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| [[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449394639/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=4ourthmobile-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=1449394639|{{attachment:wiki-banner-book.png|Click here to buy from Amazon.|align="right"}}]] {{attachment:wiki-banner-bonus.png|align="right"}} |
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| If your job title, job description or deliverables have names like those, and you work in mobile, then you need this book. If you are moving from another field, such as mobile design, or are switching from one narrowly focused mobile area to another, this book encompasses general patterns that can help you understand how to move from one type of device, or one type of interaction to another. | If your job title, job description or deliverables have names like those, and you work in mobile, then you need this book. Whether working on apps or websites for mobile (or any of many other things), this book addresses the common underlying principles in order to help you make better decisions and understand how to create better designs. If you are moving from another field, such as desktop web design, or are switching from one narrowly focused mobile area to another, this book encompasses general patterns that can help you understand how to move from one type of device, or one type of interaction to another. |
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| === Who is this book not for? === Really, that title is a trick. If you are still reading this, then it is at least partly for you. Go ahead and read it all without reservation. However, if you are used to very tactical books, about how to get the right reflection on your app icon, this might seem to miss the point. That's because it's not a book for today, but for yesterday and tomorrow. When I started working in mobile full time, the word "app" was not rolling off the tongues of everyone, and the mobile web was something of an embarrassment. In 18 months, who knows what the world will bring? So parts of this book will bore you. Web designers need to know some, but can implement very few of the patterns, though more all the time as HTML5 comes to fruition. App developers can implement more, depending on what sort of app, and what level of device integration they get. And on what platform. And there are a lot more device and OS designers than you think. I can think of around 20 eReaders alone. Touchscreen clocks, and interactive cars? There are a lot of people working on these systems, will be more tomorrow, and the lines will begin to blur soon over web, app, os. So we did not label what each pattern applies to. You will figure it out, and tomorrow it will all change. === You and your OS === ALSO: Be sure to mention 1) OS means GUI. The modding community on Android, not to mention the ability to skin for operators, implies that very soon deeply embedded features may be under control of third-party applications. Etc. And the OS for a web app is in many ways the Web, and the browser... 2) You can still mess this up. Some OS's allow you to override (or mis-apply) keyboard functions, scrollbars, annunciator rows and more. You need to know why these exist, and how to use them correctly in everyday application design. |
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Like any good interactive design, I have kept a specific scope in mind from the very beginning of this book. If it was all things to all people, it would be much larger or we'd simply never have finished it. Our focus here has been on design. By which we mean information architecture, information-, interaction-, interface-, and visual design, and copywriters.
If your job title, job description or deliverables have names like those, and you work in mobile, then you need this book. Whether working on apps or websites for mobile (or any of many other things), this book addresses the common underlying principles in order to help you make better decisions and understand how to create better designs.
If you are moving from another field, such as desktop web design, or are switching from one narrowly focused mobile area to another, this book encompasses general patterns that can help you understand how to move from one type of device, or one type of interaction to another.
If you work in a related job, there is still something for you. Human factors engineers and HCI experts will find numerous discussions of why these solutions have become patterns, and references to cognitive psychology and physiology reasons these are true.
Development is not addressed as such, but the book has been organized so it can be used to find specific solutions to any mobile interaction. If you don't have a dedicated design team, you can use the patterns to find and focus on solutions, confirm they are technically possible, and to avoid common implementation pitfalls.
Hardware designers, or anyone who can influence hardware design, will find specific guidelines to best practices in interactive, such as key labels, and the use of sensors. Though these are included mostly for the use of interaction designers -- to understand how the hardware influences their on-screen behaviors -- they are also specific enough to be used for design of the interactive portions of the hardware itself.
Next: What Do You Mean by "Mobile"?