Research / Reports on Mobile Usability

Few days back, I was reading some article related to Mobile Usability on Jakob Nielsen’s website . I found it quite interesting and so trying to put in some facts which I think should be useful for us to understand the scenario.

To understand usability factors that makes mobile sites easy or an unpleasant experience, Jakob Nielsen had combined 3 different usability testing methods, namely: 1) Diary Study 2) User Testing 3) Cross-platform review.

Mobile devices’ users face several usability obstacles to overcome with, like Small Screens, Difficult / non-easy ways of input, bandwidth / download time issues and worst of all, badly designed website.

Surprisingly, as per the Jakob Nielsen’s tests which were designed to test participants using those sites which were specifically designed for mobile devices, their “average success rate” was 64% which is quite higher than the 53% success rate recorded for the “full sites”. And, as Jakob thinks, this is a enough powerful reason to start developing mobile optimized websites.

This “mobile usability” has several interesting facts unconvered. You can read the complete article here: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

Some Resources:

Mobile Web – Navigation Design

Mobile Web Applications – Design factors

In this series of posts about “mobile web application development strategies’, we will discuss about ‘advantages of mobile web platform, strategizing for mobile web, initiating a mobile web project’ and much more will be added as and when possible.

To begin with, we will understand how mobile web is promising.

Advantages of Mobile Web platform:

Anywhere-Anytime information access:
Unlike conventional desktop-based computing, mobile web has surpassed the limitation of immobility. With mobile devices, users can access information anywhere, anytime when they are in the cell phone connectivity coverage area or using a WI-FI hotspot.

Wireless Internet Connectivity:
Users are now having access to internet on their mobile devices or accesses internet through their mobile devices.

Leveraging Application / Device capabilities:
Services / Applications now can take the advantage of in-built capabilities of mobile devices, like clicking on a phone number can help users to call the respective number with no hassles involved.

Geography-based Content Delivery:
Location-based technologies are enabling the end-users to receive the content based on the location. Such localized content delivery mechanism is helping users to get the desired content with minimal efforts, which leads to a better user experience and benefits to the respective service provider as well.

Strategizing for mobile web:

When an organization decides to design a website or an application targeted at mobile web users, they need to consider several factors like:

• Why should we make / create a mobile web application?
• Does the content delivered on mobile devices make sense for the TG? Is it really adding value to their usage?
• What kind of content can be made available online? Do we deliver useful content?
• We have a very powerful flash-based website. Should we create a similar application User Interface (UI) for mobile devices as well? Will it work across multiple device profiles?

Precisely, before we start working on a mobile web application, we must be aware of all aspects like advantages and limitations the mobile web platform has and also about how to leverage this platform for an organizations’ and end-users’ advantage. We must be clear about ‘whether creating a mobile web application can really add value’ to the respective website as well for the end-users / TG.

As this is a series of posts, we will continue with “Initiating a mobile web project” in the continuing post.

A great navigation is intuitive, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-use and ideally, should not need some plug-in to be downloaded to use navigation. For example, a site navigation is designed using Flash and no alternative way of navigation is not provided, can you imagine how miserable an experience a user can have who doesn’t have flash installed on this machine?

So, we must design sites to good navigation to make the website or an application successful in terms of end-users’ experience while using our website / application.

Below given are some of the points which can help us design a better navigation that helps users to use your site:

1. Navigation Placement:
Make sure that the navigation is placed at an easily visible location, so that the users don’t have to “guess” or “search” for it.

2. Place important things on high:
Keep the important things on the top area of the page, preferably in the first half of the page. Such significant information should get displayed first to the user.

3. Banner Blindness:
As Wikipedia describes it – “Banner blindness is a phenomenon in web usability where visitors on a website ignore banner-like information.

Make sure that you don’t put any content above the ad banners as users are tend to ignore all the content that’s displayed above ad banners. Make sure especially that navigation is not placed above such banners, as ‘navigation’ is very important & should not be ‘lost’.  [Read more about "Banner Blindness"]

4. Avoid being unconventional:
Designing website navigation in an ‘unconventional’ way to make the site stand out from the crowd is NOT a good method of navigation design. It becomes difficult for the users who are now quite used to the general web design practices of designs, navigation & such other generic functionality.

