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Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Link: Paper Versus Pixel (nautil.us)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Link: The World Without Mobile (youtube.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

“We’ve found it! Even better, it says “Limit ad tracking off”. So ad tracking is off already. I’m not being tracked, thank goodness. But wait a minute. It doesn’t say “Ad tracking – off” it says “Limit ad tracking – off”. So it’s a double negative. It’s not being limited, so when this switch is off, ad tracking is actually on. Off means on! This is actually a great example of what I define as a Dark Pattern. It’s a user interface that uses manipulative techniques to get users to do things they would not otherwise have done.”

Link: The slippery slope (90percentofeverything.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

What if our body surfaces could be used as computer control inputs?

“In addition to offering nearly fail-proof feedback, using body parts as input devices also has another distinct advantage: the device is literally always with you – because your body is you. Yes, people often carry their mobile phones, but they’ll never be without their hands or their ears. Thus they’ll never be without system functions that have been assigned to their hands or ears…Although these technical obstacles remain to be solved, it’s reasonable to expect that user interfaces might be at least partly body-based in 20 or 30 years.”

Link: The Human Body as Touchscreen Replacement (nngroup.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

“There’s some kind of smart-TV idea trying to be born at Microsoft, an interesting technology which seems just out of reach. There’s something to its Minority-Report-esque idea of swiping, swishing and talking to your television. There’s some notion in the middle of that with tablets and interactions and second screens. But to get there needs a deep reinvention, and the road toward it does not lead through changing everyone’s minds about the meaning of “console.” Instead it needs to be a new product, even a whole new category, and its adoption has to go slow.”

Link: What Games Are: Reinventing The Games Console Half Way Won’t Work (techcrunch.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

“…One of my favorite Gmail Labs features showed a static shot of your inbox with all your mail while the page loads, so you can start mentally processing emails right away. And some content-heavy apps like Flipboard and Pulse often load titles and leading paragraphs to enable fast scrolling, then load images and full text once the user pauses or chooses an article. The lesson here is to present useful content, even though it might not be fully interactive, so that the user can get a jump start and not feel like time is unnecessarily wasted.”

Link: Waiting stinks: How to redesign your product’s dead time (gigaom.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

“The personal computer is dying. Its place in our lives as the primary means of computing will soon end. Mobile computing-the cell phone in your pocket or the tablet in your purse-has been a great bridging technology, connecting the familiar past to a formative future. But mobile is not the destination…I’m talking about a diffuse and invisible network embedded in our surroundings. Chips and sensors are finding their way into clothing, personal accessories, and more. These devices are capturing information whose impact is not yet meaningful to most people. But it will be soon enough. The question we need to answer is: how will these intertwined systems of hardware and software be designed to meaningfully add to our lives and to society?”

Link: Why Today’s Mobile Devices Are Doomed Like the Dying PC (technologyreview.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Link: A Conversation with Gina Trapani: On Designing Meaningful Notifications (adaptivepath.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Link: Android Design in Action: Navigation Drawers (youtube.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

“Mobile devices have their own set of Information Architecture patterns, too. While the structure of a responsive site may follow more “standard” patterns, native apps, for example, often employ navigational structures that are tab-based. Again, there’s no “right” way to architect a mobile site or application. Instead, let’s take a look at some of the most popular patterns: Hierarchy, Hub & spoke, Nested doll, Tabbed view, Bento box and Filtered view.”

Link: Designing for Mobile, Part 1: Information Architecture (uxbooth.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

“Yes, getting the technology to work is hard, but the really hard part is getting the human-system interaction right, making it easy for people to use the systems…To overcome the limitations of affordances, Norman introduced the concept of a “signifier,” a perceivable (usually visible) signal of the location and form of the possible input interaction. Signifiers are of critical importance for these new interfaces because without them, the person will seldom be able to operate the device properly or, even if some operations are done, not be able to take full advantage of the rich possibility offered by more advanced, but invisible, modes of interaction. Today, signifiers are badly done with multi-touch devices. With touchless devices, the signifiers, if show at all, tend to be diagrams or short animated sequences visible on some associated display. This is an area in deep need of standards.”

Link: Opportunities and Challenges For Touch and Gesture-Based Systems (jnd.org)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

“The users who we observed touching their phone’s screens or buttons held their phones in three basic ways: one handed – 49%, cradled – 36%, two handed – 15%. In the following sections, I’ll describe and show a diagram of each of these methods of holding a mobile phone, along with providing some more detailed data and general observations about why I believe people hold a mobile phone in a particular way.”

Link: How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices? (uxmatters.com, via. See also Microsoft Research Paper for a pre-iPhone study)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

“Want to enchant people, simplify their lives, and make them feel amazing with your app? Learn how Android’s Design Principles can help you create products that resonate with people. Find out about the meaning and research behind the principles. See real-world examples and practices from the Android Design team. Discover techniques for applying the principles in your daily work. No design experience necessary.”

Link: Google I/O 2013 – Enchant, Simplify, Amaze: Android’s Design Principles (youtube.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more

Link: The Future Of Technology Isn’t Mobile, It’s Contextual (fastcodesign.com)

Small Surfaces designs amazing mobile and device UI. Learn more