The Mobile User

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Tunde Cockshott

From a review of learnings from 2011-
” A small screen doesn’t signal a desire to do less. Removing mobile features because ‘it’s just a phone’ is like an author removing chapters because ‘it’s just a paperback’. It confuses context with intent. Mobile apps and websites have to be more than lite version of their desktop counterparts; they should have the conceptually same content and features as other platforms. Our job isn’t to remove complexity but to make complex information accessible—a challenge for the small screen, but an important one.”

This is a great analysis of the problem of designing for a mobile audience. The dominant approach seems to be a reduction of functionality and content and a simplicity of UI, rather than meeting a full range of intents through simplicity. As the author (Josh Clark) points out, an increasingly large percentage of mobile users only access the internet from their mobile device. If we remove content or functionality form the mobile site we make it totally inaccessible to this audience. You can read more learnings here.