7 Usability Guidelines for Websites on Mobile Devices
By Abid Warsi2008-01-30
3. Clearly distinguish selected items
|
|
Mobile phone users tend to have poor cursor control. This is because moving the pointing device down (with the joystick or direction buttons) simultaneously scrolls the page and highlights links, buttons and form fields. Due to this lack of control it's important to clearly feedback to users what item is in focus. This can be done by changing the appearance of an item to make it stand out from everything else. For example, you can change the font and background colour of links and buttons.
For example, O2's mobile portal doesn't highlight buttons well. It adds a blue border on a lighter blue background that isn't noticeable. Users have to move the joystick around to find the cursor. Worse still, Thomson Local only distinguishes form fields by making their border slighter thicker. In contrast, their highlighted links stood out because the font and background colour was changed and contrasted strongly against the page's overall white background.
O2's highlighting needs to be stronger to be noticeable.
Simple page designs allow for more effective highlighting on Thomson Local.
Tutorial Pages:
» Introduction
» 1. Meet users' needs quickly
» 2. Don't repeat the navigation on every page
» 3. Clearly distinguish selected items
» 4. Make user input as simple as possible
» 5. Only show essential information
» 6. Place basic browsing controls on the page
» 7. Design mobile-friendly page layouts
» In a nutshell