5. Ideally, an easy way to come back to homepage, like a HOME link should be always there:
Homepage being core of any website, a back-link to the homepage should always be there. Also, it is very much possible that user might have landed up on your website through some search engine or have come directly to your sub-page / inner page, a “home” link always helps them to come back to the homepage of your website.

6. Keep the navigational elements consistent across the website:
Make sure that all the links & navigational elements are kept consistently on the same place as there have been anywhere else, in terms of links, styles, etc. User can find them easily anywhere in the site.

7. Design it to ‘load fast’:
Do all your design & development by considering a user having low-speed internet connections. Make sure that your all your site’s HTML, CSS, Flash components (if any) loads faster,  so that users do not leave the site quickly even before it loads as they may not be ready to wait or may switch to your competitor’s site.

8. Quality as against to Quantity:
Internet users like minimum options & clicks to get the desired information. Create sub-sections & sub-categories to help the user to “navigate easily & locate the required content easily & quickly”.

9. Browser-Compatibility:
There is multi-browser application scenario.  Do compatibility tests for your website before it goes live on major browsers like “MS Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, and Opera” & check if the look & feel as well functionality of JavaScript used in the site is working well.

10. ONLY essential stuff in the navigation:
Non-core Information like “Privacy Policy, Terms of use, even Contact Us (in most cases)” should not be in the main navigation & can be placed in the “bottom menus” zone.

Also read:

Navigation Design for Mobile Web – Best Practices

Drop Down Menus – Usability

Do provide your suggestions / insights that can imprve the way we design navigation.

A usable navigation design improves the end-users experience and makes sure that users don’t leave the website due to frustration as they are not able to use your website on their mobile device.

While designing websites specifically for mobile devices, there are several factors which you will have to consider. In this article, we will discuss particularly about “navigation design for mobile websites”. You can read more about Usability Factors for mobile web as well as Design Factors for mobile web.

Here, we will discuss some important aspects of navigation design for mobile websites:

1.Provide only minimal navigation at the top of the page:
Only basic navigation to help users enhance the experience by reducing clutter for these relatively small screens. Core links upfront also help users to navigate across the application easily without getting much frustrated. In case of footer links, provide very few (2-3) and only if it’s really essential and helps users.

Provide only minimal navigation.

2. Balanced Site Structure:
Unlike desktop-based browsers, mobile web browsers has too many limitations like screen size, hardware’s processing capabilities, memory, etc. Scrolling too much could be painful for the users on such devices. So, the information architecture will need to take care of this balance between that will help end-users to reach the desired content with minimal links.

Inessential links or steps added to get the desired content make users frustrated and they simple stop using the site.

3.  Consistent Navigation Mechanism:
The way users navigation on mobile devices is not as easy as pointing devices like mouse on a desktop and they have to rely on joysticks / 4-way navigation or keypad. In such a case, using a consistent navigation method helps a lot.

A “drill-down” navigation mechanism in such interface can help end-users, as it is based on the major headings that take you inside it based on your preferences. For example, someone who wants to see what’s available in movies or music can be directed to the same using main heading link as “entertainment”. Also, we should make sure that links that takes him to main homepage or category homepage are available, e.g. home, entertainment, up, back to top.

Consistent Navigation Mechanism

Make sure you keep these links minimal required and steps to get the desired content also very minimal, as users may not be interested in going for more retrievals or clicks to get the content he / she is looking for. Also, some form of breadcrumbs can help them to track their trail as well as to go back easily.

4. Device-based Access Keys:
Unlike traditional desktop computing, mobile device is not capable of relatively easy-to-use point device (but is bit easier in smart-phones with some point device like stylus). In such a case, we should use the built-in capabilities of the keys built on the device, which are keyboard shortcuts for a mobile device. Users can press a number on the keyboard to go to a link associated with.

Also, make sure that same access key assigned a link is used across the application for the same link.

5. Description for the link:
Provide information related to a link. For example, if a link is directed to a file which may not be supported by the end-users device, it may be frustrating for him as he isn’t ware of the kind of file type is linked with that particular link. Handsets which don’t support videos etc. may show undesired response and may frustrate the end-user.

