

How to design a mobile application - samaparicio
http://blog.aparicio.org/2009/12/17/9-steps-to-design-a-mobile-application/

======
jacquesm
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 ?

~~~
samaparicio
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

~~~
samaparicio
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.

