Getting Started in Mobile Design

Getting started with application, service, and web site design for distribution on mobile phones and other wireless handheld information devices? Little Springs Design is a mobile design and user research agency. We help clients from operators to startups improve their customers’ mobile user experience.

To improve your mobile brand, check out the resources below, then contact us for a free 30-minute consultation on how we can help you.

How can I quickly improve my mobile web site or application?

1. Use proven design patterns when designing and building your site or application — see the pattern library at Design 4 Mobile, or the one at Forum Nokia
2. Do usability testing to find the strengths and opportunities in your market, product and design — see a mobile usability testing slideshow as well as our blogged thoughts on usability testing).
3. Use mobile analytics, not desktop, from companies like Admob, Ametheon, Flurry, and Bango. You need to know what devices are actually using your site; better systems also gather actual user data.

Little Springs can help you by performing a professional quality usability test. For a tighter budget, our expert review service gets you prioritized actionable recommendations for your application or site, in about one week

What should my mobile strategy be?

1. It depends on business goals and user needs — be sure to review Going Mobile: Choosing Target Devices and Platforms over at SlideShare.
2. Understand that mobile is different — it’s personal, multi-purpose, always-on and always-connected. Understand the Carry Principle and how it affects your product.
3. Plan for a mobile experience, not just a smaller version of your desktop application or website — remember to Mobilize, Don’t Miniaturize to take advantage of the unique opportunities afforded by mobile devices.

If you want some professional help, contact us for a free half-hour consultation.

How much will it cost to take my site mobile?

Cost to go mobile really depends on several issues:

• Fast and cheap — services like Mobify.me let you select parts of your content, and make it mobile. They can include hosting, which is good because you won’t need to develop and host several sizes of your images (among other things). If you really want to go cheap, this may cost you hundreds of dollars and you can do the work. Or you can get a designer to do the work for somewhere in the $2,000 range, and be done.
  
  The drawback to the “mobilizing” sites is that they are selecting some content and converting it to mobile-friendly formats… they are miniaturizing. For many services (and most that are making money), we recommend that you Mobilize, Don’t Miniaturize.
• Slow and expensive — big-name design or advertising agencies. These folks will wow you with a great sales presentation, perhaps fly you out to their studios, let you interact with senior designers. You can get “conceptual” designs from them, well-researched, for prices that vary but can range from $200K to $1M.
• Targeted and actionable — companies like Little Springs Design will charge you more than the web designer down the street, but live and breathe mobile. Again, the price will range, but for almost any web site you can get some user research, conceptual design, detailed design, all graphics, developer-ready specifications, and a usability test for less than the big agencies charge for conceptual design.

Where can I find best practices in mobile web and application design?

1. Pattern libraries — like the wiki at Design for Mobile
2. The Mobile Marketing Association’s Consumer Best Practices Guidelines
3. The Mobile Web Developer’s Guide at Mobiforge, formerly dev.mobi, the developer community surrounding the .mobi TLD
4. Manufacturers & operators — Qualcomm BREW User Interface Design Guidelines, Palm OS User Interface Guidelines, Forum Nokia, Sprint Nextel, Sony Ericsson, Verizon Wireless, Motorola handsets and “mobile computing”, Apple’s Developer’s Connection
5. Platform providers of all sorts —Sun’s MIDP 2.0 Style Guide for the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition, Windows Mobile Design Guidelines, Openwave Graphical Browser Application Style Guide, Symbian Style Guides, Dev.Opera mobile guidelines
6. See our best practices for mobile widgets — get a copy of our mobile widgets whitepaper

For new and emerging technologies, there are no such things as best practices. You’ll need usability and interaction design professionals to make sure effort on that new product is being directed properly. Contact us for design concepting, research and specifications.

What are the best books, blogs, and web sites for learning about mobile user experience

Especially when starting out, self-directed reading is a great way to absorb knowledge and find the topic areas that interest you.

• The Little Springs Design blog, covering a variety of mobile design topics: Business, Carriers, Conference, Context, Design, Design Tips, Devices, faq, Gestures, Java ME, Location (LBS), Messaging, Mobile applications, Mobile web, Money, Multimodal, Podcasts, Product Ideas, Review, speaking, Strategy, Theory, UI Design Patterns, Usability testing, User research, Widgets, and more
• Read the book Designing the Mobile User Experience, by Barbara Ballard
• As mentioned above, the Design For Mobile Resources wiki contains style guides, design patterns, script information, device information, and more; and if you think it should have something else, remember it’s a wiki, so please join the community and add it yourself
• Read the MobiThinking blog, from the folks behind the dotMobi registry and toolsets
• Read the Carnival of the Mobilists for links to the best in mobile thinking each week
• Other industry blogs, books, and communities are listed on the Squidoo mobile design page
• Watch the news and blog feeds that Barbara reads every day.
• Sign up for our almost monthly newsletter

What about training and conferences?

For more directed learning, there are an increasing number of mobile conferences, and mobile-specific training.

• See the list of dozens of mobile conferences at the Design for Mobile wiki. There are events all over the world, and a surprising number of more ad hoc recurring events cropping up like Mobile Monday, maybe in your city. Check now to join in.
• Take training from Little Springs Design. We offer both in-person and webinar-based training. While there are several pre-packaged courses offered, we can also customize to your needs.

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