The State of Mobile User Experience

A period of maturity

When NN/g began this research in 2008, most devices offered miserable experiences. Five editions later, most sites and apps offer a genuinely good one. Mobile design has become stabler and less experimental — and users now attempt almost any task on a phone.

Consistency and convergence

Patterns have standardised: sites settle on a navigation bar or a hamburger, and users expect one or the other almost everywhere. The convergence extends to platforms — iOS and Android have grown similar enough that designers can ship nearly the same UI on both without hurting usability.

The demise of the full site

One study participant didn’t even know what a "full" site meant. Thanks to responsive design, nearly all sites now carry their full content and features on mobile — and there’s little reason to request the desktop version on a phone.

Native and web blur together

Progressive web apps now look and behave like native apps — home-screen icons, background running, push notifications. Meanwhile app clips and instant apps let people use an app for a quick task without installing it. For users, the channels are merging.

Simpler login and registration

Typing passwords on a phone is tedious, and designers have finally minimised these flows. Biometrics, in-browser password managers, passwordless one-time codes, magic links and Apple’s passkeys all make signing in dramatically easier.

The most recent trend in registration is the passwordless account — and users barely notice the friction is gone.

Where mobile still fails

The small-screen lesson is only half-learned: decorative graphics still needlessly lengthen pages. Worse, overlays have multiplied — used for navigation and detail pages, not just cookies and chat — and in-app browsers routinely disorient users, sometimes stacking two conflicting hamburger menus or hiding persistent buttons.