Why it’s Bad to Port Your (Mobile) Interface Without Optimization for the Platform

This post has been a long time in the making, not necessarily writing, but I have spent some time mulling over the idea. The tipping point came when I saw a lecture by Scott Jenson (Mobile User Interface Manager at Google) for the Stanford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar. In it, Scott talks about why putting the web on your mobile is a bad idea, something that must of us can probably agree on. He names a very good example (Google Maps) of how you should adapt your UI, based on the platform (web vs mobile) that it is being used on. Forward to 32:50 for the details.

Whilst browsing the web might be an extreme example of how this is done (wrong), even smaller changes in input or output can change the interaction methods. Example would be having an extra monitor. The fact that I have two impacts my usage pattern in the sense that I switch less between windows, do much more dragging of content between visible windows, or might have a harder time finding where my windows are hidden.

A more subtle example would be having a scroll wheel on a device that enables you to navigate very quickly through lists (A), vs having to press a button every time you want to go up or down in the list of items (B).

At first glance the implications of this are simply that you’d have to restrict yourself on Device B with the amount of menu’s you can bury in a menu. This however, affects the entire application. Not only do you need to restrict yourself to the amount of items in the list, you need to design the application in such a way that all the features are still accessible. When you can jump up and down in lists without problems, such as in A, you can afford to have a very flat menu structure, perhaps only 2 levels deep. On B, because you can’t fit so much in one screen, you’d need to design in such a way that you can still fit in all the functionality, whilst dealing with the restrictions. It requires a much deeper structure.

This illustrates that even the smallest change on seemingly similar devices require you to think twice about simply porting over your interface from one platform to the next. I don’t read my physical copy of The Economist in the same way as I do with the online version. Why should mobile application be any different?

PS: thanks to Barry for the tip about the lectures.