As previously discussed, the way users interact with digital products and services varies greatly depending on the platform and device they are using. While desktop websites historically dominated, mobile has become increasingly important to consider with the rise of smartphones and tablets. However, the landscape extends far beyond just mobile vs desktop – voice assistants, wearables, and connected devices introduce additional interaction modes.
As a product manager, understanding and optimizing the user experience across the diverse platforms customers may engage with is essential. Users expect a consistent, integrated experience whether they are interacting via a phone, laptop, smart speaker, watch or connected appliance. Designing for each platform also allows you to take advantage of their unique capabilities and contexts of use. This enables delivering the right experience, at the right time, tailored to the strengths of each platform.
In this article we will cover:
- Key considerations when designing for mobile and web
- How to approach designing for emerging platforms like voice assistants, wearables and more
- Strategies for optimizing and connecting design systems across platforms
- Approaches for testing and launching cross-platform experiences.
Getting these elements right allows delivering a streamlined, yet tailored experience across the platforms your customers use today and into the future.
Mobile Design Considerations
The pocket-sized nature of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets enables on-the-go access to information and services, but also introduces unique UX considerations. You compete with much more for a user’s attention on a small mobile screen. This demands focusing on streamlined, useful content that aligns with key mobile usage contexts.
Some of the top elements that you need to approach differently for mobile designs include:
- Content and Navigation – Mobiles require ruthless prioritization for small screens. Core use cases and tasks should be prominent in information architecture and content presentation.
- Visual Design and Layouts – You have less real estate to work with. This demands streamlining and often restraining visual elements for quick mobile scanning.
- Interactions – Smaller touch targets, gestures, and single hand use cases impact development.
- Performance – Optimizing processing power and battery life usage is critical due to mobile hardware constraints.
- Connectivity – Mobile use often spans online and offline scenarios, introducing questions around caching and offline-first approaches.
Now more than ever, mobile use represents primary and significant digital engagement across many demographics. Use cases range from quick lookups to extended engagement. By considering the constraints as well as opportunities of mobile platforms, you can deliver excellent mobile-first experiences.
Web Design Considerations
While mobile has become more dominant, web access via desktops and laptops still represents significant usage across many products and demographic groups.
Some unique considerations for web experiences include:
- Screen Real Estate – The larger screens of desktop devices allow you to appropriately include more content and visual elements without overwhelming users.
- Interactions – Mouse, trackpad and keyboard inputs vary greatly from mobile touch interactions. These allow more precise selections and typing input.
- Usage Contexts – The desktop environment often allows more extended sessions versus quick mobile lookups.
- Connectivity – Wired and WiFi web access is typically more consistent versus varying mobile network conditions.
- Screen Sizes – Design elements should adapt across smaller laptops up to large high resolution displays with responsive design principles.
- Accessibility – Additional considerations like color contrast ratios, ARIA roles and semantics, keyboard navigation and screen reader testing are critical for accessible web experiences.
Optimizing for the unique contexts of web use allows you to take advantage of additional real estate while accounting for connectivity and input method variances.
Designing for Additional Platforms
While mobile and web represent significant usage modes, focusing design strictly on these platforms misses opportunities to engage users through new modes like voice assistants, wearables, and more.
Here is an overview of some additional platforms and environmental considerations that could influence your product’s user experiences:
- Voice Assistants – The rise of Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri introduces new conversational UX considerations and hands free usage contexts.
- Wearables – Connected watches, fitness trackers and glasses enable quick glanceable interactions through very small screens.
- TVs – Large screens in a leanback usage context demand reconsidering layouts and input modes.
- Cars – Distraction avoidance and voice control modify approaches for in-vehicle infotainment systems.
- Appliances – For connected home devices visual or voice interactions may enable managing internet-enabled appliances like refrigerators or washing machines.
Evaluate each of these platforms based on your target customer usage contexts. Design to take advantage of unique inputs and connectivity constraints per platform. While you may not be able to design custom experiences for each, evaluating your product roadmap for gaps is prudent.
Optimizing Design Systems and Components
With an array of platforms to design for, maintaining efficiency and consistency across experiences is critical. This demands approaching cross-platform design in a systematic way.
Some best practices include:
- Creating a Flexible Design System – Build a system for structuring site-wide elements like navigation, headers, content containers etc that can adapt across platforms. Maintain a high level library of reusable UI/UX patterns and components.
- Modifying Components – Within the flexible system, adjust components to best meet the needs of each platform and device. For example, a navigation menu may work well as a dropdown on web but need a mobile drawer version.
- Maintain Consistency – While components morph to platforms, anchor around consistent branding, naming, core interactions and data across experiences. This retains a connected feel improving intuitiveness during transitions across devices.
- Centralize Design Tokens – For elements like colors, padding/margins, shadows etc, centralize definitions to propagate changes systematically.
- Document Extensively – Catalog how components adapt across platforms to guide implementation and explain intended variance.
The goal is not to overly standardize experiences, but allow platform uniqueness while retaining brand and UX familiarity customers appreciate. Think systemic flexibility.
Testing on Different Platforms
While designing for an array of platforms, continuously test across representative phones, tablets, laptops and other devices. Diagnose usability gaps specific to each form factor and environment early, and gather feedback from a diversity of end users.
Some tips for effective multi-platform testing include:
- Combine emulator and real device testing – Emulators are great for quick iterations during development while real world mobile testing on networks identifies performance gaps.
- Test early, test often – Build usability testing into sprints early and continually eval UX decisions against device specific priorities.
- Focus groups – Gather feedback from groups representing your personas to surface device preferences and pain points.
- A/B testing – Evaluate component and layout alternatives quantitatively across segments.
- Analytics review – Analyze usage data for platform engagement and frictions.
Testing early and iteratively allows adjusting course based on real user feedback by device. Avoid falling in love with designs before testing on the platforms customers will experience.
Launching and Iterating
With an optimized, test cross-platform experience, implementation approaches can streamline rollout and continue improving engagement. Some tips:
- Implement Responsively – Leverage progressive enhancement and feature detection to selectively activate experiences matched to browser/device capabilities.
- Monitor Analytics – Review usage across platforms, including metrics like sessions, engagement and conversions. Identify priority areas for optimizations.
- Iterate Based on Usage – Using analytics insights, prioritize future platform specific enhancements to better meet customer needs.
- Enable User Feedback – Collect feedback post-launch to identify platform specific frustrations and gaps to address.
- Enhance Cross-Platform Consistency – Expand shared components and patterns overtime to simplify navigation and understanding as customers transition devices.
- Automate Testing – Scale test coverage through UI testing automation to catch cross-browser, multi-device layout and functionality gaps.
The launch and iterations stage is critical for cementing a cross-platform experience that continues aligning to shifting consumer engagement trends across devices and environments.
Key Takeaways: Designing for Different Platforms
Designing for the breadth of platforms and devices customers use introduces significant complexity. However, accounting for mobile and web nuances while scaling experiences more broadly unlocks immense value. Some core lessons:
- Understand each platform’s constraints and interaction conventions when designing
- Craft flexible design systems and component libraries for cross-platform reuse
- Maintain branding, UX familiarity and key data consistency
- Test early, test often, iterating to address device specific gaps
- Monitor usage and enhance responsively post-launch
While targeting core platforms like mobile and web is key today, keep an eye on emerging engagement devices. As wearables, voice and connected appliances/vehicles mature, focusing innovation on these areas can provide competitive advantage.
By internalizing critical design considerations and optimization strategies per platform, product teams can deliver streamlined, tailored experiences matching their customer’s context and priorities across any device. This cross-platform alignment drives satisfaction, engagement and business results in the digital age.
