Essential Mobile Interaction Design

Design User-Friendly, Intuitive Smartphone and Tablet Apps for Any Platform 

Mobile apps should feel natural and intuitive, and users should understand them quickly and easily. This means that effective interaction and interface design is crucial. However, few mobile app developers (or even designers) have had adequate training in these areas. Essential Mobile Interaction Design fills this gap, bringing together proven principles and techniques you can use in your next app–for any platform, target device, or user.

This tutorial requires virtually no design or programming knowledge. Even if you’ve never designed a mobile app before, this guide teaches you the key skills that lead to the best results. Cameron Banga and Josh Weinhold help you master the mindset, processes, and vocabulary of mobile interaction design, so you can start making better choices right away. They guide you through the entire design process, demystifying issues that arise at every stage.

The authors share hard-won lessons from years of experience developing more than one hundred mobile apps for clients and customers of every type. They cover important issues that platform-specific guides often overlook, including internationalization, accessibility, hybrid apps, sandboxing, and what to do after release.

This guide shows you how to

• Think through your designs, instead of just throwing together UI elements
• Allow an intuitive design flow to emerge from your app
• Sketch and wireframe apps more effectively
• Reflect key differences among smartphones, tablets, and desktops
• Design for visual appeal without compromising usability
• Work effectively with programmers
• Make sure your apps are accessible to everyone
• Get usable feedback, and understand what it’s telling you
• Learn valuable lessons from today’s most successful apps
• Refresh your designs in new apps and future versions
• Discover new tools for designing more successfully

Packed with iOS and Android™ examples, Essential Mobile Interaction Design offers dozens of tips and solutions that will be equally useful on today’s platforms and on whatever comes next. Extensive resources are available at cameronbanga.com/EMIDbook.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 A Look at Mobile and Its Main Players
Chapter 2 Design for Humans, by Humans
Chapter 3 Dynamic Differences in Mobile Design
Chapter 4 First Sketches of an App
Chapter 5 Finding the Right Design Flow
Chapter 6 Designing for Visual Appeal
Chapter 7 Working with Programmers
Chapter 8 Making Apps Usable by All
Chapter 9 Designing for Simplicity
Chapter 10 Gaining Valuable Feedback
Chapter 11 Refreshing a Design

Appendix A: Standout Apps
Appendix B: Apps for Designers
Appendix C: Artwork Requirements for Android and iOS