Designing Mobile Interfaces

Chapter 2. Display of Information

Look Around

Take a moment and look around. Are you inside? Then you might come across books, a pile of mail, your computer, and your television. Or maybe you’re outside, carrying your mobile device and checking your appointments. The world we live in is surrounded by ubiquitous information. Information that is visual, audible, and tactile. It is meant to inform, to entertain, to instruct, and to warn. Because we are constantly bombarded with this information in our daily lives, we must quickly collect, filter, store, and process which information is important to use for specific tasks.

Consider a busy intersection you are trying to cross. You are surrounded by the sights and sounds of pedestrians conversing, cars and trucks honking, birds flying, signage on billboards, and thousands of other types of stimuli. Our minds have an amazing ability to focus on the task at hand, filter the surrounding noise, and process, store, and allow us to act on only the relevant “signal” information.

When the crosswalk signal changes to “Walk,” we identify the sign, interpret its meaning, determine an action to move our body forward, and carry out our actions by walking until we’ve crossed the street, achieving our goal.

Understanding how we process and filter visual information, or data, will help us to design effective displays of information on mobile devices. Let’s first explore the types of information we will encounter.

Types of Visual Information

All humans have ...