Steven Hoober

Strategy, architecture, and design for every screen

Steven Hoober wrote the book on mobile design patterns, and is best known for his ongoing research into how people really use touchscreen phones and tablets. He has been doing mobile and multi-channel design since 1999, designing the first Google mobile search, the first mobile app store (for Sprint), mobile browsers including parts of the Samsung one you might be using right now, websites like Weather.com and Lowe's home improvement, and apps for companies like Hallmark, US Bank and Cummins diesel. Steven maintains a repository of mobile design and development information including all the content from the O'Reilly book Designing Mobile Interfaces at the 4ourth Mobile Patterns Wiki, regularly writes for UX Matters magazine, and UX Magazine, among other writing and speaking.

If you want me to speak at your event, check out my speaking policies first.

Speaking, Workshops & Other Events

2015

• STC Technical Communication Summit - 21 - 24 June, 2015 - Columbus, Ohio.

  • Phones Aren't Flat: Designing for People, Data and Ecosystems - 45 minutes with hands-on work, so bring something.

  • #stc15

• MoDevUX 2015 - 23 - 24 March, 2015 - Arlington, Virginia.

  • Designing Ecosystems, Not Just Apps - Workshop
  • #modevux
  • My discount code is FOS30 which I think gets a whole 30% off!

• SXSW 2015 - 13 - 17 March, 2015 - Austin, Texas.

  • Design for Fingers, Thumbs and People - Slideshare

  • #sxsw

2014

• Midwest UX - 23-25 October, 2014 - Herron School of Art & Design (well, my sessions are), Indianapolis, Indiana.

  • Designing for Ecosystems: The Intersection of Connected Technology & People (Workshop)

  • Fingers, Thumbs, and People: Design for How People Touch and Hold Their Devices - 25 October

  • #mwux14 Vimeo

• That Conference - 11-13 August, 2014 - Kalahari Resort, Wisconsin Dells.

  • Design for Fingers, Thumbs, and People: Real World Data and Tactics for Designing Touchscreen Interfaces

  • Also, an OpenSpaces session

• UXPA 2014 - 21-24 July - London.

  • Design for Fingers, Thumbs, and People: Real World Data and Tactics for Designing Touchscreen Interfaces YouTube Slideshare

• 2014 mLearnCon Conference and Expo - 24-26 June - San Diego, California.

  • How People Hold and Touch Their Mobile Devices

• UXPA-KC - 2 June - VML, Kansas City, Missouri

  • Preview of UXPA London — How People Really Hold and Touch Their Phones and Tablets YouTube Slideshare

• SoCal UX Camp - 31 May CSF, Garden Grove, California.

  • Design for Fingers, Thumbs & People - How People Really Hold and Touch Their Phones and Tablets YouTube Slideshare

  • Designing for Ecosystems: The Intersection of Connected Technology & People (Workshop) Slideshare

• 2014 Interagency Mobile Learning Webinar - 20-22 May - Online

  • How People Really Hold and Touch (their phones) Slideshare

• MoDevUX - 19 May - McLean, Virginia

  • Workshop - API First: A UX Design ImperativePodcast preview, Slideshare

• TechJobsLA - 5 April - Blankspaces DTLA, Los Angeles, California.

  • Workshop - Physical, Digital, Human: Designing Experiences for Mobile and the Internet of Things Slideshare

• IxDA Los Angeles - 4 April - CP+B, Santa Monica, California

  • How People Really Hold and Touch... their phone YouTube

• Developer Week SF 2014 - 18-19 February - San Francisco, California.

  • Multi-Device Development: Building for Everything (Panel)

• Convey UX - 5-7 February - Seattle, Washington.

  • Tools for Mobile UX Design (90 min Mini-Workshop) Slideshare Video Flickr

  • How People Really Hold and Touch... their phone (40 min Presentation) Slideshare Video

  • ''Preview of what I will be talking about''

• Mobile Trends Conference - 16-17 January - Krakow, Poland.

