The Context of User Experience

You can test if a website is responsive by resizing the browser window with the mouse if you're using a laptop or desktop device. If you're on your phone...Ba dum tss!! Its remarkable how fast mobile devices have become popular. In 2014 StatsCounter Global Stats reported Mobile internet usage soars by 67%, and the average American owns 4 devices. Over the past few years responsive web design (RWD) has become more, and more prevalent partly because the number of mobile devices has risen dramatically. Mobile devices now consume over 50% of the Internet usage. Most business websites that have been developed in the past 3 years are likely responsive. Typically this means the content 'responds' to the device. This seems to be the standard default approach for most websites - re-arrange and re-size the content to fit the screen. The elements just stack up, one on top of the other. All the content is there. No pinching to zoom in, no turning your phone the other way around for a better view. The content is the same on any device you're using. But is it the content that you are looking for? NN/g published an article entitled Optimizing for Context in the Omnichannel User Experience. It talks about context in terms of what device and what channel the user journey is happening in. Understanding in what context people are experiencing your website is critically important to providing award winning user experience. The article has a good comparison table of devices (Desktop, Tablet, Mobile) by common channels, device strengths, context assumptions. There are also real-world examples to demonstrate emphasizing content and features that are needed on the go.

Read the full article here

Optimizing for Context in the Omnichannel User Experience https://www.nngroup.com/articles/context-specific-cross-channel/ Summary: Design for each channel’s unique strengths and role in the customer journey to create usable context-specific experiences.