Mobile users and mobile usage are growing. With more users doing more on mobile, the spotlight is on how to improve the individual elements that together create the mobile user experience. The mobile user experience encompasses the user’s perceptions and feelings before, during and after their interaction with your mobile presence — be it through a browser or an app — using a mobile device that could lie anywhere on the continuum from low-end feature phone to high-definition tablet.
Creating mobile user experiences that delight users forces us to rethink a lot of what we have taken for granted so far with desktop design. It is complicated in part by mobile-specific considerations that go hand in hand with small screens, wide variations in device features, constraints in usage and connectivity, and the hard-to-identify-but-ever-changing mobile context. Dissecting the mobile user experience into its key components gives us a conceptual framework for building and evaluating good mobile experiences, within the context of a user-centered approach to designing for mobile. These components shape the mobile user experience — including functionality, context, user input, content and marketing, among others.
Design
This has to do with the visual presentation and interactive experience of mobile, including graphic design, branding and layout. Remember the sayings “Mobilize, don’t miniaturize” (popularized by Barbara Ballard) and “Don’t shrink, rethink” (of Nokia). Both make the point that mobile design should not just rehash the desktop design. Design for glance ability and quick scanning. Glance ability refers to how quickly and easily the visual design conveys information. Maintain visual consistency with other touch points and experiences (mobile, app, Web, print and real world) through the use of color, typography and personality. Identifying Amazon in the stack below is easy even though the brand name is not visible. Guide users from the initial and most prominent element of the design to other elements to help them complete their tasks. This is known as visual flow. A good design brings together visual elements as well as information architecture, content and functionality to convey the brand’s identity and guide the user. Consider both portrait and landscape orientations in the design process. Devices increasingly support multiple orientations and automatically adjust to match their physical orientation. Maintain the user’s location on the page when they change orientation. Indicate additional or different functionality in the new orientation if applicable,
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