As UX Professionals we have to think about moving away from traditional mouse-based interactions and think of a new way

Until recently, I used hover-states, flyout panels, rollovers and mouse overs when designing user-interfaces. I’m beginning to rethink these methods, though, especially when designing for touch devices, cell phones, etc.

In my opinion, interactions like these often hinder us because although they may work for the desktop or laptop scenario, they impede interactivity and frustrate users in other contexts.

In doing research for this Opinion, I found a great article by Bill Scott, “Musings on Mouse Hover” about the benefits of rollover/hover-states. For interfaces that require a mouse,I generally agree with Scott. He writes:

“Use hover to create a more lightweight but engaging way to cue the user to hidden functionality. Use it as a way to provide just-in-time details. Use it to keep your page visually simpler providing what is needed when they are most curious.”

But what happens when there’s no cursor wandering around the user-interface? What happens when buttons are activated on-click,gesture, or similar interaction? Answer: nothing is lost if the hover-states are *enhancements*, but if they’re an integral part of your UI, users will get lost and frustrated.

Context & Clarity

We have to make user-interfaces clear. Functionality needs to be visually apparent and indicative of what the user should expect. We can no longer rely on images lighting up, buttons or sections gaining focus, alt-text giving instruction or dropdown menus appearing when a cursor triggers them.

Again, in the touch-scenario, the developer/designer cannot rely on an omnipresent cursor.

All of this thinking comes from being a Dad and, specifically, from experiences I’ve had with the Flash games at NickJr.com. A game like “Diego’s Underwater Adventure,” for example, is perfectly suited to a touch-device because it doesn’t rely on keyboard interaction, right-clicking or any of the standards we often expect. This makes it easy to guide the character through the story and choose items for kids, to which these games are geared.

However, “The Great Roadrunner Race” (another Go, Diego, Go! game), which uses mouse-position to dictate the movement of the characters and keyboard interactions for things like jumping, leads to frustration … why?

Stepping Outside the Laptop/Desktop Dichotomy

As user experience professionals, it’s our job to step outside the laptop/desktop dichotomy and consider the myriad devices on which our interfaces might now be available. I’m picking on hover-states here, but the problems include screen-sizes, required plugins and download times, too.

How do you accommodate for not only screen resolution and different browsers, but also different form factors, input mechanisms and platforms such as mobile and various providers?

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