Mobile Design Patterns Library
Introduction
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Please Add Your Thoughts
This is a wiki on purpose. We want the entire mobile design community to help with this effort. Even if you disagree, add your thoughts. For very significant changes, please add comments, instead of just over-writing what others have done without discussion.
Patterns
Components
A section or subsection of a design - This carousel is one of those. Components are made of widgets, and maybe other, custom stuff.
Display of Information
Control & Confirmation
- Confirmation Maybe Principles ... but the thing where you don't label buttons yes or no. Mostly modal dialogues.
Revealing More Information / Drilldown
- Windowshade individual and list - explicit opening. When used as a list item, doesn't make it a new list type. Just the select action is in place, vs. a new screen or a popup.
- Pop-ups Various sorts. Should we steal from Sprint and use their several types, or just call them all variations on a theme. OR? Is this the sort of thing that goes in pages? Behavior as a modal popup is a page behavior thing... ????
- Heirarchical lists Open up little arrows or +s to see the next level down. Like file system explorers...
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Returned results http://patterns.design4mobile.com/index.php/Returned_Results Could be a LIST, could be just a widget at top of screen... could be something else. Like uses LIST display modes, but it's a result section.
- Revealable Menus From softkeys to android to that weird thing on the Pre you pull up (or the bar on some FF mobile things)
- Fixed menus Same as revealable, but Apple style of it living there all the time.
- Dialer Not always done well, so lets do it well - hard and soft pause for example, and how dialer is different from entering numbers into address book. Things like keep mute/spkr buttons when num pad is visible (soft keypads only... but concept is sold. All those actions on a call are immediate. Allow access to 3-way, etc. but mute better be 1 button) - MAYBE lives in KEY section as a special type of keyboard.
Widget
Scrollbars, buttons, etc.- Smaller than a Component. Highly reusable items, used many times, over and over, in other places. Some similar sized items are not widgets, because they are custom implemented items.
Lateral Access
- Tabs All these not so much sideways and "at the same level" and view switching - solutions to tabs not fitting, like USAT scrolling the tab bar. Note that tabs are terrible because text is horizontally inefficient
- Peel away The google maps on iPhone (I think) thing where you get to see other layers by peeling back to a layer behind
- Flip over Suggest device flipping also, but mostly rotating the virtual space to see the other side of an object
- Other 3D effects Like cube displays, etc. Find mobile equivalent of
- Prev/next Not just pagination... or is it? Could be that this is where that goes...
Drilldown
- Stack of photos Tap to expand stack, etc. See all ways of doing it on Surface ... Many other drilldown methods'
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- Vertical Scroll
- Horizontal Scroll Or sideways indicator... see Seesmic details for an interesting version of "more over here"
- Links Suggest underlines for web. Indicators for off-site?
- Buttons size, indicator of priority. Still like BOA old ones with color/shape icons alongside. Apple arrowed button bars are good examples of this.
- Pointers Including text insertion points, the mag insertion for iPhone edit? Pre "splash" thing
- Icons Some notes about good practice, Consistency, modifiers to icons (+ next to one means, new message, but it better be big enough to see... multiple encoding)
- Avatar Image of a person, or the stand in, and how it's used various places
- Meters and levels Generalized version of what I think of battery meters. For all those things, signal strength, and anything else; ratings is a good one. How to show that your rating is different from baseline. Perhaps systematically similar to the charging state of the battery
Text entry http://patterns.design4mobile.com/index.php/Text_Entry --- Probably several of these, so we cover all the usual form elements, and which work better and worse, and notes about pop-up selection or entry on default J2ME, S60... (and not to do it!)
- Reload/Refresh/Stop As one thing, since sometimes you use a single location. Must offer refresh for more than web browser URLs, so a single idea... I think.
- Clear fields Need an easy way to do this, as typical desktop methods are hard to do, BUT, abide by principles of mobile design and let it be undoable also. (suggest how, if not OS level, like press and hold clear after this returns it, or robust autocomplete saving)
- Spinners Or, more likely, their alternatives. The Galaxy has some nice ones. The gist is that we think that obscuring the number is dumb, and you need alternative methods (up/down arrows, direct entry... click and get numpad even if softkb only) and scrolling as machine-era interface should be left as secondary; also, if you must scroll, click detents; ALSO: here or other entry methods, pick good numbers. Scroller for minutes on a calendar should be at 15 min intervals, and direct entry required for any odd numbers.
