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Does size matter?: investigating the impact of mobile phone screen size on users' perceived usability, effectiveness and efficiency.

Published:27 August 2013Publication History

ABSTRACT

Given the wide adoption of smartphones, an interesting debate is taking place regarding their optimal screen size and specifically whether possible portability issues counterbalance the obvious benefits of a larger screen. Moreover, the lack of scientific evidence about the concrete impact of mobile phones' screen size on usability raises questions both to practitioners and researchers. In this paper, we investigate the impact of a mobile phone's screen size on users' effectiveness, efficiency and perceived usability as measured using System Usability Scale (SUS). An experiment was conducted with 60 participants, which interacted with the same information seeking application on three different devices of the same brand that differed on their screen size. A significant effect of screen size on efficiency was derived, leading to an important finding that users who interact with larger than 4.3in screens are more efficient during information seeking tasks.

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Conferences
      MobileHCI '13: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services
      August 2013
      662 pages
      ISBN:9781450322737
      DOI:10.1145/2493190

      Copyright © 2013 ACM

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      Publication History

      • Published: 27 August 2013

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      MobileHCI '13 Paper Acceptance Rate53of238submissions,22%Overall Acceptance Rate202of906submissions,22%

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