Good first post on a great topic.

There are tons of sites online with information about design for the web and print, but I would imagine designing for mobile apps is more challenging given the restricted screen realestate and information you need to provide for the user.

As I delve into FlashLite I'm wondering:
Do you usually design AROUND the information to display, or do you approach both at the same time? Also, would you say effective UX for mobile is (info display/design): 50/50, 60/40, 75/25? It seems in your later examples that it is mostly info, with some design afterthought.

Thanks in advance.

thanks for you comments jason.

to answer your questions. i think it fair to say that in all of our work we strive to let the content drive the UI.

you mention design as an "afterthought" and i would disagree with that. the idea was "how can we make the content BE the design" and thus free more space for more content.

we are testing other ideas like "is it possible to use content to SKIN the UI?".

you've touched on a great topic that most of our entries will undoubtedly keep coming back to.

A very nice first post, Andrew, I'm looking forward to reading the other ones :)

I've found that with mobile applications, another important factor is anticipating the user's physical\environmental context for the app. eg. It's hard to design an app indoors under perfect ambient lighting if it is to be used primarily outdoors in direct sunlight, etc.

I definitely believe that the challenges involved in mobile development (even the ones imposed by the current FlashLite) are actually opportunities for creative thinking (as the Flash community is displaying with steady trickle of sample apps that have been popping up.)

This is a great read and good to get an insight on your thoughts. Because of the multitude of phones out there I actually think users are quite open to different ways of doing things. Take series 60, its such a conservative interface and such a simplistic design. It works really well for an OS because there is such a variety of info to deal with and consistency is key. However I think users want to break out of that when it comes to applications, they want the whole experience to be different to the phone OS. and with FL we can blend the UI with content in so many interesting ways. Looking forward to reading more.

Great post, Andrew. I remember seeing some of the XD team's work in Bangalore this year, at the MAX 2005 Conference. It's amazing stuff, and really fascinating, in my opinion. I can't wait to buy a Series 60 and get into it myself.

Indeed a nice post. I believe that, UI is very important thing for a mobile application. There is a large scope for UI designer, interaction designers and Usability experts.

I think, for two similar mobile applications (say calculator), UI can play a differentiating factor.

Application with more usable and better UI would be popular.

Keep posting such posts...

-abdul

If this is the first post I can imagine next ones :)
Great post.
I think that for many flash developers who try to develop for mobile devices, one of the major difficulty is to create a UI.

Looking forward to reading more
All the best
marco

Good Start Andrew,

Waiting to read more ;)

Regards,
Arul

Hi,

It's really great to read someone else's take on designing for flashlite. I've spent the last year and a half designing apps/games and it can get pretty frustrating sometimes trying cram everything into 176x208 pixels!

Thanks for the show and tell - more please!

Graham

Your approach to mobile apps (as shown in "Figure 1.4 Recent Designs") somehow reminds me of Dashboard Widgets... :-)

Awesome posting. Thank you.

mobile + flash = i'm buying... this clunky java-based interface i'm using irritates me to death. good work, all of you.

good job,

i was really missing such thing :D

// chall3ng3r //

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Designing UI for anything but the desktop is an interesting challenge.

Television, console game, mobile devices, etc.

I love reading about the challenges and overcoming these kind of hurdles - great, great post! I can't tell you how many times people ask me to port desktop apps to mobile devices and want things in the design to remain the same. It just doesn't work.

I look forward to many more posts. Thank you.

Thanks for your post Andrew.

It was interesting to see how your designs progressed as you came to understand the limitations of the mobile space.

I have to admit, though they are pretty to look at, I'm a little bit scared by some of your designs. As a designer in this space, I need you to explain what physical affordances are given to the user of the device you were designing for. This is very important because if the device is built around a five-way with dual soft keys (this is what it looks like from your designs) it will be a completely different architecture / design then that of a touch screen with a stylus. It is very important for all designers in this space to understand these interaction models and how they influence design.

Furthermore, Aral's comment really struck me in a bad way. I have spent a lot of time implementing system / application architecture that is exactly opposite from what he/she is talking about.

Arals's comment:

However I think users want to break out of that when it comes to applications, they want the whole experience to be different to the phone OS. and with FL we can blend the UI with content in so many interesting ways. Looking forward to reading more.

I believe this is incorrect. A users entire experience with any device is based around musle memory. If you as a software designer think your application is so important as to change the interaction in your app to be completely different then the interaction within the entire OS, you will be breaking the users muscle memory of how they use the device and therefore making the user learn something completely foreign / new to them. This will render your killer app as a pain in the butt to use! Bottom line, your killer app will suck, and 95% of the users will not want to re-teach themselves your new interaction model.

Designers need to abide by the architectural constaints of a UI (OS) and build their applications around this model. A well designed application that is based on the rest of the OS's architecture is easy for users familiar with the device to use and adapt to. Remember this is not a desktop compter we are talking about here.

Some food for thought. Thanks for all the posts.

I have been a UI designer in the desktop space for years and although mobile devices are unigue to some degree in the challenges they pose, I am struck by the how similar goals are for effective UI design no matter what the space.

1)Advance rather that revolutionize is really just another way of saying surrender your design ego to the needs of the user, a primary usability tenent. I agree with Eric, current conventions need to be leveraged whenever possible, change is good but new designs should strive to feel familiar not just compelling.

2)Content should be the focus of any device designed to deliver it. The new designs (fig 1.4) presented were definately focused on the content and I am intrigued by the concept of having the content skin the UI. These current designs however are hard to parse as the levels of contrast and color saturation are all high and the text does not pull quite as much focus as the images.

3)Good UI design is modular and seeks to create a flexible container through which a range of content can flow. I definately see this occurring in the recent designs (fig 1.4) - Although I think there is too much integration of text and image to be truly scanable. The use of scrims and levels of opacity may one way to create different levels of perception for either image or text.

I am facinated by the direction Mobil UI is going in and would love to get more info - any recommendations for organizations/URLS/books etc... would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks (Andrew) for sharing your process - it is a tough call to make when we are all so caught up in propriatorial interests.