Mobile Usability

Jakob Nielsen has a long-established reputation for understanding how we use the internet, and admonishes us to design around the user's natural inclinations, not try to reengineer the user or guide her mouse-clicks. In an ever increasingly complex world, he has made a career teaching us to keep it simple.He co-founded the Nielsen Norman group (NN/g) to preach and teach usability, and its staff are all rocket-scientist-caliber researchers who teach from facts and figures, solid research all.In "Mobile Usability", he teams up with NN/g researcher Raluca Budiu to produce a wonderfully narrated, extensively illustrated and entertaining read, showing us by numerous examples why we must simplify our website designs for the mobile device. Screen real estate is the prime constraint, and most websites which work on the 20" desktop cannot function on the hand-held device, unless we strip away the unnecessary 'chrome', assure that our page links are easily 'discoverable', and each precious user click offers high 'affordance' - you get the content you want and expect when you click a link.These simple guidelines are easily adopted by even novice web designers, and should be read by anyone designing mobile websites. A seventh grader can read and understand this book, and that's my definition for good writing.The examples range from ordering a Pizza to browsing the news; the sites featured all are targets for improvement in usability. Martha Stewart's site emphasizes cutesy over discoverability - good luck figuring out what is a hyperlink. Pizza Hut will starve you by the time you order dinner for carry-out on your cell phone (BTW this is still true; last night I tried to order a Pizza from my Android but got so frustrated I finally called the store to manually order). And so on. The examples are profoundly instructive.For those who find this book pricey, know that the NN/g staff publishes a wealth of articles on their website for free. Their writers may be mostly Harvard PHD types, but you don't have to drop major coin or enroll in post-grad courses to benefit from their knowledge.Yet, if you have the few bucks for a classic paperback you'll read over and again, this one sells for fifteen bucks for the Kindle, and new for half-retail. I actually bought mine for full list at the bookstore as an impulse buy, and it was worth every penny with the next site I designed.Furthermore, I just saw that Nielsen's "Designing Web Usability" is selling used for one penny and up (plus shipping, for sure), and it is still the BIBLE for web authors. So if you endeavor to design websites that just plain work, order that one too...Read, learn, write simply, educate others.Bob Reedtechwriter1@comcast.net

Whichever page you open this book at, you'll find common sense advice that you'd think anyone could come up with on their own. Unfortunately, reality has taught us that developers perform quite poorly at understanding how users want to interact with their applications (I'm a developer myself, and I know how true that is from first hand experience).The book is quite good at explaining why some decisions (actual decisions, made by real people in real applications) are bad, and why others are good -- and when you see other developers' apps analyzed like that you can't help but agree with the authors. Of course, you might have a different perspective on things if you are one of the developers who performed poorly, but this is what this book is all about: helping us avoid mistakes we know we're inclined to make in the first place. And that's the whole point of reading it.

Jakob Nielsen is famous among the HCI community for his heuristics, which are as valid today as they were back in 1994 when they were created. With this publication, he has shown that he is also in tune with the more recent mobile world. A good read for UX practitioners in the mobile space.

I would recommend this book to all UX professionals and mobile apps designers as it presents many valuable guidelines and hints for app development and testing. However, I was a little bit disappointed by the number of remarks that might be obvious even for a fresh user of a smarthopne or a tablet.

Not a bad book, lots of research to support theories in this book. I personally felt some of the conclusions drawn from some of the research weren't accurate based on how they were presenting it or that they could have been concluded a different way from the same data, but overall great points to consider. The book seemed a bit dated and probably is.

Just like achieve with Prioritizing Web Usability, Jakob Nielsen sets a benchmark in mobile usability. In a nutshell, you will find in this book useful advises on how to deal with the most challenging problems with mobile usability.

Actual research on usability issues for mobile devices. Great resource for usability students. Gives info and details on testing and the results. Students can create own test plans following the experts.

Tough to really learn much from a book discussing new tech during its infancy. It is thought provoking, interesting and a quick read.

Este libro centra el 80% de su contenido en estudiar la usabilidad web en un smartphone. Primero intenta convencer que de las webs responsive mobile son el futuro, por encima de las apps nativas y luego cuando empieza a tocar aplicaciones (todo casos antiguos con deficiencias) apenas se sale del estudio de la representación de datos vía listados. No se habla ni de grids, ni de estructuras tipo ViewPager, DrawerLayout u otros menús. Ah bueno, habla de los formularios...Es del 2012 y se nota, pero dejando de lado las cuatro conclusiones útiles que se pueden sacar del libro, ya en su momento fue un despropósito llamar a esto libro Mobile Usability en lugar de Mobile Web Usability.No os aportará casi nada si sois diseñadores o desarrolladores Mobile.

il libro si legge molto velocemente date le dimensioni. È corredato di numerosi esempi e best practice, che guidano il lettore attraverso l'analisi di tutti i punti fondamentali relativi alla progettazione di interfacce touch, sia mobile che non, visto che i tablet non ricadono propriamente in questa categoria.Per chi segue Alertbox più della metà dei contenuti del libro sarà una rilettura, sicuramente utile e arricchita. Rispetto agli articoli di Nielsen su useit.com è stato fatto un ottimo lavoro nella creazione del percorso narrativo.Il libro non è adatto a una lettura su kindle data la numerosa presenza di immagini in una pagina e testo esplicativo nella successiva

L'ho acquistato per aiutarmi nella stesura della mia tesi (marketing associato alla web usability) e debbo dire che mi è stato abbastanza utile. é ben scritto e scorrevole, molto interessante e ricco di spunti.

Un piccolo testo che racchiude ed approfondisce leggermente molte delle nozioni rilasciate nella rubrica AlertBox di Nielsen. Per i professionisti senior del settore saranno pochi gli spunti interessanti, o inediti, che si troveranno leggendo questo libro. Personalmente preferisco i testi dove determinate affermazioni o concetti vengono presentati in modo più approfondito e facendo riferimento alle nozioni teoriche che li supportano ma alla fine questo titolo rimane comunque una buona lettura.

This book is useful, short and it gives examples. It also bases its suggestions on user testing rather than assumptions. A must read for any UX professional.