This article was written in 2013. It might or it might not be outdated. And it could be that the layout breaks. If that’s the case please let me know.

Quantitative research on tablet orientation preferences.

Yesterday, Bob asked if there’s any research been done about how people hold their tablets. Always in portrait, or always on landscape mode? The only scientific research I know of is a Twitter poll I did a few years ago. Back then, ten people answered and there was no consensus. I decided to repeat the poll – I have more followers now than I had two years ago. More followers is more science.

I did a similar poll about how people hold their telephones, and the outcome was not shocking at all. Everybody holds their telephone in portrait mode, unless they do something special, like watching a movie, or typing. Landscape mode is a clear exception here.

The results

On tablets the results are very much divided. 22 people replied to my tweet. Four people clearly answered that it depends on what they’re doing, without showing a clear preference. I divided the rest of the answers into four possible results: always portrait, always landscape, preferable portrait, preferably landscape.

I could have stopped with the it depends answer. Five people always use their tablet in portrait mode and four people always use it in landscape mode. Four people prefer portrait, while five people prefer landscape. I think we can conclude that 50% of the tablet users will mostly use their device in portrait mode, while 50% will mostly use it in landscape mode. It looks like it’s a good idea to not make any assumptions about screen orientation when designing an app or a website.

Further thinking

There are many interesting questions that pop to mind after this poll. For instance, might the way people hold their device be coupled to some kind of personality. For instance, do some types of people prefer landscape mode because the have more overview, and do other types prefer portrait because of more focus? I’m no UX person, and I’ve never been interested in psychology, other people might know the answer to this assumption.

It might also be a cultural thing. All the respondents were Dutch or Belgian. People could also be lying unconsciously. Their preference might not be the same as their actual behaviour. It would be interesting to compare these results with actual website statistics.

Further reading

After writing this article, that same Bob pointed me in the direction of this much more interesting article on the same subject (with roughly the same results!). If you like thoughts about tablet orientation, you should definitely read it.