Let's get into the differences between smartphones and tablets for a minute. You're familiar, I'm sure, with a phone and a tablet, but I just want to point out a couple of key distinctions. The other thing I wanted to point out is I'm not showing too many tablet examples in this course, because tablet is easier – the resolutions are much larger. And if you're on the mobile web, responsive design takes care of that.
The key, though, is to notice the difference. So, with smartphone we have *more distractions*, *smaller resolution*, *not always the primary access point*, that users are *multitasking*; they're in a *deep social and emotional context*. And that also includes *environmental factors* such as low lighting. And that they need to *know how to tap on objects*.
And notice that compared to a desktop, that you can click on things and you can have things like hovers; and on mobile, classically this is one of the big things when you start doing mobile design, is, 'Oh, you can't do that on mobile. Mobile doesn't support that.' Actually, mobile can support hovers with a CSS hover class. But just to say that those are kind of key distinctions for smartphone. And tablet itself is less fixed, so users are kind of sitting there;
in a way, easier to design for. If it's a mobile app, I guess that you're porting to a tablet as well – you know – as you usually do and then it's terrible if you don't, because if it's a mobile app and they just open it – and we're talking about an app now – and there's just a tiny little screen; it was optimized for mobile. So, you need to be respectful if you're doing a mobile app that you think natively in a mobile – in other words, you've got all that real estate and you want to lay things out nicely and have them feel and look appropriate to the tablet.
More kind of consumers using tablets at home, less used in business than, say, a mobile phone. Multi-user device, so tablets are often shared with other users in a family kind of situation or in a home. Of course, the resolution is larger. You still need the *tapability*, though, so that's the key.