How mobile screen size expansion affects user experience design

Strange shape of the small screen mobile phone all-powerful era is gone forever. In fact, industry trends in recent years have shown that large-screen handsets, or giant-screen handsets, will dominate for a long time. And now, it is time to sum up the past few years, the face of large screen mobile phones, the designer's dereliction of duty.

　　How to define a big screen mobile phone?

In fact, simply called the big screen is not particularly accurate, its English name is more image: Phone+tablet=phablet, that is, it is a combination of traditional mobile phones and tablets, phablet.

As a result, these big-screen phones are actually more than the palm of our hands, the control of the size, but did not reach the level of the tablet. More precisely, those big-screen phones with screen sizes in 5~6.9 inches. As a reference, the iphone 4&4s's screen size is 3.5 inches, the iphone 5&5s is 4 inches, the iphone 6 is 4.7 inches, and the iphone 6P is 5.5 inches.

So, just look at the screen size to quickly determine the type of phone.

Although phablet is not new at the moment, the vast majority of users are still aware of its existence from Samsung's note series, and are now fully on the street after the iphone 6P. The earliest phable could be counted on Samsung's Galaxy Note, which was available as early as 2011.

　Traced

In the mobile phone call as the main SMS communication supplemented by the era of functional machine, the vast majority of users do not buy content on the phone, but now it is very different, users to buy digital content on the phone is not new, and digital content consumption will be more and more, this and the growth of the mobile phone screen and the change in the way the interaction is inseparable. According to Statista, the mobile phone market will grow by 4% a year from now, and as of 2018, the growth rate of big-screen handsets is expected to be as high as 36%, and I think you can see how much imagination there is in between.

　Interactive design of large screen mobile phone

Large-screen mobile phones are naturally cool, and now every day many users abandon the small screen before the smart machine to join the 5-inch big screen machine camp. However, they are not sure that the larger screen will bring them a better and more comfortable user experience, after all, the palm does not increase. Therefore, the interaction between the user and the large screen machine needs to be adjusted.

The thumb-operated hot zone map of the mobile screen you may have contacted, it identifies people holding the phone and identifies areas where the thumb is easy to manipulate and where it is difficult to reach.

In fact, the thumb-working heat map was first used by designer Steven Hoober in the 2011 book, Designing Mobile Interface, where the green part was dubbed "the most comfortable area of thumb touch in one hand". The measurements in these areas were summed up by 1333 observational analyses, which also showed that 49% of users were accustomed to holding their phones in one hand, using their thumbs to manipulate the screen, and doing other things with the other. Also based on those reports of the year, the following information was obtained:

36% of users will surround their phones with their hands, using the thumb of one hand to manipulate the screen

15% of users use their hands to hold the phone and manipulate the screen with their hands, while 90% of the users are accustomed to the screen, while 10% of the users prefer horizontal screen operation.

But what about the controls on big-screen handsets after the "3.5-inch-best" era? Do users need to stretch their thumb to click on the other edge of the screen, or do they have a change in grip? According to Steven Hoober's latest research data, "the proportion of a user holding a single hand drops, will be more with the other hands, and will frequently switch hands, whether it is input or grip." "The situation has been extended to different sizes of devices, including ordinary mobile phones, big-screen phones and tablets."

Take a look at the Operation Hot Zone map of the user's thumb in a single grip, the green is the comfort zone, the orange part is the area where the finger is stretched to reach, and the red is the area that the thumb cannot touch. Obviously, the thumb control area is not big on these big screen mobile phones, users will not be wronged their thumbs to complete the complex task, "bear" all the operation. Therefore, this is why users will adjust their grip mode, adapt to the new grip, try to adapt to the new control and interactive way, with the big screen mobile phone easy to interact.

In this way, it seems to be a relief, one hand to consider the current large screen mobile phone size and interface complex interaction, so users in the vast majority of cases is still a hand to assume the grip of the task (grip mode has changed). As a result, for both grip and interaction, the user's most comfortable operating area on a large-screen handset is still close to the previous thumb comfort zone.

Unfortunately, the reality is not the case.

How to design an interface/interaction/user experience for a large screen mobile phone

As a pioneer in the field of big screen mobile phones, the Samsung Galaxy Note series has made a great contribution to the market and users, but its only contribution to the interface, interaction and user experience is probably the stylus. Another awkward reality is that the vast majority of note users almost never use their stylus.

Correspondingly, Apple seems to be more dedicated to big screen optimizations. The IPhone 6P release has spread all the problems, and iOS designers have added a number of "accessibility" designs for this, such as double-clicking on the home button and pushing the top of the screen down to the comfort zone for easy user action. Many of these designs are a typical compromise result that has been upgraded in design but not good enough. Outside the iphone, there are all sorts of Android phones, which are basically eight Immortals crossing recount, and the quality of UI and interactive design is even harder to say.

Luke Wroblewski also offers another solution: move the most important interaction points to the bottom of the screen and arrange them from bottom to top, based on the importance of these button/control/operation areas. (Domestic handset manufacturers in the design of the FlyMe when the introduction of the Smartbar solution, and the idea is basically consistent) for iOS, it is good to follow this approach to design, which is true of Android, but Apple and Google can only control the design on the system, and specific app developers and designers need to take a deeper look at this.

The last Thought

The popularity of big-screen handsets is growing fast, and the larger screens and richer digital content are reshaping our time, and the mobile-side design is quietly changing everything. In the context of the UI, interaction, and user experience design of a large screen handset, we need to learn more about the actual situation, gather more data support, and consider more about ui/ux decisions. In the last two years of all the mobile phone and mobile system conference, each speaker is stressed that "we have a big screen machine interface optimization has a special skill", but the actual use, strange way of operating still feel unnatural. The future, there is a long way to go, this space, still very large.