james & internet

“Using designs intended for a full screen on a 7-inch tablet is like squeezing a size-10 person into a size-7 suit. Not going to look good. But that’s what the Fire is trying to do. Accessing full (desktop) sites on the Fire was a prescription for failure in our testing. Users did much better when using mobile sites.

Using sites optimized for 3.5-inch mobile screens on the bigger 7-inch screen felt luxurious — somewhat like using a regular website on a 30-inch monitor.”

This is something I noticed when I saw the original 7-inch Galaxy Tab, but reading this study has reminded me again of this problem.

Most websites are designed with 2 sizes in mind — desktop, and mobile. When you’ve got a 7 inch screen, you’re trapped in a usability middle-ground. Desktop designs end up with tap targets that are far too small, and mobile designs looks sparse and unwieldy.

The question seems to be; will designers start to build websites optimised for all of these screen sizes? So far, we have:

• 3.5-inch screens (iPhone, iPod touch & many Android phones)
• 4 to 4.7-inch screens (More modern Android phones, some WP7 phones)
• 7-inch tablets (HTC Flyer, Kindle Fire, PlayBook, Galaxy Tab 7.7)
• 10-inch tablets (iPad, Galaxy Tab 10.1, HP TouchPad, Acer etc)

My sense is that designers & companies will target the 3.5-inch & 10-inch sizes for their market popularity, and the rest of the devices will work, but ultimately but either awkward-looking, hard to use, or both.