Our goal is to compare user performance with mobile and desktop applications. For this, we have to identify tasks that are comparable in execution with both mobile and desktop applications.

At first, we want to find common tasks in each field, mobile and desktop applications, individually. Therefore, we observed people using a smartphone and later also asked them which applications they usually use. As a result, we found out that many users communicate with mobile devices via email or messenger, they look at social media and read newsfeeds. Another activity is information retrieval, often with the help of Google or Wikipedia. Other fields that are often used in a mobile context are online shopping, watching videos and mobile gaming. Smartphones are also often used to navigate with the help of a maps application.

We then used the same technique to identify common tasks on desktop devices. Some are very similar to the ones in a mobile context, like email, messenger, social media, gaming, online shopping, information retrieval, watching videos, reading a newsfeed and using maps. There are some more specific and complex tasks, which are preferentially executed in a desktop context, like programming, cutting audio or video files and planning with CAD applications. Office applications are also often used at a desktop computer.

Of our results, eight of them overlap. We figured that it would be difficult to compare user performance with the tasks using social media, watching videos, reading newsfeeds or navigating with maps.

However, the tasks writing email, communicating with a messenger, online shopping and information retrieval seem comparable with regard to the usual user performance metrics task completion, task completion time and error rate. This is why we will presumably concentrate on these tasks when comparing the user performance with mobile and desktop applications.