Mobile Applications Design

Tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them." Creating a whole new OS within your app can be fun, but when you're dealing with the mobile medium, people just want to get stuff done. Getting stuff done means that the designer has to get into the flow of the OS and create an app that requires zero explanation for the end user to operate. Mirroring the layout and UI elements that the user is already familiar with saves time and energy. So it seems quite convenient to use this approach when designing iPhone-applications.

Facebook (iTunes Link) In the new Facebook 3.0, you'll find a grid layout that users can swipe left and right to access more categories. Because it mirrors Apple's native UI, users do not have to "learn" how to use it all over again. A similar approach exists in Web design: users expect to see a logo in the top left, navigation along the top, etc. Facebook has taken this concept mobile, using large buttons that are easily distinguishable and tap-able.

Until Apple debuted the Verizon iPhone, which operates on a CDMA-based cellular network, the company had relied on Infineon for the phone's baseband processor.

Lam said that it's likely Apple's next iPhone will work on both CDMA and GSM technologies, with only minor modifications to each networks' model. AT&T, and most of the world's cellular networks, use GSM.

His take: Because the Qualcomm processor supports both CDMA and GSM, Apple can slap the same processor in both CDMA and GSM iPhones.

"The changes required [for a GSM iPhone] are not insignificant," Lam said. "But the CDMA iPhone foretells the feature design of the next iPhone."

With the great significance of the large screen on the iPhone / iPod Touch, the graphical interfaces of iPhone apps are more important than on other mobile platforms. In this post, we've rounded up several tutorials, links, and resources that you can use in your iPhone user interface design process.
iPhone GUI PSD (Photoshop file)
iphoneguipsd.png

Teehan+lax – an interactive user interface design agency – has put together a solid Photoshop file (PSD) containing all of the main iPhone UI widgets. It's a whopping 6 megabytes and includes everything from scrolling lists to the keyboard, labels, browser bars, play controls, phone keypad, and more.

This file is awesome if you want to put together some mock designs for your app. Even if you're not an iPhone app developer yourself, you could use this to spec out your app before passing it to a developer.. giving you more control over the result.

320480.com has an alternative iPhone interface PSD file for download, if you want some variety