Mobile-first web designs cause significant usability issues when viewed on desktop. Content becomes overly dispersed across long scrolling pages with expansive white space and enlarged images and fonts, making it difficult for users to consume and understand the information.
Policy pages often fail to follow basic usability guidelines: they are not readable, lack high-level summaries and inside-policy navigation, have poor formatting, and are not available in expected places.
Simplicity depends on the capacity of the information channel and what's simple for one device, can be primitive or intricate for another, since screens are information channels with a limited capacity. When you're designing for multiple devices, don't go by common cliches like "simple is good."
Chunking makes content easier to comprehend and remember. Chunking text help users understand the relationship between content elements and information hierarchy.
Hick's Law (or the Hick–Hyman Law) says that the more choices you present to your users, the longer it takes them to reach a decision. However, combining Hick’s Law with other design techniques can make long menus easy to use.
To transition images from mobile to desktop, consider relative screen space and information density. Pay attention to cropping, scaling, and proportions.
Testing finds that Chinese and Western users experience the same difficulties with complex sites, but Chinese tend to complain less about complexity and prefer fairly high information density.
Designing for all screen sizes must consider the human–device communication capacity, which depends on users’ memory, device portability, and screen size.
Intranets are improving findability and discoverability by organizing content by task, using mega-menus, offering wayfinding cues, and providing shortcuts.
