Usability and Mobile Devices

Prepared by:

Mohammed Fahel

21012195

Mobile Usability

• Mobile applications are important for providing users with an alternate means of accessing your web page, as well as keeping connected anywhere and at any time.

Impact of Low Resolution

recommendations for mobile interfaces:

• Minimize the amount of scrolling required to find information

• Include more search options

Impact of Download Speed

implementing a tactile feedback mechanism to notify users if the task is expected to take more than four seconds. The feedback would allow users to direct their attention back to the environment rather frequently checking the screen status. This should reduce the amount of needed gazes and increase user safety.

Impact of Limited Screen Size

Horton’s changes include:• Separate HTML mark-up language

from content information using CSS

• Use a consistent, uncluttered page design

• Limit the amount of text used for non-semantic purposes

• Arrange information in an inverted pyramid styles (from most to least important)

Screen Readers for Mobile Devices• The software converts normal Web pages into a mobile

friendly format. Borodin, et al (2007) described software (CMo) that analyzes the semantic content of each requested page and displays it in order of predicted importance to the user question.

• www. zuznow.com

RSS Feeds

• Garofalakis and Stefanis (2007) described a system that takes advantage of the existing formatting of content into RSS feeds. The authors used an algorithm that takes content formatted as RSS and adapts it to the mobile screen.

• Garofalakis and Stefanis asked participants to locate a Web news article within three minutes and compared their performance to the existing mobile browser. Results showed improved success rates on the search task with the new system as well as positive useful ratings by participants.

Mobile Usability Update

three categories of mobile phones:

• Feature phones: primitive handsets with tiny screens and very limited keypads that are suited mainly for dialing phone numbers.

• Smartphones: phones with midsized screens and full A–Z keypads.

• Touch phones: devices with touch-sensitive screens that cover

almost the entire front of the phone.

Mobile User Experience Improving Slowly

• Mobile site success rate: 64%

• Full site success rate: 58%

user testing

• design a separate mobile site

• horizontal swiping

• links from the full site to the mobile site

• Apps Beat Sites

• We measured a success rate of 76% when people used mobile apps, which is much higher than the 64% recorded for mobile-specific websites.

• The fat-finger syndrome will be with us for years to come.

• limit the number of features

Thank you