How to design a mobile application

blog.aparicio.org

5 points·samaparicio··4 comments

Apart from using your finger as the 'pointer' (which is only really true on touch screen enabled devices, which is definitely not all of them) how is this any different from developing any other application ?

The main difference I see, is that when you design a web or desktop application on a computer screen, the designer is seeing, more or less, the pixels at the same size than the end user. When you design a mobile app, if you design it on a desktop, and that's where you mostly look at it, you end up having a built-in 2x magnification, and when you finally put it on the device, things are much more scrunched up and less usable than you thought.

The idea in the post is to play with the design, in the device, for a while, and get design feedback much earlier than when you give the app to a developer.

Wouldn't it be best to take your mock-ups directly to a mobile screen for verification ? That seems to be the most natural thing to me, to wait until it's 'built' before you see it on the device seems to be a bit late.

I'd try to get it displayed on the actual device as early as possible on way or another.

I agree with that. That's step 4 in the article. It's probably not enough, in the sense that just looking at the mock screens doesn't tell you much about navigation and widget selection.

What came as a breakthrough for me was to actually mix screenshots and statically implemented screens in a real mobile app, then play a lot with that.

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