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From MobileDesign
Resources for designing and building mobile applications and websites.
Mobile design resources are provided free by the leader in mobile user experience consulting, Little Springs Design, and by you. Join the conversation and add your own thoughts, patterns, best practices or just check our work for typos.
Designing mobile user interfaces grows ever more interesting. Device and network capabilities are improving, platforms are giving us more features to help the user, privacy and security are becoming more important, and device proliferation is both increasing and decreasing.
This wiki aims to be the authoritative resource for all things related to the art and science of mobile user interface design. While it is maintained by Little Springs Design, content comes from various sources and is shared freely (see license info at bottom of the page). Please use, reuse, and edit.
Mobile design is not monolithic. It depends on the device characteristics and platform capabilities. Thus each page in this site has header information indicating what devices, device characteristics, and patterns the page applies to.
The following topics may be helpful to get you started in mobile design.
- The Mobile Challenge - Designing for mobile is more complex than designing for desktops. Device proliferation abounds.
- Design Patterns - an introduction to what design patterns are.
- Class-Based Design - Devices and device classes can be chosen strategically, based on market and user needs.
- Device Hierarchy - mobile patterns rely on both device user interface style and platform.
- Mobile Design Principles - ways to think about mobile design.
- Making your mobile app sticky - principles from a discussion at WIPJam (see WIPwiki for great mobile developer resources)
Contents |
[edit] Design Patterns
While neither standard practice nor academic research has yet formalized what a pattern is and is not, patterns have become a good method for a new user interface designer to learn good, well-practiced solutions. At a minimum, UI patterns provide a good starting point for specific parts of an application. See a thorough discussion about user interface Design Patterns.
- Screen Design Basics - Covers general and specific strategies for laying out screens. See a thorough discussion about user interface Screen Design.
- Screen Design Patterns - A list of documented solutions to common mobile design issues. For example: Fisheye Lists, Returned Results and Carousel.
- Application Navigation - Covers patterns that span individual pages or screens and how different screens work together. For example: Game Navigation, Softkey and Button Management, and Cookies Management.
- Application Management - Application management patterns that do not involve direct user interface issues, but instead involve less visible components of the user experience. For example: Application Download, Application State Management, and Launch Process.
- Advertising - Techniques to deliver advertising content on the mobile device. For example: Banner Ads, Fisheye Ads, and Interstitial Ads.
- Mobile Search
[edit] Articles & White Papers
- Mobile Design - mobile design worldwide, theories, phenomenas, and experiences working with the latest in mobile design
- The Carry Principle - the fact that the phone is always carried has profound implications
- Mobilize, Don't Miniaturize
- Style Guides - From standards organizations, carriers and manufacturers, and others
- A User Interface Designer’s Guide to J2ME and MIDP2
- An Overview of Mobile Versions of XHTML
- Design Case Study: Symbol Technology
- The Enterprise Distributed: Symbol Technology
- Integrating the Internet with the Physical World
- Mobile Usability Testing on a Budget
- MultiModal Applications: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
- Unsolved Problems in Unified Messaging
- Optimizing Images for mobile rendering
- Search Engine Optimization
- Mobile Contexts to Consider While Designing
- Fitt's Law for Mobile Devices
[edit] Design Tools
- Script Events - How different mobile browsers handle, or don't handle, DOM events for Javascript/ECMAscript
- Emulators - Emulators, design aids, etc.
- Color Deficit Design Tools - And other tools to help understand colorblindness and related conditions.
- Drawing Tools & Templates - Graphic design tools, and so on.
- Set up Photoshop and Illustrator color controls - Valid for anyone who works in interactive pretty much all the time.
