For many years, there was no particular assistance provided to those seeking to design for mobile handsets. Over time, books and other documents and supporting information has emerged. Now, major software vendors like Adobe are embedding mobile-centric technology in their products.

New ones are constantly being added, or replaced, so please help us keep this up to date. Visit the wiki at www.4ourth.com/wiki or contact us with updates you may encounter.

Templates & Stencils

These are graphic items you can use with various drawing programs to create concepts, mockups, process diagrams, comps or graphics for final designs.

First listed are organizations with either general templates, or a number of templates for different devices and OSs. This is followed by a list by platform, as recently most designers and agencies have become concentrated on one or two devices or platforms, leading to a surge in such templates.

Note that this is just those we've found, or found useful. Many more may exist, or be included as part of the various manufacturer and OS developer links under the UI Guidelines section, below. Also be aware that by no means are all of these reviewed for quality, and are just checked to make sure that (at the time) they were valid links to real files, and are in the right category.

Design Organizations

4ourth Mobile

These are the templates we use every day for designing mobile device interfaces. Includes a numer of mobile components and additional information like typograph, for general mobile design. Also includes gesture guidelines, and some handset/OS specific items. The illustrations and diagrams in this book were created with these components.

• Adobe InDesign CS4 (.indd) format, compressed zip file, 15.7 mb

• PDF for viewing, or opening in, Adobe Illustrator, et. al., 1.4 mb

If you are still working in Macromedia Freehand, the old (September 2009) version is still available. It has Little Springs branding, as that's who Steven worked for when he made it.

• Macromedia Freehand MX 2004 (.fh11) format, compressed, 1.1 mb

Graffletopia

• Mobile UI Stencils (Omnigraffle)

Mobility

• Mobility A free set of mobile UI design elements. (Photoshop)

Punchcut

• Punchcut Toolset for Managing Screen Resolutions a collection of devices of various sizes, in PSD format, to assist with developing content or design at multiple resolutions.

Squetch

• Wireframe Sketching Kit with tools for Browser, iPad upright, iPad landscape, Smartphone, GUI-Elements and Form-Elements. Not sure what some mean, but I guess "Smartphone" means they are trying to not just be iOS, so they get a category. (Illustrator)

Yahoo!

• Yahoo! Stencil Kit many non-mobile parts, but also useful general and iPhone bits and pieces.

Specific Operating Systems

Android OS

All versions, all platforms, all operator overlays.

• Library of Android UI Elements from Smashing Magazine. Photoshop library of Android (default) elements only. (Photoshop)

• Android 2.2 Elements based on the Smashing Magazine work. (Photoshop)

• Android Wireframe Tools (OmniGraffle)

• http://www.webdesignshock.com/freebies/free-photoshop-android-interface-gui/ which has a lot of UI widgets, and includes the typography needed to make it all work.(Photoshop)

• Icon Design Guidelines, Android 2.0 from Developer.Android.com. Includes ways to download their template pack and other useful stuff. Quite detailed for the graphic designer, for a change. (Photoshop)

• 14 Android GUI Widgets by which they seem to mean default desktop widgets (e.g. clock), vs. UI widgets like scrollbars. (Photoshop)

• HTC HD2 PSD Vector150 layers, 60 groups, almost all vector. (Photoshop)

• HTC G2 370 layers, almost all vector, (Photoshop)

• Motorola Droid 2350 layers, almost all vector (Photoshop)

• Samsung Galaxy S Device not specified. 127 layers. (Photoshop)

• Samsung Galaxy Tab P1000 110 layers. (Photoshop)

• Android Honeycomb Tablet Preview of wireframe components, sketch sheets, etc. (based on screenshots, emulators, etc, so not final). From Zurb (OmniGraffle)

• Google Android 1.6 Wireframe stencil for Omnigraffle from MarlinMobile (OmniGraffle).

• Google Android 2.1 / 2.2 Wireframe stencil for Omnigraffle from MarlinMobile (OmniGraffle).

iOS

iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad

• Library of iPhone UI Elements Photoshop library of iPhone-specific elements only, from Teehan-Lax. Updated occasionally, so if you see a new one, please update the link for us. (Photoshop)

• http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/2010/08/12/iphone-4-gui-psd-retina-display/ Same as above but for the iPhone 4 resolution instead. (Photoshop)

• iPhone UI Kit Lots of UI widgets like switches, buttons, etc. (Photoshop)

• Another Libtary of iPhone4 UI Elements Based on the Teehan-Lax work above, but presumably different in some way. (Photoshop)

• Vector Wireframe Templates for iPhone (Illustrator)

• iPhone 4 HD Another one, not sure who made it or if it's fresh or a derivation of the Teehan-Lax stuff again. (Photoshop)

• iPhone Wireframe Kit In, of all things, Google Docs. Haven't tried it, but I really need to. (GoogleDocs)

• iPad Template Preview only has the frame, so not sure what is included. (Photoshop)

• iPad Wall Presenter I think just the frames with guides to put backgrounds and designs into. (PNG and Photoshop)

• Sketching the iPad from Zurb to encourage sketching, even as far as to print empties and use your mad Sharpie® skills. (OmniGraffle)

MS Windows Phone 7

• Design Templates for Windows Phone 7 from Microsoft. Includes 28 layered Photoshop template files and the Segoe system font (Photoshop)

• Microsoft Windows Phone 7 wireframe stencil for Omnigraffle from MarlinMobile (OmniGraffle)

Symbian Family (S40, S60 & Maemo)

• Templates for mobile phones meaning mostly S40 featurephones, but also some older S60 devices.

