Designing Mobile Interfaces, by Steven Hoober & Eric Berkman.Designing Mobile Interfaces: Patterns for Interaction Design is the comprehensive, platform-agnostic reference for your mobile design work. Whether you design or develop for smartphones, featurephones, tablets, or other touchscreen devices, common principles are discussed and codified as 76 universal interaction and interface patterns. Designing Mobile Interfaces has been translated into multiple languages, used to teach interactive design at universities, and guided the creation of countless apps, websites and even entire OSs like Firefox.

Each pattern explains the underlying psychology and physiology, describes best practices in implementation, and lists pitfalls and "best practices" you should watch out for and avoid. Every pattern is grouped with similar or optional patterns, and appendices detail key background information from typography to the principles of mobile networks. You get not just a list of designs and out of date screenshots, but have a base of knowledge to make up your own mind, and react to the always-changing mobile environment.

"Designing Mobile Interfaces is another stellar addition to O’Reilly’s essential interface books. Every mobile designer will want to have this thorough book on their shelf for reference." — Dan Saffer

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Or, you can just read it right here on this wiki. Pretty much every bit of content from the book is posted online, right here.

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We also update it occasionally, especially the reference sections, so even if you buy the book check back for updates, and contact us with errors, suggestions or to get access to the wiki to add updates yourself.


Preface


Designing Smartphone Interfaces

I had planned on updating the patterns to create an eventual second edition, and I certainly have added plenty of notes and so on, but now think I may propose a fairly different type of follow-on book. This is where I am working on it.


The Patterns

Think we need to add a pattern? You might have just missed it, or the world might have changed. Create an account and add it directly to this wiki, or if more lazy just contact us and we'll look into it. Really!

V - Stuff We Didn't Put In the Book

We made up a LOT of patterns as short descriptions, and when we got around to organizing and detailing them... they didn't all sound that good after all. Also, we have to keep the book at a reasonable size. But, we don't want to loose track of these, so here's an un-ordered list of those ideas we've kicked aside. For now.


Appendices & General Information

To keep the patterns focused on design and implementation, I have pulled all kinds of supporting information out of them. However, a lot of it is still very interesting. And there's no good way for a designer or developer to get a summary of this sort of information.

So, I've included it here as an Appendix, ordered so you can just pretty much read it from one end to the other.

Visit any time to get the latest updates, or just to avoid typing in long links from a piece of paper. And please come add your own information, or update old or changed links.

 


Not Desktop, But Not Quite Mobile

Though the patterns are supposed to be general enough to apply to kiosks, telematics, 10-foot Ui, etc. experts in those fields insist they just aren't. I have given in and in the interest of increasing knowledge, am going to start linking to the good stuff in related domains.


References


Other Stuff from the Book


Speaking Engagments, Presentations, Webcasts...

Eric works in Sydney, Australia. Steven lives in the Kansas City, Missouri (US) area.

We're pretty busy with day jobs, freelance jobs and so on. But if we're scheduled to go somewhere and talk about anything remotely related to mobile (and it's an open meeting you can come to) we'll post it here.


Mentions, Reviews & Other Writing

We (and especially Steven) write a lot still. Here we've gathered a list of articles of note, articles in which we're mentioned or interviewed, and reviews or other important mentions of this book.