A comparison of performance and preference on mobile devices vs. desktop computers

Smartphones and desktop computers are ubiquitous in today's world. Due to the improved computing power and high portability of smartphone devices, users are performing more sophisticated tasks on their smartphones. This study compares the performance of a web-based task on a desktop computer with a mobile-based task on a smartphone. In addition, we have compared the overall user experience and preference across the two devices. In order to achieve this, we created a mobile-based word game for an Android mobile platform and a web-based version of the same word game for a browser platform. Sixty participants were instructed to complete the tasks on both devices. Our results show that while performance on the computer-based game was significantly better than performance on the mobile-based game, people preferred to play on the smartphone rather than the desktop computer. People preferred smartphones over desktop computers on account of their touch-screen features, portability and ease of use, even though they actually performed the task more efficiently on the desktop computers.