Mobile & Tablet Articles & Videos

  • iPad Usability: Year One

    iPad apps are much improved, but new usability problems have emerged, such as swipe ambiguity and navigation overload.

  • Utilize Available Screen Space

    Websites and mobile apps both frequently cram options into too-small parts of the screen, making items harder to understand.

  • Optimizing a Screen for Mobile Use

    A single mobile screen with almost no features still required 10 design changes to meet usability guidelines for mobile websites.

  • Mobile Content Is Twice as Difficult

    When reading from an iPhone-sized screen, comprehension scores for complex Web content were 48% of desktop monitor scores.

  • iPad and Kindle Reading Speeds

    A study of people reading long-form text on tablets finds higher reading speeds than in the past, but they're still slower than reading print.

  • iPad Usability: First Findings From User Testing

    iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print metaphor and weird interaction styles cause further usability problems.

  • iPhone Apps Need Low Starting Hurdles

    Most mobile applications are used only intermittently, so they must be especially easy during initial use. In particular, upfront registration shouldn't be required before users experience an app's benefits.

  • Mobile Usability, First Findings

    In user testing, website use on mobile devices got very low scores, especially when users accessed 'full' sites that weren't designed for mobile.

  • Kindle Content Design

    Writing for Kindle is like writing for print, the Web, and mobile devices combined; optimal usability means optimizing content for each platform's special characteristics.

  • Kindle 2 Usability Review

    Amazon's new e-book reader offers print-level readability and shines for reading fiction, but it has awkward interaction design and poor support for non-linear content.

  • Mobile Web 2009 = Desktop Web 1998

    Mobile phone users struggle mightily to use websites, even on high-end devices. To solve the problems, websites should provide special mobile versions.

  • Palm Foleo: A Failed Mobile Device

    There is room in the market for a device in-between laptops and cellphones. But Palm Foleo isn't it. It's too close to a laptop.

  • Why Mobile Phones are Annoying

    Bystanders rated mobile-phone conversations as dramatically more noticeable, intrusive, and annoying than conversations conducted face-to-face. While volume was an issue, hearing only half a discussion also seemed to up the irritation factor.

  • Mobile Devices: One Generation From Useful

    New mobile devices show a huge improvement over previous generations, but they're still not good enough to score a real win. To get there, we need both PC-integrated applications and specialized mobile services rather than repurposed website content.

  • Supporting Multiple-Location Users

    About half of the users now access the Internet from more than one location. Despite the implications of this for service design, many systems assume that users remain bound to a single computer.

  • Deferred Hypertext: The Virtues of Delayed Gratification

    Navigating a full browsing session to find information can be unpleasant and slow, particularly on mobile devices. Instead, issue a deferred request and have the information arrive later, as done by some SMS systems.

  • Mobile Devices Will Soon Be Useful

    New mobile devices and services are more realistic and useful than last year's models, and will likely expand mobile device adoption. Design usability and simplicity are key, particularly for the automotive market where complexity can be dangerous. DEMOmobile Conference on Mobile Computing 2001.

  • Japanese Products Map the Mobile Road Ahead

    Japan is now shipping a wide variety of new Internet-connected devices. Among the highlights are new mobile photography units like Eggy, and i-mode telephones with liberating two-dimensional controls.

  • Mobile Phones: Europe's Next Minitel?

    Europe's cellular phone system is far superior to that in the United States. However, telephones will not be the platform for the mobile Internet. Given this, Europe's advantage may in fact be an obstacle to real innovations, as France's experience with Minitel shows.

  • WAP Mobile Phones Field Study Findings

    Following a UK field study, 70% of users decided not to continue using WAP mobile phones. Mobile's killer app is killing time; m-commerce's prospects are dim for the next several years. Current services are poorly designed, have insufficient task analysis, and abuse existing non-mobile design guidelines.

  • How to Fit Big Tables on Small Screens

    No matter your screen size, some data tables will be too big for the screen. This problem is particularly common on mobile devices. Simple interaction techniques can help, but you may need to offer users more advanced features for information hiding and column reordering.

  • Easier Input on Mobile Devices

    Form filling and other user input on mobile devices such as smartphones can be awkward and error prone, but by taking advantage of the strengths of the phone, designers can improve the usability of these tasks substantially.

  • User Interface Design Fails

    Jakob Nielsen discusses the biggest failures in today's user interface design. (Recorded at the Virtual UX Conference.)

  • Virtual Reality and User Experience

    Virtual reality (VR) user interfaces are currently more difficult for users to manipulate than a traditional GUI, partly because of more degrees of freedom and partly because VR is still new, so people have less experience using it. Advice for how to employ usability studies to alleviate this problem.

  • Designing Effective Carousels for Websites and Mobile Apps

    Sliding hero images that rotate through a set of promotions, news, or the like on the top of web pages are often annoying to users and are definitely error prone, unless they are designed according to usability guidelines.