• Templates for smartphones meaning S60 3rd and 5th edition, Symbian ^3, Maemo and some newer S40 devices.

• S60 Wireframing Stencils S60 (through 5th edition) elements of all sorts. (Illustrator, Fireworks)

UI Guidelines

OS and device manufacturers have increasingly been providing guidelines for the implementation of their UI. This may include brief, general guidance, relatively specific format rules, or quite involved discussions of design implementation and the reasoning behind them.

All provide much more documentation for developers, so if there is insufficient information in the UI guidelines, you may wish to browse the rest of the developer resources for the answer. Some UI or UX information may be included in other sections.

Android (from Google and OEMs)

• Android User Interface Guidelines

• Motorola’s Best Practices for Android UI

• Mutual Mobile Android Design Guidelines

• Listing of Android patterns, real ones, with problems and solutions as drawings, from UNITiD in Amsterdam.

• Google TV Web Developer's Guide and Google TV Android Developer's Guide, both from code.google.com.

Apple iOS

• iPhone Human Interface Guidelines

• iPhone Human Interface Guidelines PDF

• iPad Human Interface Guidelines

• iPad Human Interface Guidelines PDF

HP Palm WebOS

• User Interface Summary

• Human Interface Guidelines

MeeGo

• Handset UI Design Principles

• UX Design Principles A brief, neat overview of how to approach the overall interaction of the OS.

• Hildon UI Guidelines for Nokia Maemo

• MeeGo UI Design Guidelines for Handset

Microsoft Windows CE, Mobile & Phone

• Windows Touch UI Guideline

• UI Guidelines for Windows Mobile 6.5

• UI Design & Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7 v 2.0 PDF, from Microsoft.

RIM Blackberry

Smartphone

• UI Guidelines for BlackBerry 6.0 Smartphones website

• UI Guidelines for BlackBerry 6.0 Smartphones PDF.

• UI Guidelines for BlackBerry 4.x, 5.x Smartphones

• UI Guidelines for BlackBerry 4.x, 5.x Smartphones PDF.

• BlackBerry Browser Content Design Guidelines PDF.

QNX / Tablet

• UI Guidelines for the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet online, or the same information as a PDF

Samsung Bada

• Bada Application UI Guide

Symbian Family (S40 and S60)

• Nokia Design & User Experience Library

• Nokia Mobile Design Patterns A series of articles, approaching a pattern library. Note that some of these may be very familiar, as it is a wiki, so some older patterns from this book and other information posted to the wiki have been copied to here by the authors, and other users.

• Forum Nokia Design Portal PDF.

• Symbian UI Wiki

• Nokia Series 40 UI Style Guide

• S60 Visualization and Graphic Design Guideline PDF.

• Symbian^3 UI Style Guidelines PDF.

Featurephones

Featurephones, by the classic definition, do not have a "named OS." More to the point, applications cannot generally be loaded in the native OS, so other methods must be used.

J2ME

The Java Platform, Micro Edition (the same thing used to have a "2" in there, and is still mostly referred to by that abbreviation) is a common platform for running applications on practically all featurephones, worldwide. It was developed by Sun, so is now owned by Oracle. Installation methods vary, and some applications will work on basically all devices, while some are targeted to specific operators, regions, manufacturers or classes of devices. J2ME runs on over three billion handsets right this minute. This is a big deal.

• Sony Ericsson UI Rulebook for JavaPlatform8 and higher

• Java ME Landing Page a bunch of introductions, as well as developer resources, from Oracle.

BREW

A competitor to J2ME, created by Qualcomm, also allowing a (more or less) single piece of software to run on a range of handsets.

• AT&T UI Elements for Brew MP

Native Operating Systems

Featurephones do have operating systems, mostly developed by the individual manufacturers, and native applications are in fact developed outside of the manufacturer's direct control for these devices. However, they generally cannot be installed by end users. These are created or specified by operators, and installed under controlled conditions. This is mostly stuff like a custom phone book. Even the default web browser is likely to be J2ME or BREW.

While UI guidelines do exist, these are generally proprietary so cannot be distributed. We have a few of them, but cannot share them. They would also be generally irrelevant; if you have to develop for this situation, you will be given the most applicable version by the operator and/or manufacturer, and have to work closely with them to get the software implemented.

Drawing Tool, Tips & Tricks

This is really just a list of items that we keep for ourselves, so we don't forget things. Feel free to add items, or even categories, if there's a tool you want to share your notes about. It is not provided in the printed book text, and shouldn't be as is too specific to our methods of work, or is not particularly mobile-specific. Or both.

• Sharing between versions of InDesign

• Stupid INDD Tricks

• Stupid AI Tricks

Links, Guides, Other Stuff

• Real World Tips for Working with Text in InDesign CS3 - Sample Chapter from Peachpit Book

• Set up Photoshop and Illustrator color controls

• Free Freehand: Trying to get Adobe to let FH become open source or otherwise available

• The Q&A list from Free Freehand

• How to get FH MX to run in Snow Leopard

• Mike Rankin solves the double downsave problem

• Usability Links