This link has been bookmarked by 268 people . It was first bookmarked on 17 Feb 2009, by Johannes Baeck.
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Same with mobile. Last year, it might have been cool simply to have an app. Now, that app better be good. Requirements have gone up. Luckily, our new research shows that mobile sites and apps have been improving their usability, even though it's still far below that of regular websites accessed from a desktop computer.
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In the new research, the average success rate was 62%. Better, but only 3 percentage points better in 2 years. Although this improvement rate might seem disappointingly slow, it's about the same as the pace we recorded for desktop Web use in 263 studies over the last 12 years.
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- Mobile site success rate: 64%
- Full site success rate: 58%
Measured usability varied substantially, depending on whether people used a mobile site or a full website. (By way of definition, a "mobile" site is one designed specifically for use on mobile devices, whereas a "full" site is a regular website designed mainly for use on a full-screen desktop computer.)
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This leads to the first, and maybe most important, guideline for improving the mobile user experience: design a separate mobile site. Don't expect users to access the same site from both desktop and mobile browsers. (The exception would be people using large-sized tablets like the iPad. Our separate studies of iPad users show that they do fairly well browsing full sites.)
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A second key guideline is to have clear, explicit links from the full site to the mobile site and from the mobile site to the full site. Unfortunately, search engines often fail their mobile users and erroneously point them to the full sites, even for companies that offer mobile sites with much better user experience. As long as users don't need to navigate, they might actually be okay when they're dumped into a site that works poorly on their phone. Search engines frequently offer deep links to pages directly related to the user's query. But if users want to know more than what that one page offers, they'll suffer if they're stuck on the full site. That's when the link to the mobile site will come in handy. (And why the search engines should have pointed to the mobile site in the first place.)
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While a mobile site is good, a mobile app is even better. We measured a success rate of 76% when people used mobile apps, which is much higher than the 64% recorded for mobile-specific website
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The main news? From the 1st to the 2nd edition of our mobile usability report, the number of design guidelines increased from 85 to 210. This is partly because we now know much more about mobile usability and partly because requirements have increased. Sites and apps have definitely gotten better, raising the bar for acceptable user experience, and thus increasing the number of guidelines that designers should follow.
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Also, users have become more aware of horizontal swiping than they were in our previous research. The horizontal swipe gesture is often used to "flip" through deck-of-cards or carousel features. Swiping is still less discoverable than most other ways of manipulating mobile content, so we recommend including a visible cue when people can swipe, or they might never do so and thus miss most of your offerings. Also, you should avoid swipe ambiguity: don't employ the same swipe gesture to mean different things on different areas of the same screen. This recommendation is the same for mobile phones and tablet usability, showing the similarity between these two gesture-based platforms.
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It's interesting to consider the difference between mouse-driven desktop design and gesture-driven touchscreen design here. Desktop websites have a strong guideline to avoid horizontal scrolling. But for touch-screens, horizontal swipes are often fine. Indeed, mobile-device users typically expect to horizontally swipe their way through a carousel. Of course, this is just one more example of the meta-guideline that sufficiently different platforms require different user interface designs. This, again, is the underlying reason that mobile sites perform better than full sites when used on a mobile device.
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The second point is more conceptual — and harder for some people to accept: When you have a smaller screen, you must limit the number of features to those that matter the most for the mobile use case.
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06 Jun 12
jgreene331This outlines an actual mobile usability test and what those surveyed said they found important. This survey is the 2011 sequel to one that was conducted in 2009.
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- Highly specific tasks. For example, "You are in an electronics store and consider buying a Canon PowerShot SD1100IS as a present. The camera costs $220.25 in the store. Check adorama.com to see if you can get a better price online."
- Directed, but less specific. For example, "Find a moisturizer with SPF 30 or above that is suitable for your skin." (While using the Walgreens app.)
- Open-ended, but restricted to a predetermined site or app. For example, "See if you can find any interesting pictures related to today's news." (While using the China Daily app.)
- Web-wide tasks that let users go anywhere they wanted. For example, "Find out which is the tallest building in the world." (While giving users no indication of which site might have the answer.)
e tested 105 users — 53 males and 52 females. Of those test participants, 12% were 50 years or older, while the remaining 88% were evenly distributed across the ages of 20–49 years. Occupations ran the gamut, from fashion consultant to patent lawyer to television producer.
Tasks ranged from directed to exploratory:
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This leads to the first, and maybe most important, guideline for improving the mobile user experience: design a separate mobile site. Don't expect users to access the same site from both desktop and mobile browsers
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A second key guideline is to have clear, explicit links from the full site to the mobile site and from the mobile site to the full site. Unfortunately, search engines often fail their mobile users and erroneously point them to the full sites, even for companies that offer mobile sites with much better user experience.