[edit] Design Recommendations
- Creating media content for mobile delivery
- Game Design - currently focused on Java, but will mostly work for Flash & native apps
- Feature phone browsers - design recommendations for mass-market devices
- Full browsers - browsers like iPhone's Safari, Skyfire, and similar
- Help systems - building useful help systems for mobile applications and sites
- TouchWeb - designing web sites for touch screens
- Myth of the Page Fold - designing for scrolling
- Mobile Application Style Guides
- Mobile Style Guides - Sample Chapters
- Mobile Style Guides - Multiple-Device Platforms
- Mobile Style Guides - Screen Design, Part 1
- Mobile Style Guides - Screen Design, Part 2
- Off Deck design and distribution issues
- Mobile Web Speed - tips for speeding up the mobile web
[edit] Other Resources
- Mobile Design Lens at Squidoo: pointing at several online resources
- Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 at W3C Mobile Web Initiative
- Mobile Web App Best Practices Working Draft 7 at W3C Mobile Web Initiative
- Ready.Mobi Testing and scorecard for mobile-friendliness
- Mobile Browser ID Strings at Zytrax
- Mobile Advertising Guidelines from Mobile Marketing Association
- Mobile Design & Development Workshop Assets at Mobiledesign.org
- Location Caret Tags
- WALL Next-Generation Tutorial by Luca Passani
- Mobile Webkit rendering table by Peter Paul Koch
[edit] Mobile Design Communities
- Mobile Design Community Mobile Design worldwide mobile community site
- Brian Fling's Mobile Design blog and email discussion list
- Scott Weiss' Usable Mobile email discussion list.
- Ten Mistakes in Mobile Web marketing at dotMobi
- Advice, .mobi web design techniques, browser issues, and WAP discussion at the Mobile Web Design Section at dotMobi.
- Mobile Threads at IxDA
- Mobile Design UK
- Mobile Web Development
[edit] Mobile Design Conferences
- Design for Mobile Conference April 20-22 2009, North American mobile design conference
- Mobile User Experience May, UK. conference
- Mobile HCI Academic mobile HCI conference
- Mobile Device & User Experience November, London. Mobile UX conference with a networking emphasis
- Mobile Usability: Usability Week
[edit] Device-Specific Resources
- BlackBerry UI Guidelines - Dimensions for screens, background images, and icons on Blackberry devices
- Palm UI Guidelines for designing Palm webOS applications.
- Windows Touch UI Guidelines at the Microsoft Developer Network
- iPhone UI Guidelines
[edit] Device Classes
While computer-targeted design can assume a 800x600 display or better and in landscape orientation, a mouse or pointing device, and a keyboard, the same can not be said for mobile devices. This section outlines classes of devices the design recommendations in this wiki represent. See Device hierarchy for an overview of the concepts. category:Device Classes
[edit] User Interface Classes
This is a hierarchical listing of UI characteristics, which deals primarily with input methods, in which are placed all the important device operating systems. category: User Interface Classes
- Scroll & Select Interfaces - also, Category: Scroll & select interfaces
- Screen-input interfaces category: Screen-input interfaces
- Pen interfaces - also, category: Pen interfaces
- Touch screens - also, category: Touch screens
[edit] Hardware Classes
Generally independent of the UI model above. To really understand the needs of your target device, you will need to know these features also. The Hardware Classes section is concerned with display mechanisms, and the overall layout of the mobile device. See this section if you are concerned with device resolution or determining whether it is a clamshell or slider.
- Environmental input devices
- Keyboards & keypads - also, Category:Keyboards & keypads
- Device formats - form factors, etc.
- Display devices
[edit] Every Device Ever Made
Nothing here yet. But maybe someday we could do that. And, they will not be listed here, as the list would be insane-long. You'll have to drill into it, or search, or something.
Under Construction. Slowly.
[edit] Design for Mobile Branding and Images
You are free to use any of the graphic marks depicting Design for Mobile when making any legitimate references to the wiki, the conference series or any related venture. All use of Design for Mobile branding on items sold must contribute profits to running the wiki or conference. Contact us for more information or to clear usage.
To avoid loading every image into the wiki, there is no subsidiary page within the wiki:
- Visit the D4M branding page on the conference site for a list of brand images in various sizes
- Most brand images are also posted to the D4M Flickr pool
If you require other images, or resolution independent imagery for other purposes, please use the contact link above.
Photos found on the D4M Flickr pool can also be put to good use, but seek permission from the photographer or at least link back to the Flickr site to assure they get appropriate credit.
The 2009 conference introduced a T-shirt to promote the event, with different branding on the front. Follow that link to purchase it, or if you want the revolutionary graphic for other purposes, contact us with details of the request.

