Designing Mobile Interfaces

Part I. Page

The page is the area that you will spend your time designing for any application or website. A part of it is visible in the viewport of the mobile screen during its current state. There are states and modes and versions to be considered, as well as addressing what is fixed to the page, what can float, and what is locked to the viewport.

Based on cultural norms of reading conventions and how people process information, you have to design elements for the page, and place items on it in ways your users will understand. You also want to create information that is easy to access and easy to locate. Your users are not stationary, nor are they focused entirely on the screen. They’re everywhere, and they want information quickly and to be able to manipulate it easily.

Unlike later parts of this book, which cover broader topics, the Page patterns that we will discuss here are contained in only a single chapter:

• Chapter 1

Helpful Knowledge for This Section

Before you dive into the patterns, we will provide you with some extra knowledge in the section introductions. This extra knowledge is in multidisciplinary areas of human factors, engineering, psychology, art, or whatever else we feel is relevant.

For this particular section, we will provide background knowledge for you in the following areas:

• Digital display page layout guidelines

• Page layout guidelines for mobile users

Digital Display Page Layout Principles

The composition of a page has to do with the assembly of components, concepts, ...