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Max Maurer, Doris Hausen, Alexander De Luca, Heinrich Hussmann
Mobile or Desktop Websites? Website Usage on Multitouch Devices
In NordiCHI2010: Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Reykjavik, Iceland, October 16 - 20, 2010. 739-742. ACM, New York, NY. ISBN: 978-1-60558-934-3 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1868914.1869018 (bib)

Having Internet access on mobile phones nowadays nearly is a standard. Due to former bandwidth, input and screen limitations, website providers often created special versions of their websites for the use on mobile devices. New hardware and interactions techniques - like multitouch gestures - of current generation devices enable a new way of browsing the web on mobile devices. Fast and easy interaction with the original version of websites nally becomes feasible. However, companies still spent eort and money in creating secondary versions of their original pages. With the rapid deployment of new mobile devices supporting such interactions, the usefulness of mobile versions of websites becomes questionable. To nd out about users expectations we conducted an online survey asking 108 participants about their browsing habits on mobile devices and their preferences using mobile versions of websites. We also performed a small additional user study with 24 participants. The results of the survey show that at least some people prefer using original content websites instead of the respective mobile version, especially for users of new generation mobile devices like the iPhone or Android phones. Those results are supported by the user study which shows no signicant performance increase when comparing both versions - the mobile and desktop one - performing a visual search task.