Designing Mobile Interfaces

Chapter 4. Revealing More Information

It’s Not Magic!

The audience stares, transfixed, at the man on the stage, hoping to catch a glimpse of his strategy. The man waves a black top hat around, showing its form and lack of contents to the interested spectators. Next, he places a red silk handkerchief in front of the hat. Shouting “Voilà!,” the man drops the cloth and reaches into the hat. As the audience “Oohs!” and “Aahs!,” a white rabbit hops out of the magician’s hat.

Context Is Key

Magic tricks are exciting because we are challenged to figure out what just happened and how it fooled us. We’re left to ponder and to discuss with one another the magician’s strategy and skill. This curiosity of what and how information is revealed is entertaining to us.

But guessing is not acceptable when designing mobile interfaces. On mobile devices especially, we want to eliminate the confusion. Our users are not stationary, nor are they focused entirely on the screen. They’re everywhere, and they want information quickly and to locate, identify, and manipulate it easily.

Understanding Our Users with Norman’s Interaction Model

Magic confuses us because it takes advantage of our cognitive processing abilities.

Donald Norman tells us there are two fundamental principles of designing for people (Norman 1988):

• Provide a good conceptual model.

• Make things visible.

A conceptual model, more commonly known today as a mental model, is a mental representation—built from our prior experiences, interactions, and knowledge—of ...