M. Kurosu (Ed.): Human-Computer Interaction, Part III, HCII 2014, LNCS 8512, pp. 146–154, 2014. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014 Comparison Test of Website Use with Mobile Phone and Laptop Computer Martin Maguire and Min Tang Loughborough Design School, Loughborough University LE11 3TU, UK m.c.maguire@lboro.ac.uk Abstract. The study compared user performance and subjective ratings between a mobile phone and laptop computer for accessing the internet. Twenty four par- ticipants were required to carry out two equivalent sets of 5 tasks, one set of tasks with a mobile phone and the other set with a laptop. It was found that the task times for the mobile phone were higher than those of the laptop for all tasks but only significantly different for two of the task pairs. The most important reason for this result seemed to be the difference in size of the screens on each device. Participants were also asked to rate the difficulty of each task performed on both laptop and phone. Interestingly, participants did not rate the difficulty of using the mobile phone significantly higher than for the laptop. This seemed to be because of lower expectations when using the mobile phone, good dexterity in zooming in and out of the screen, and spending less time reviewing each page on the phone than on the laptop before moving on another page. Keywords: Usability evaluation, Website, Mobile phone, Laptop. 1 Introduction Mobile phones are not just a device for calling and texting people but have become a necessary and indispensable tool in our daily lives. In combination with the internet, mobile phones already have the functions of a personal computer but in a handy port- able size. However the relatively small screen and keyboard size of a mobile phone can make an ordinary webpage or ecommerce website difficult to use [1]. Smart phones can display most websites without modification, however the user is often unable to read the text or see useful content without pinch-zooming. Responsive web- sites can adapt to the device or operating environment although the technology still faces challenges to overcome such as non-fluid advertisements [2]. This study ex- plored the difference between mobile phone and laptop when using them to perform search tasks on the internet. The project was also inspired by the need for Loughbo- rough University information to be easy to obtain via a mobile device which is often student’s preferred way of accessing the internet. 2 Aims and Method This aim of the study was to compare a mobile phone and a computer laptop for accessing the internet. In addition, it was intended to record the user’s experience of