Last week we attended an evening dedicated to opening our minds and gathering some tips on mobile usability. The evening was free and hosted by Northern User Experience, and these are my thoughts…

The main talk was by Kimberley Bottomley, a User Experience Manager at Aviva who has “spent a considerable amount of time researching [mobile usability] and learning about [it] in the past 12 months”.

The talk got off to a bit of a slow start, detailing some points which any good designer or User Experience professional should take into consideration on every project, whether mobile or not. However there were several interesting facts and figures to spark discussion amongst the group.

Here area few that I thought worthy of noting down (although I’m not certain of the source, sorry):

• 63% British users are not using smartphones
• Android is the leading OS in the top 6 European countries
• 73.4% of new Android sales in the UK are upgrades from non-smartphones
• Blackberry users vary enormously, from 16 - 24 y/o right through to all ages of corporate

What I think we can take from this is that there are still an awful lot of people not using smartphones (duh! I know) - But I think that we may be forgetting about these users far too easily at the moment - LESS THAN HALF OF BRITISH USERS DON’T HAVE SMARTPHONES. And by ‘smartphones’ I don’t mean that they don’t have access to the Internet on their phone, a lot of them do, but they definitely don’t have access to the powerful browsers that are available for the big OSs out there. That means that when we’re adapting responsive websites for mobile, or creating dedicated mobile sites, it’s still really important to consider what might happen if you accessed the website, for example, on an old Nokia.

The other very obvious point that we can take from the above is that Android is on the up, big time. Our industry may be in love with the iPhone, but 3/4 of people who are experiencing the mobile Internet in it’s full glory for the first time are using Android, which means if we want to suck all these new ‘customers’ into the idea of mobile browsing, and more specifically the use of Apps, we need to build Android versions too - for launch. Not as an afterthought.

One little note that I just want to add in here about the speaker is that it was evident that all the research was conducted for her employer, Aviva, which is perfectly fine because after all, that’s her day job, but it just brings into question how applicable the talk was to mobile user experience as a whole. If the focus of the research was around the ‘typical Aviva customer’, then it would probably be more eye opening to hear from an independent researcher who has looked at a much wider section of the population.

Having said that, there was one idea that I found extremely interesting: ‘Designing for Interrupt-ability’. If that term hasn’t been coined yet then consider it mine! ;) I think this is possibly an entire post in itself, but for now I’ll quickly summarise what this means.

Before I move on, here are a few more additional points that I picked up on from the rest of the talk:

• Customers aren’t very comfortable making transactions on their phones. How can we combat this? Save for later / email details to myself?
• Android users tend to use native buttons such as Menu / Back
• Users prefer Apps over using the browser, but aren’t really sure of the difference
• No one saves bookmarks on their phones
• Fewer people type web addresses straight into the browser on their phone, preferring to search Google instead

Designing for Interrupt-ability

No matter how advanced our phones get, they still have one single purpose: Being a phone. This means that at any time, night or day, mid-game or mid-purchase, there is a likelihood of us being interrupted by that all important (or no so important) phone call. This means that the mobile Internet and Apps are at a disadvantage compared to desktop browsing. Yes, there are also distractions when using your laptop or desktop computer too, but not in the same way as mobile.

When we’re at home we’re more relaxed, we sit at the computer for a specific purpose, and we are immersed and more focused on the task at hand. If we get a phone call we can grab the phone and still be on the Internet and it’s much easier to pick up where we left off. When using a smartphone out of the house there are many many more opportunities to lose concentration. Firstly, if you get a phone call, your screen switches and you have to put the phone to your ear (unless you’re one of these people who enjoys looking like they’re talking to themselves). Secondly, by the time you’re finished on the phone it might be time to get off the bus, or the train, or time for your meeting. On top of that, even if you aren’t on the phone it could still be time to get off the bus, or the train… you get the idea.

To summarise: Mobile users get interrupted. We need to do something about it. And I’m not sure what the answer is… it might be something clever like being able to track users who abandon a purchase mid way through and pushing a notification to them to complete the purchase after a set period of time, or it may be as simple as making more informed considerations on what they really want from your website and allowing them to access that content as quickly as humanly possible…

Designing for interrupt-ability was the most thought provoking idea that I took from this talk. It’s something that’s so obvious, but I really don’t think it has been researched and considered anywhere near as much as it could be. I’ll certainly be thinking about it in much more detail.

Northern User Experience is an informal community for people interested in usability, HCI, information design and all aspects of the user experience. Our membership is as diverse as the field itself, with developers, academics, usability specialists, accessibility experts and technical authors all represented. Whatever your interest in usability, we hope you will find something useful here.

By Chris Skelton