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Web sites need to be adapted to touch devices - 26/07/2010
Smartphones, iPad, iPod Touch, together with other similar devices, represent new ways of accessing the internet from any place. We receive emails at the dentist's office, we visit social media from restaurant tables, and we read the news while standing in line at the bank.
Besides the mobility, many of these devices have something else in common. They don't have a mouse. To browse, all you have to do is touch their screens.
The internet as we know it today was created for mouse and keyboard interaction. Links and buttons are adequate to the size of the mouse cursor; some information only show up on the screen when we roll the mouse over elements on the page, which is known as 'hovering'; with hovering we can also detect if an element on the screen is an interactive item or not.
However, on touch screen devices there is no mouse and no cursor. The cursor is replaced by the user's sight. The mouse click is replaced by a touch on the screen.
This means that buttons and links should have a size which adequate to a human finger or even a thumb - depending on the position of the button on the screen, people will use their thumbs.
It also means that one cannot rely on hover behaviors to make users understand the interaction elements. Links and buttons don't change color and look when the cursor rolls over them; additional information are not shown when the cursor rolls over some element. All of this for one simple reason: there are no cursors.
So, the interactive elements need to be more easily recognized and differentiated from the rest of the content, its actions need to be more easily deducted and the interaction as a whole needs to be clearer and more intuitive.
The web sites that wish to attract and seduce touch device users will need to adapt themselves to this new interaction paradigm which is gaining a lot of strength.
This adaptation can be achieved in two different ways. The first one is to create a new interface for the website, which will work as nicely through touch interaction as it will through mouse and keyboard interaction.
Another option is to create a specific version of the website, which should be shown only to users who access through a touch device.
In order to make sure that they are offering the best possible experience to their touch device users, some companies have already started including Usability Tests and User Experience Research during their web sites' and applications' development phase, and they are moving ahead of their competitors.
What really matters is to create a positive experience for the web site users. Those who are successful in this new challenge will surely be one step ahead in the race for the users' and customers' loyalty.
Fernando Oliveira
Usability Expert
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