Design Patterns for User Interfaces on Mobile Equipment

The objective of this tutorial is to enhance the participants’ skills in designing user interfaces for mobile equipment, including adaptive and context sensitive user interfaces and multimodal interaction. Through a combination of lectures and practical exercises, a collection of patterns addressing issues regarding designing user interfaces on mobile devices is presented. The patterns address typical challenges and opportunities when designing user interfaces that are to run on PDAs and SmartPhones – both challenges connected to characteristics of the equipment and connected to tasks to which designing suitable user interfaces is challenging. The tutorial is intended for user interface designer, systems developers, and project leaders that work with or plan to work on development of applications on mobile devices. The tutorial requires basic knowledge of user interface design in general, and basic understanding of challenges connected to designing user interfaces on mobile devices. 1 Description of tutorial The objective of the tutorial “Design patterns for user interfaces on mobile equipment” is to enhance the participants’ skills in designing user interfaces for mobile equipment, including adaptive and context sensitive user interfaces and multimodal interaction. The tutorial presents a collection of patterns [1] addressing issues regarding designing user interfaces on mobile devices that we have developed in two research projects conducted in the period 2004-2009 in cooperation with a number of partners developing application and development tools for mobile applications.. The patterns address typical challenges and opportunities when designing user interfaces that are to run on PDAs and SmartPhones – both challenges connected to characteristics of the equipment and connected to tasks to which designing suitable user interfaces is challenging. The patterns in the collection are structured in three main groups: 1. Utilizing screen space 2. Interaction mechanisms 3. Design at large. The suggested solutions are based on existing design practice, and the description includes examples of good solution and pros and cons of different approaches.