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While a mobile site is good, a mobile app is even better. We measured a success rate of 76% when people used mobile apps, which is much higher than the 64% recorded for mobile-specific websites.
Of course, it's more expensive to build an app than a mobile site, because you have to code different versions for each platform. Thus, we can really recommend building mobile applications only if you're either rich or offer a service that's particularly suited to mobile use.
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The main news? From the 1st to the 2nd edition of our mobile usability report, the number of design guidelines increased from 85 to 210. This is partly because we now know much more about mobile usability and partly because requirements have increased. Sites and apps have definitely gotten better, raising the bar for acceptable user experience, and thus increasing the number of guidelines that designers should follow.
-
It's interesting to consider the difference between mouse-driven desktop design and gesture-driven touchscreen design here. Desktop websites have a strong guideline to avoid horizontal scrolling. But for touch-screens, horizontal swipes are often fine. Indeed, mobile-device users typically expect to horizontally swipe their way through a carousel.
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To have a successful mobile site or app, the obvious guideline is to design for the small screen.
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14 May 12
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11 May 12
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10 May 12
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There's no need to declare this "the year of mobile." If anything, last year was the year of mobile in terms of the growth in both mobile usage and the availability of mobile sites and apps. Now, however, it's time to redesign your mobile site, because your existing version is probably far below users' growing expectations for user experience quality.
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In addition to user testing, we also conducted 2 rounds of diary studies to discover how people use mobile devices in their everyday life. One diary study was in the U.S.; the other included participants from Australia, The Netherlands, Romania, Singapore, the U.K., and the U.S. In total, 27 people participated in the diary studies, providing us data about 172 person-days of mobile activities. Again, participants had a wide range of jobs, from bookkeeper to football coach.
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It's interesting to consider the difference between mouse-driven desktop design and gesture-driven touchscreen design here. Desktop websites have a strong guideline to avoid horizontal scrolling. But for touch-screens, horizontal swipes are often fine. Indeed, mobile-device users typically expect to horizontally swipe their way through a carousel.
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12 Mar 12
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12 Jan 12
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21 Dec 11
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18 Dec 11
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02 Dec 11
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The user experience of mobile websites and apps has improved since our last research, but we still have far to go. A dedicated mobile site is a must, and apps get even higher usability scores.
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Now, however, it's time to redesign your mobile site, because your existing version is probably far below users' growing expectations for user experience quality.
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Now, people simply expect websites to work.
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Same with mobile. Last year, it might have been cool simply to have an app. Now, that app better be good.
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The current success rate for mobile Web use is about what we measured for desktop Web use in 1999. The current desktop success rate is 84%; unless mobile usability starts improving more rapidly, we'll have to wait until 2026 to reach that level.
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- Mobile site success rate: 64%
- Full site success rate: 58%
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design a separate mobile site.
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A second key guideline is to have clear, explicit links from the full site to the mobile site and from the mobile site to the full site.
-
Unfortunately, search engines often fail their mobile users and erroneously point them to the full sites, even for companies that offer mobile sites with much better user experience.
-
We measured a success rate of 76% when people used mobile apps, which is much higher than the 64% recorded for mobile-specific websites.
-
Of course, it's more expensive to build an app than a mobile site, because you have to code different versions for each platform. Thus, we can really recommend building mobile applications only if you're either rich or offer a service that's particularly suited to mobile use.
-
The main news? From the 1st to the 2nd edition of our mobile usability report, the number of design guidelines increased from 85 to 210.
-
This recommendation is the same for mobile phones and tablet usability, showing the similarity between these two gesture-based platforms.
-
Desktop websites have a strong guideline to avoid horizontal scrolling. But for touch-screens, horizontal swipes are often fine.
-
Of course, this is just one more example of the meta-guideline that sufficiently different platforms require different user interface designs. This, again, is the underlying reason that mobile sites perform better than full sites when used on a mobile device.
-
The second point is more conceptual — and harder for some people to accept: When you have a smaller screen, you must limit the number of features to those that matter the most for the mobile use case.
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29 Nov 11
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06 Nov 11
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05 Oct 11
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01 Oct 11
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28 Sep 11
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Kristina HollisGreat look at usability issues relating to mobile devices
mobile mobile learning mobile devices mobile design mobile usability
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Elena PapastefanMobile Usability Update - http://ow.ly/6FSsr
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27 Sep 11
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26 Sep 11
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Laura SolomonLast year, it might have been cool simply to have an app. Now, that app better be good.
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07 Sep 11
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When our test participants used sites that were designed specifically for mobile devices, their success rate averaged 64%, which is substantially higher than the 53% recorded for using "full" sites — that is, the same sites that desktop users see.
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Improving user performance by 1/5 is reason enough to create mobile-optimized sites. Such sites were also more pleasant to use and thus received higher subjective satisfaction ratings.
