How small displays affect web browsing

This study does a comparison of task performance while using large displays vs. small displays to interact with web content.

The related work section offers a good overview of other studies that examine how screen size affects reading speed. In this study, they found that "Users of the small screen were 50% less effective in completing tasks than the large screen subjects." The two resolutions tested were 1074x768 and 640x480, so one could argue that task performance would degrade still further at even lower resolutions (around 240 pixels or so) found on many pdas or phones.

There was a few interesting changes in behavior for small screens:
- Search was used twice as often
- Navigation patterns changed
- Scrolling increased

And they came up with some guidelines:
- Put less content on a page
- Provide easy access to search
- Put critical content near the top

The thing I found striking here was that such a relatively small screen size difference had so much impact on task performance and that screen size was changing user behavior. What if you used a small screen to access your favorite online community? Would you behave differently?

Improving Web Interaction on Small Displays, 1998
Matt Jones, Gary Marsden, Norliza Mohd-Nasir, Kevin Boone
[Full-text pdf]