  • Simple Design Is Relative

    Simplicity depends on the capacity of the information channel and what's simple for one device, can be primitive or intricate for another, since screens are information channels with a limited capacity. When you're designing for multiple devices, don't go by common cliches like "simple is good."

  • Why Users Feel Trapped in Their Devices: The Vortex

    Many users report anxiety and lack of control over the amount of time they spend online. We call this feeling “the Vortex.”

  • Mobile-Checkout Experience: Tips

    Remember these essential experience elements that are often overlooked or easily forgotten during the mobile-checkout design process.

  • Designing Effective App Permission Requests

    App permission requests are an important part of the overall user experience, yet they are often neglected by app designers. Here are 3 tips for designing them well: get content, timing, and decision reversal right, or users will just say NO.

  • Social Features in Chinese Apps

    Social features (like online communities and experience sharing) are very popular in Chinese apps. This video offers examples and tips for adding social features to your product.

  • How To Setup a Mobile Usability Test

    There are a lot of elements involved in a mobile usability test. In this video, we'll walk you through an example test setup, including the necessary equipment, and discuss how to prepare for a test.

  • Multitasking on Microsoft’s Surface Duo

    The Duo is a two-screen foldable mobile device that enables users to use two applications side by side, but most apps do not take advantage of the two screens. Support for information transfer from one app to the other is limited and multitasking within the same app is at times confusing.

  • UX Guidelines for Augmented-Reality Shopping Tools

    Ecommerce AR tools are relatively new, so must be highly discoverable and easy to learn. Calibration issues run rampant, and users must dedicate focused attention to interact with this unfamiliar feature.

  • Accordion Icons: Which Signifiers Work Best?

    The caret icon most clearly indicated to users that it would open an accordion in place, rather than linking directly to a new page.

  • Mobile-App Onboarding: An Analysis of Components and Techniques

    Onboarding is the process of getting users familiar with a new interface. It can involve one or more of the following components: feature promotion, customization, and instructions.

  • Mobile Tutorials: Wasted Effort or Efficiency Boost?

    Our research shows that tutorials don’t make users faster or more successful at completing tasks; on the contrary, they make them perceive the tasks as more difficult.

  • Mobile Microsessions

    Notifications, widgets, quick actions, and Siri shortcuts or Google Assistant routines are all ways to support mobile sessions shorter than 15 seconds, with minimal interaction to complete a user goal.

  • Touch Targets on Touchscreens

    Interactive elements must be at least 1cm × 1cm (0.4in × 0.4in) to support adequate selection time and prevent fat-finger errors.

  • 3 Design Considerations for Effective Mobile-App Permission Requests

    Mobile permission requests are often poorly designed. Consider the content and timing of these requests, avoid dark patterns, and enable users to reverse their decision.

  • The Mobile Checkout Experience

    Optimize the checkout experience on mobile ecommerce channels by taking into account the strengths and limitations of mobile devices. Aim to minimize the number of steps and typing, and take advantage of capabilities such as geolocation and the camera.

  • Five Mistakes in Designing Mobile Push Notifications

    Provide value to users before asking them to receive your app’s notifications; tell them what the notifications will be about. Don’t send notifications in bursts; make it easy to turn them off.

  • Shopping Cart or Wishlist? Saving Products for Later in Ecommerce

    On ecommerce sites, saving shopping-cart items for possible later purchase must be discoverable and low-effort.

  • Mobile Login Methods Help Chinese Users Avoid Password Roadblocks

    In China, QR-code scanning and verification codes are popular mobile-login alternatives that circumvent the problem of remembering and typing passwords.

  • Carousels on Mobile Devices

    Carousels on touch screens are plagued by low discoverability and sequential access, and not all designs implement swipe as a carousel control.

  • Design for Kids Based on Their Stage of Physical Development

    As kids’ physical development throughout childhood changes, so do their physical abilities, constraints, and device preferences. Touch gestures such as swiping and tapping big targets are easy for all children, but fine mouse or trackpad gestures such as dragging are hard for young kids.

  • Distracted Driving: UX’s Responsibility to Do No Harm

    I walked away from two distracted-driving accidents in one week. Can we use known UX principles to reduce harm?

  • Banner Blindness Revisited: Users Dodge Ads on Mobile and Desktop

    Users have learned to ignore content that resembles ads, is close to ads, or appears in locations traditionally dedicated to ads.

  • The State of Mobile User Experience

    Ten years from the original iPhone, the field of mobile UX has finally reached maturity.

  • M-Commerce: Terrible UX

    Traffic and sales data show that ecommerce sites had 111% higher sales-per-visit on desktop than on mobile on Cyber Monday 2017. Better than 2014 when desktop sold 288% more.

  • iPhone X: The Rise of Gestures

    Replacing the Home button with a swipe gesture creates some UX difficulties, but they are likely to be overcome by the benefit of a larger screen.

  • We Can Do Better on Mobile: Designing for the Medium

    Mobile designs need to do more than shrink a desktop experience to a smaller screen: they must create innovative, integrated and enhanced experiences.