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Users repeatedly told us that they don't want to do tasks on their mobiles that involve heavy interaction or in-depth information perusal.
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In our current study, one user did really well — an iPhone user who had a weather application installed on the phone and used it to get the weather forecast in only 18 seconds (1/3 of the fastest speed from 2000). If any additional evidence were needed for mobile-dedicated design's benefits, this example should surely suffice.
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When designing for mobile, there's a tension between (a) making content and navigation salient so that people do not work too hard to get there, and (b) designing for a small screen and for slow downloading speeds. That's why almost every design decision must be made in the context of the site being designed, and what works for one site may not work for another.
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05 Apr 11
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04 Apr 11
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30 Mar 11
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In our mobile studies, the average success rate was 59%, which is admittedly higher than success rates in the 1990s, but substantially lower than the roughly 80% success rate when testing websites on a regular PC today.
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When our test participants used sites that were designed specifically for mobile devices, their success rate averaged 64%, which is substantially higher than the 53% recorded for using "full" sites — that is, the same sites that desktop users see.
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What has changed is the usage environment. In 2000, users were restricted to the "walled garden" supplied by their mobile carrier. WAP phones came with a built-in "deck" that supplied direct access to a few selected services. While this approach limited users' freedom and restricted them to only the simplest of tasks, they could get to the information with just a few key-presses.
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14 Mar 11
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01 Mar 11
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28 Feb 11
Kevin Van HornIn user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, especially when users accessed "full" sites that weren't designed for mobile.
mobile usability webdesign nielsen web Design accessibility iphone
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25 Feb 11
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28 Dec 10
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03 Jun 10
Christian SaxIn user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, especially when users accessed "full" sites that weren't designed for mobile.
mobile usability webdesign accessibility design web ui nielsen jakobnielsen
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25 May 10
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13 May 10
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we asked participants to perform typical tasks with their phones.
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we tested 36 websites
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34 Web-wide tasks where participants could use any site they wanted. One such task was: "You and your veget
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The Mobile User Experience Is Miserable
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's neither easy nor pleasant to use the Web on mobile devices. Observing user suffering during our sessions reminded us of the very first usability studies we did with traditional websites in 1994. It was that bad.
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the average success rate was 59%
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Small screens
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Small screens mean fewer visible options at any given time, requiring users to rely on their short-term memory to build an understanding of an online information space.
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Awkward input
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t's hard to operate GUI widgets without a mouse
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Getting the next screen takes forever
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Download delays
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Mis-designed sites.
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Feature phones (regular cellphones) with a tiny screen and a numeric keypad
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Smartphones
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Touch-screen phone
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Unsurprisingly, the bigger the screen, the better the user experience when accessing websites. Average success rates were:
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buy a touch phone if using websites is important to you.
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Considering the horrible usability of feature phones, should you even support them? Alternatively, should you focus on smartphone and touch phone users who are more likely to use your site extensively? There's no single answer.
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22 Apr 10
ricardo caceresIn user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, especially when users accessed 'full' sites that weren't designed for mobile.
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16 Apr 10
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Linking to the full site supports users who want advanced features that the mobile site doesn't support. Given this fallback solution, you should scale back the mobile site's functionality and focus on features that people are actually likely to use in a mobile scenario. Users repeatedly told us that they don't want to do tasks on their mobiles that involve heavy interaction or in-depth information perusal.
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- Feature phones (regular cellphones) with a tiny screen and a numeric keypad. These devices account for the vast majority of the market (at least 85% in some statistics).
- Smartphones, in a range of form factors, typically with a mid-sized screen and a full A-Z keypad.
- Touch-screen phones (such as the iPhone) with a nearly device-sized screen and a true GUI driven by direct manipulation and touch gestures.
Better Phones Perform Better
There are 3 distinct classes of mobile user experience, and they're mainly defined by screen size:Feature phones 38% Smartphones 55% Touch phones 75% -
Considering the horrible usability of feature phones, should you even support them? Alternatively, should you focus on smartphone and touch phone users who are more likely to use your site extensively?
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Today's mobile users are highly search-dominant. When we don't specify which site they should use (and often even when we do), they turn first to their favorite search engine. Again, this means plenty of typing, which is slow, awkward, and error-prone on mobile devices.
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Technical accessibility is very far from providing an acceptable user experience. It's not enough that your site will display on a phone. Even touch phones that offer "full-featured" browsers don't offer PC-level usability in terms of users' ability to actually get things done on a website.
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When designing for mobile, there's a tension between (a) making content and navigation salient so that people do not work too hard to get there, and (b) designing for a small screen and for slow downloading speeds. That's why almost every design decision must be made in the context of the site being designed, and what works for a site may not work for another.
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