Screen Size Effect on Usability of Arabic Forms for Smartphones

Researchers have established a concrete and solid ground for web forms design and their usability testing since the nineties. However, since the dramatic shift towards devices that carries a varied set of properties, such as, smartphones and tablets, developers started to build forms to suit these devices. As a consequence, a radical shift in research and usability testing needed to strike as well. We attempt to work with Arabic forms that are designed particularly for mobile devices (smartphones to be exact). Our goal, was to come up with empirically tested usability guidelines for Arabic mobile forms through achieving a set of objectives. Firstly, we have investigated the effect of smartphones screen size on error rate. In other words, do smaller screens increase the number of errors made by the users during form filling tasks? Secondly, we have addressed the following question: what is the best location for an error message to appear on smartphones' forms? The above issues as come to our knowledge never been addressed before for Arabic smartphones' forms. We have reached that conclusion after a detailed literature review. Our results have revealed the existence of a negative relationship between screen size and number of errors, users are less likely to make errors when the screen is big. As to the best location to display an error message, we tested a variety of locations. Our findings indicated that for a smartphone that has a small screen, below text box is the best location for a message to be shown. Pop up messages comes next but it scored the worst regarding subjective preferences.