  • Preview Q&A with me

  • Getting Good UX Into Mobile Slideshare

  • Post-event promo video including quotes from me YouTube

• Entrepreneurial User Experience Workshop - 6 & 8 January - Kauffman Foundation, Kansas City, Missouri.

  • Slideshare

2013

• MoDev East - 12 December - Mclean, Virginia.

  • Design for Fingers, Thumbs, and People Slideshare

• DevLearn - 23-27 October - Mobile Learning Stage, Las Vegas.

  • Panel: Exploring the Present and Future of Mobile Learning, 10am 23 Oct

  • Presentation: Mobile Design: Adding Mobile to Your Learning Ecosystem, 11am, 24 Oct Slideshare

• eLearning Guild - September Online Forum - 19-20 September - (Online)

  • How People Really Hold and Touch (their phones) Session Recording

• 2013 Interagency Mobile Learning Webinar Series - 16-18 July - (Online)

  • Ask the Mobile Experts: An Interactive Panel Discussion! Video

• mLearnCon - 18-20 June - San Jose, California.

  • Designing UI and UX for Your Learners and Not for the Device (Panel)

  • Turning Boxes into Ecosystems: Designing for Ecosystems and People Instead of Screens and Pages Slideshare

  • How People Really Hold and Touch (their phones) Slideshare

• MoDevUX - 9-11 May - Mclean, Virginia.

  • Workshop: Turning Boxes into Ecosystems: Successful multi-channel, multi-platform, multi-user design Slideshare

  • How People Really Hold and Touch (their phones) Slideshare Video

• MMConf - 18-19 April - Krakow, Poland.

  • The Trouble With All Those Boxes (Slideshare)

• Interaction Design BOF Yahoo! (sponsored by BayCHI and IXDA Silicon Valley) - 17 Jan - Sunnyvale, California.

  • Slideshare

  • Sketchnotes by Jerome Domurat

2012

• Executing for Every Screen, an O'Reilly Webcast - 10 July.

  • Slideshare

• Float Mobile Learning Symposium during Techweek 2012 - 25 June - Chicago Merchandise Mart.

  • Slideshare

  • Video of presentation

  • Video interview

• D2WC - Designer, Developer, Mobile Workflow - 16-18 May - Mariott Hotel, Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri.

  • Slideshare

• MoDevUX - 20 April - Ritz Carlton Hotel, Tysons Corner, Virginia.

  • Really Using your Device Capabilities Slideshare * Video

• User Centered Execution for Mobile UX Designers, an O'Reilly Webcast - 29 Feb.

  • Watch the recorded session

• IXDA Toronto - 23 Feb - Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

  • Agile UX: The What, Why, and How Panel

• Avoiding the Heuristic Solution, an O'Reilly Webcast 31 Jan.

  • Watch the recording

2011

• Kansas City UX Show & Tell - 22 July - Kansas City, Missouri

• Float Mobile Learning Symposium - 10 June - Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois

  • Video of presentation in 4 parts

  • Video interview

• Applying Patterns to Mobile Design, an O'Reilly Webcast - 8 November

  • Watch the recording.

• MoDevEast - 1 December - Gannett Conference Center, Mclean, Virginia

  • Cannot recall. Should look it up sometime...

