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Mobile-first: 10 quick tips about ergonomy and usability
In the past few years the web mobile audience has grown up to 4 times higher than the desktop one, leading designers’ vision from a mobile-friendly to a mobile-first approach.
While in a forward looking digital industry context the discussion is shifting to voice-first design, most of the real world work is still focused on adopting an effective mobile-first logic that responds to all the challenges related to designing for small display real estates. And in some real world applications, it doesn’t even sounds plain that mobile-first design should not just be a matter of stylesheets, breakpoints and some web mobile look and feel!
While Google is promoting Progressive Web Apps, most designers and developers are still struggling with mobile-first solutions that should provide the user with quick and immediate access and comprehension of contents in mobility environments, designing accordingly with both technical and ergonomic characteristics of mobile devices. It should definitely take advantage of the specific features of mobile.
I have collected here 10 quick and pretty basic tips to keep in mind when aiming for a successful mobile-first approach.
1. The quickest the better!
Minimize download time by using techniques such as lazy loading for images and, more in general, for long scrolling pages while progressively load content.
2. Anticipate user in navigation
Provide a navigation system designed accordingly to user mental models and to those activity flows derived from qualitative research.
3. No broken file and media for download and view
Make sure that those files available for the download as well as every kind of embedded media can be displayed properly by any web mobile user-agent.