6. Do not Use Image Maps-based navigation:
Even though it’s an effective way to navigate by using client or server-side image maps, most of the mobile devices don’t support them. Also, usage of images as navigation should be avoided as end-users with information-seeking behavior tend to disable loading images and your navigation may go completely invisible for the end-user, as browsing websites on mobile devices do involve data usage charges to the end-users and they may be simply not interested in viewing those images as they have to pay for it.

There could be more ways to design a better navigation for mobile web. Please contribute them here if you can think of anything.

Here, we will discuss something about the “design factors for mobile web applications”. As we have already discussed, there are several limitations. You can read more about limitations here!

Following are some of these guidelines which needs to be considered while designing mobile web applications, so that it can deliver its best on multiple platforms in almost same way it is intended to. Ultimately, mobile web apps are intended to deliver quickly , on-the-move!

Design Factors for Mobile Web Applications:

1. Semantic Markup:
The way we design our code for conventional desktop-based web is NOT the same when it comes to the “mobile web”. The capabilities of the devices and the browsers it contains, has major impacts on the way content gets displayed.

So, ideally, you should use a “clean & semantic” markup to make your site display in almost the same form on all the devices, without major difficulties for the end-user. If the code isn’t clean & semantic, the website may not look the same on all the target devices as it is expected to be & may create usability issues for the end-users, motivating them to leave the site as soon as they want.

Clean, semantic markup is a ‘foundation to the usable mobile website’.

2. Separate Content from Presentation factor:
Typical mobile web users are more keen on the information they like to see on the mobile websites, as their browsing behavior is mostly ‘information seeking behavior’.  For such users, presentation is secondary, as compared to ‘content being primary reason’ behind the mobile web browsing.

Users are using web on their mobile devices, generally for their immediate needs, like locating the nearest café or a Bank ATM available in the closest proximity. For such users, functionality or the content is more important than anything else.

Considering this, along with a clean & semantic markup, a clear segregation of “Content” and “Presentation” is required. We can enable websites to reach users faster, with clean, valid markup and CSS for the presentation purpose.

3. Alternative Content – “ALT” tags:
With more of ‘information-seeking behavior’ along with ‘pay-for-bandwidth’ scenario, users may not prefer to download images on their mobile browsers, as it saves download time & money for them. Such factors makes us prefer to provide an alternative content for all the images used across the website.

Providing an “ALT” tag makes the application more useful for those who have disabled “load images”. In any case, for mobile web or desktop-based interfaces, you MUST provide the alternative content, to make your application “usable”.

4. Form Fields – Labels:
Filling up form fields in the mobile browser is bit tough as compared to  conventional desktop-based website forms. Entering information in the form field without knowing what it should be filled with, is literally impossible for the end-user.

So to assist users, like ‘ALT’ tags for non-text content, form fields also needs to have “label”, that clearly defines the form field and instruct the users about the information required in the respective form field.

5. Navigation:
Unlike desktop web, navigation elements on the mobile web applications are generally an “adaptation”, that suits mobile web environment at its best. Navigation design for desktop web and mobile web has different design considerations.

Do not repeat the complete navigation on every page & reduce the links and keep only those which are relevant.Also, provide other ways to navigate the website, such as “Access Keys” and tap the hardware capabilities if you know the TG & their devices.

6. Use Heading tags – H1, H2, ….. :
Devices have their own browsers & they render the same sites differently. In such cases, styling given to the text / content on the pages may not actually display as you desire.

In such cases, heading tags like H1, H1, H3…..can help you to make the important headings, text to stand out & helps users to read the content effectively – as they tend to have a ‘scan-through’ behavior.

7. Environmental Factors & Color Contrasts:
Designing websites for mobile devices has several considerations, including the environmental factors, such as lighting conditions. When someone who is using the application the day-light, he may not be able to use the application effectively, if the right color contrast is not created in the application design.

Mobile Web Applications - Design Factors: Mr. Movie homepage

Mobile Web Applications - Design Factors: Bcwebwise mobile edition homepage

Note: Compare these two screen-shots. Readability is higher in the 2nd screen-shot of BC Web Wise – mobile web edition homepage.

You can view this complete presentation on SlideShare.net at: http://www.slideshare.net/vishalvaidya/mobile-web-application-design-factors

If you can bring in some more ideas here when it comes to mobile web application design & its usability, I would be really happy! Please post your comments / suggestions.