Small Surfaces - Amazing Mobile UI Design & Resources (via Mowser)

Increase mobile UX quality? Just add standards.

February 2, 2012

“Apple, Android, and Blackberry all do a great job of sharing standards with their developer communities. They share detailed guidelines on standard UI elements, the associated terminology, and their behaviors, and give usage examples for the UI. However, what they don’t do is string them all together into patterns. What happens after you click this button? How should these messages change in context of the task? If you’re opening a document online, should it open in a new window or in the current window? When and where do error messages appear in a form? Is that different or the same in a wizard or series of forms? These are the questions that designers and developers spend most of their time toiling over-the little things that pull UI elements together into a full interaction. And these are also the questions that the OS standards do not cover. This is a key gap in standards for designers and developers that can be filled by a new custom set of guidelines, which further save money and time in development efforts and add value to the existing, basic OS standards.”

Link: Raising the Bar for Mobile Standards (uxmag.com, via)

The messy fragmented Android universe

January 23, 2012

In an interview with Android’s head of design, Mathias Duarte gave the (unimpressive, I think) response to the question of why there are so many different versions of Android in the wild just now:

“A lot of those issues really are much more related to the hardware capabilities. Things like just how much memory you have. The reality is, right now Android is growing so quickly, it’s like it was back in the X86 days of PCs. When you got that 286 and were so excited! ‘Yes!’ And then Quake comes along and your 286 just couldn’t do the job. So right now, we have that issue people call ‘fragmentation,’ where some of the older hardware just won’t run the new OS. So trying to upgrade the OS is really difficult.”

While I don’t normally write about technical / platform issues, the Android fragmentation problem is now becoming a genuine challenge for organisations that want to deliver consistently fantastic user experiences on the platform.

This great chart, published last year by Michael Degusta, really brings the point home.

10 principles for awesome mobile design

January 23, 2012

Uday Gajendar pulls together a set of 10 mobile design principles distilled from some of the leading mobile designers.

“Pivot, snack, bursts: support “snacking” by enabling users to pivot through tasks and information in quick bursts. Remember, the user is not chained to a desk for hours. They are often in a state of “constant partial attention,” multitasking across physical and virtual contexts, sometimes one-handed while doing something else.”

Link: Mobile UX Primer: Principles (ghostinthepixel.com)

Finally, a UI style guide for Android

January 13, 2012

Finally, a Google has put together a user interface style guide for Android. Better late than never.

“It’s not enough to make an app that is easy to use. Android apps empower people to try new things and to use apps in inventive new ways. Android lets people combine applications into new workflows through multitasking, notifications, and sharing across apps. At the same time, your app should feel personal, giving people access to superb technology with clarity and grace.”

Link: Android Design (android.com)

How to write a product design review: Nokia N9

December 29, 2011

Critiquing the Nokia N9, running Meego, Dan Hill shows us how product reviews really should be written.

“…The skeuomorphic nonsense that incomprehensibly pervades apps like Apple’s own Contacts, Calendar, iBooks, GameCenter, Find My Friends et al – all awkward faux-leather, wood and paper stylings – is is of such questionable “taste” it threatens to damage the overall harmony of iOS with its discordant notes. You cannot derive value from the idle suggestion of such textures on screen; they are physical properties and should be experienced as such, or not at all. Yet Apple’s design team will not explore those physical properties, merely sublimating their desire for such qualities into a picture of leather, a picture of wood. It recalls Marcel Duchamp’s critique of ‘retinal art’ i.e. intended only to please the eye. This has no place in Nokia’s design universe, thankfully. The design work here is intrinsically of its medium and pleases the eye consistently, without resorting to cheap imagery, but it also pleases the hand and the ear rather more than the iPhone.”

Link: Portable cathedrals (domusweb.it, via)

Luther used social media to go viral

December 21, 2011

The Economist takes a look at how the distribution of Luther’s thoughts followed some of the patterns that are very familiar in today’s digital social media universe.

“Unlike larger books, which took weeks or months to produce, a pamphlet could be printed in a day or two. Copies of the initial edition, which cost about the same as a chicken, would first spread throughout the town where it was printed. Luther’s sympathisers recommended it to their friends. Booksellers promoted it and itinerant colporteurs hawked it. Travelling merchants, traders and preachers would then carry copies to other towns, and if they sparked sufficient interest, local printers would quickly produce their own editions, in batches of 1,000 or so, in the hope of cashing in on the buzz. A popular pamphlet would thus spread quickly without its author’s involvement.”

Link: Social media in the 16th Century: How Luther went viral (economist.com)