- Pagination Convention page of page, range of total, but also dot indicators of position in a list (as for multiple home pages), etc.
- Location Within Indicates location, without a jump to feature, or a pagination control per se. Dot indicators may be THIS instead
Wait indicators http://patterns.design4mobile.com/index.php/Wait_Indicator this is terrible. See various styles in Sprint guide. Yes, overlaps widget and component. Make it work, as ONE item. Talk through it as wait indicator is the widget, suggestd /implementation/ for some states is as a modal dialogue.
- Zoom, scale Methods to zoom in and out, especially suggested icons, ways of indicating zoom level (national to house) and literal scale bars.
- Location jump Thinking of the rolodex slider motif of some address books, but ALSO the widget to type a name in an address book, and it doesn't jump but goes to the first location. See search-within for a contrasting widget
- Search within Simple. Search box, whether website or address book, when typed it either jumps to or filters results. NOT the same as location jump. I think. Unless we think that the jump behavior makes them overlap...
- Sort and Filter Controls Some overlap with location jump and search-within... Work on this.
- Truncation ellipsis are three dots, or the glyph, and nothing else. Highly suggest those to make it clear (else make sure characters can be chopped at ends of viewport). Character truncation, word truncation and when to use each. Mention marquee, but an old technique so not expected, not favored now except on very small screens.
- Lazy loading Different from infinite area, or infinite list. More a widget thing, like if you have an infinite list, the images might lazy load to get the basic list in place. Animation, low-res, etc.
- Type principles? Like, pick good readable stuff, try to pick fonts where bold face is not roomier than roman. Even mention square serifs for readability. Or... too much and not really a pattern???? - GO TO END OF THAT LINK. Has simple rules you should follow! Add square serifs to it, if not mentioned.
Page
page layout and basics stuff - NOT WIDGETS THOUGH...
- Multi-encoding? (text/icon, color/contrast) REally basic stuff like this, or should there be a "Principles" section... or should P stand for principles instead???
- Screens? auto brightness?
- Wrapper I think the concept is valid and worth mentioning. There's a template that exists, with menu indicators, annunciator rows, titles, etc. They all have their place, and you should only eliminate them under certain conditions. Generally, I think you at least allow access to, say, the annunciator row (or equivalent) so you can always find out alerts, status, battery, signal, etc. if you need. Why be surprised when in camera mode, for example? DO think we can combine as one. Unless you think it should be multiple items.
- Idle Screens Basic deck, and the multiple-home-screen mentality Apple esp brought us. Side or other scrolling, pros and cons, indicators of position...
- Signon/Pswds Everything I say about non-obscuring, and notes that you probably don't need it at all; devices are personal and those with secure info better lock the device -- device lock hints: make gestures clear, pattern codes, etc.
- Notifications Strips are becoming a best practice. But also talk about icons as widgets, etc. Non-interrupting, but visible. Refer to copia stuff a lot on this. It's pretty solid, really.
- Widgets As a principle. A widget is something that changes. Show eric my Hero200 control icons. Widgets. An icon that pulls up a control panel is an icon, not a widget. Etc.
Behaviors
interaction with no key screen component - Sound, vibration, etc. May overlap gestures but I think it meant output vs. input???
- LED Blink, colors, etc. - Again, got some of these in the blog post on battery indicators
- Sound Audible feedback guidelines, AND reading of on-screen stuff, or reminders, or...
- Backlight Timing can be odd
- Use of technology? Like the N8s nice sleep state clock. Something along the lines of avoiding common practice, and using best practice (OLED power per lit pixel)
Key
Keyboard, Keypad and Other input features. Gestures here or somewhere else? Sensors?
- Soft keyboards Probably. Unless it should be under Key below. Use my gripes about non-standard Galaxy Epic as a baseline.
- Keypad layout
- Keyboard layout Galaxy epic issues, for example. Use localized standards, do not make up own. FN only when needed, and backlight as well as reflective indicators...
- Press-and-hold Can it be generalized?
- Haptic feedback?
- Spacing Worth repeating basic ergonomics? Or are we getting into hardware design too much
Input modes Mostly, the indicator of which mode. http://patterns.design4mobile.com/index.php/Text_Entry should come back even with full keyboards, and soft keyboards I think. Some value as indicator of what entry is ALLOWED for a field, not just what mode currently in.
- Autocomplete All the bad things about predictive text input. I guess. Complex issue.
- Accesskeys Includes screen listing of them. Contrast with numbered lists...