Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces

Mobile and touch are the new normal for computing, but there remain a lot of myths, rumors, errors, bias, and out-of-date information on how portable touchscreens are used. Let’s change that!


In our brand-new book Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces, Steven Hoober shares his in-depth research about designing for touch as well as tips, tricks, trends, tendencies, guidelines, and heuristics you can apply to your work immediately to create human-centered mobile interfaces.


About the Book


There are over two billion portable touchscreen devices in use today, and hundreds of millions more installed in cars and kiosks. Sales of traditional mouse-and-keyboard computers have been falling for years, replaced by mobile phones and tablets.


Conventional computers now sport touchscreens and otherwise blur the lines between device types – and between mobile and desktop operating systems. Mobile and touch are the new computing normal, but there is a lot of myth, rumor, error, bias, and out-of-date information on how portable touchscreens are used.


Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces presents and shares real information on hardware, people, interactions, and environments. Steven Hoober has studied how people really touch and hold phones and tablets, as well as seeing it firsthand over twenty years designing products for mobile phones, tablets, kiosks, and computers.


As well as Steven’s in-depth research, the book includes tips, tricks, trends, tendencies, guidelines, and heuristics you can apply to your own designs immediately.


Table of Contents



Defining Mobile Devices
The History and Technology of Touch
Capacitive Touch
Standards, Assumptions, and Problems
Finding Out How People Hold and Touch
Touch Accuracy and the Center-Out Preference
How Fingers Get In the Way
Imprecision and Probability
Phones Are Not Flat
People Only Touch What They See
1, 2, 3: Designing by Zones
Progressive Disclosure
Practical Mobile Touchscreen Design