheel, joystick, stylus, soft keys, touch screen etc
Examples of web sites accessed on mobile
We have come up with a brief and very generalised list of sites that might be accessed by users on their mobile:
What are some of the characteristics of mobile web users?
Mobile web users are fairly tech savvy and will use their handset on a daily basis.
We have highlighted a few characteristics of the mobile web users:
- Data snacking - Browsing time is a factor
- Early failure in the site will result in a non-returning user
- Prefer to scroll than to click
What are some of the issues mobile users face?
Mobile web users are at present in for a bit of a disappointment as a lot of sites are not engineered with mobile use in mind:
- Lack of clarity in navigation
- Link presentation can be confusing
- Consistency in terminology
- Consistency in visual design
- Lack of white space and subtle spacing in interface
- Poor colour contrast schemes
- Loading time
- Scrolling pages
- Badly implemented code e.g. JavaScript
- Text input fields can be painful to fill in
- Lack of error messages and support
- Limited display size
How can you improve the mobile experience?
When it comes to mobile experience there are a number of things you can do to improve this for the end user:
- Design a separate site based around mobile use and high priority tasks on your current site
- Consider using handset detection optimised for specific mobile phones
- Consider typography across different hand sets and use a universal font e.g. arial
- Test on as many handsets as you can and don't rely on emulators
- When testing try and capture body language as well as what's on the mobile device
- Make immediate visual changes whilst waiting for network or another action
Need some more information?
If you would like to learn more about how we can help you run and co-ordinate Usability research then please call us or email us below and we would be happy to help out where we can.
We are ready to answer your questions right now, so please contact us by telephone on +44 (0)207 168 7526 or drop us a quick email info@spotlessinteractive.com and we will do our best to help you with any questions you might have.
