Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited a common Sense Approach to Web Usability Steve Krug

The tyranny of the itty-bitty living space
The most obvious thing about mobile screens is that they’re small. For
decades, we’ve been designing for screens which, while they may have felt
small to Web designers at the time, were luxurious by today’s standards. And
even then, designers were working overtime trying to squeeze everything
into view.
But if you thought Home page real estate was precious before, try
accomplishing the same things on a mobile site. So there are definitely many
new tradeoffs to be made.
One way to deal with a smaller living space is to leave things out: Create a
mobile site that is a subset of the full site. Which, of course, raises a tricky
question: Which parts do you leave out?
One approach was Mobile First. Instead of designing a full-featured (and
perhaps bloated) version of your Web site first and then paring it down to
create the mobile version, you design the mobile version first based on the
features and content that are most important to your users. Then you add on
more features and content to create the desktop/full version.
It was a great idea. For one thing, Mobile First meant that you would work
hard to determine what was really essential, what people needed most.
Always a good thing to do.
But some people interpreted it to mean that you should choose what to
include based on what people want to do when they’re mobile. This assumed
that when people accessed the mobile version they were “on the move,” not
sitting at their desk, so they’d only need the kinds of features you’d use on
the move. For example, you might want to check your bank balances while
out shopping, but you wouldn’t be likely to reconcile your checkbook or set
up a new account.

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Of course, it turned out this was wrong. People are just as likely to be using
their mobile devices while sitting on the couch at home, and they want (and
expect) to be able to do everything. Or at least, everybody wants to do 
some
things, and if you add them all up it amounts to everything.
If you’re going to include everything, you have to pay even more attention to
prioritizing.
Things I want to use in a hurry or frequently should be close at hand.
Everything else can be a few taps away, but there should be an obvious path
to get to them.
In some cases, the lack of space on each screen means that mobile sites
become much deeper than their full-size cousins, so you might have to tap
down three, four, or five “levels” to get to some features or content.
This means that people will be tapping more, but that’s OK. With small
screens it’s inevitable: To see the same amount of information, you’re going
to be either tapping or scrolling a lot more. As long as the user continues to
feel confident that what they want is further down the screen or behind that
link or button, they’ll keep going.
Here’s the main thing to remember, though:
MANAGING REAL ESTATE CHALLENGES SHOULDN’T BE DONE
AT THE COST OF USABILITY
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Thanks to Manikandan Baluchamy for this maxim.