2010

• User Centered Design - 2 November - Art Institutes International Kansas City

  • Mobile Design in :20 Introduction to mobile for designers

• Design for Mobile 2010 - September 2010 - Chicago, Illinois

  • Designing Device Design Deliverables

  • "Design for Mobile First" Panel with Scott Jenson & Luke Wroblewski

Before 2010

• JCCC - 16 November 2009

  • Ten things web designers need to know before going mobile

• November KCDesignCore Meeting - 5 November 2009 - JCCC Reginer Campus

  • Designing for Mobile Devices

• Design for Mobile 2009 - 21 April 2009 - Lawrence, Kansas

  • Weather Channel Mobile Redesign: After Action Report Slideshare

• MobileWidgetCamp - 7 September 2008 - Austin, Texas

  • Slideshare

Speaking Policy

As you may have noticed, I will happily share information with anyone. I'd love to come to your conference, workshop series, or other event. But, since I have spent so much time and money on this over the last few years, I want to be clear what I do, under what conditions:

I will:

• Make a presentation with you, for your audience and their skill level and interests. I will only talk about things I know I can confidently explain or have an opinion on.
• Go to any location, at almost any time. Check with me first to make sure it fits my schedule, but in general I do everything first-come, first-served and do not mind travel at all.
• Attend your whole event, assuming it is remotely something I can follow.
• Be social. I'll answer questions, on stage or off, come to lunches or drinks, and be a top tweeter of other speakers at your event.
• Participate however else you ask me. Need a spare person on a panel, to sign books or sit at a lunch table and incite conversation? Okay!
• Give away stuff, maybe. I often have spare stuff, like books or software. Stuff I have enough of or don't need. If so, I tend to bring it along and give it away to attendees.

You will:

• Work with me on any arrangements, and to make sure the presentation or workshop appeals to your attendees, and meets their expectations.
• Provide graphics as needed (your event logo, for example) to assure my customizations look professional and support your brand.
• Provide suitable facilities and materials for workshops. It won't go as well without a good room, paper, Post-It notes, and markers. Plus I probably travel so can't bring them easily.
• Assure there's a normal projector. VGA or HDMI, not a silly USB system so I can't attach other devices or see speaker notes.
• Make sure I will not lose money on the deal. You have to cover any travel expenses I incur for your event alone, lodging and a reasonable fee for meals outside the event. I don't care how: Give me enough honorarium to cover it, let me turn in receipts for reimbursement or you arrange the travel yourself. This can include picking me up at the airport vs paying for a cab. You can finagle this also: get one of your sponsors or your boss to pay me to come to the office for a workshop, that just happens to be the day before your event. That counts.

I don't have any demands aside from those listed. I have no fixed fees. I don't demand money to account for notional lost business, or anything.

Note: I only really speak English. If not all your attendees are fluent in it, tell me so I can deliver the deck early with extra words for translation, so everyone can follow along a little better.

If you want me to come talk to or train your company, in such a way there should probably be an NDA, you should contact me to arrange this as a piece of paid work, and to make sure it addresses the specific needs of your organization.

Quotes About How Awesome I am

"It’s possible that Steven Hoober has done more research than any one human being on mobile and in his presentation, Tools for Mobile UX Design and How People Really Hold and Touch he definitely provided the data proving it! I recommend that anyone who is doing mobile design watch this presentation, which provides great heuristics to keep in mind in terms of text size, visible target, finger size, design by zones and more. He also has for sale on his website, 4ourth.com, a great little tool, which enables UX designers to evaluate their mobile design based upon actual text and finger size!" Lisa L. Trager

Other Online Resources

Slideshare and YouTube also include items on land navigation and sensors, but just ignore those.

• O'Reilly Events then click the Multimedia tab

• Slideshare

• YouTube

Other Photos

Mostly for me, in case I need another promotional ones. These are approved by my wife as things where I don't look stupid and am not doing something (mostly: shooting) that would offend some people.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmconf/8746504465/ Up on stage at MM Conf in Krakow.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/10078963473/ Current Twitter profile.

• https://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/13426590865/ On stage at DevLearn in Las Vegas.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/2582913529/ In a small plane.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/2493154703/ Drawing on a whiteboard.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/2493150191/ Also working on a whiteboard.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/2497851835/ Intense focus while I engrave something.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/6402658661/ Drawing with a baby.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/6454896879/ Facebook headline now, working at desk.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shoobe01/8678675346/ Working at computer, with cat.