GQAdonis

Overview

Finding good resources for mobile user interface design patterns is difficult, and I have found a couple that serve as great starting points for designing spectacular, unique, but easy to use mobile application user interfaces on iPhone.

Mobile-Patterns.com

This site was apparently started by the lead designer at Foursquare, Mari Sheibley. Foursquare has provided innovative design examples in the development of their iPhone and Android applications.

Pttrns.com

This site provides an extensive list of 289 patterns categorized by type. This collection is extremely useful and provides up-to-date examples.

Balance

The thing that I appreciate most about the examples provided by these sites is the balance in the use of creativity. It is easy for UI designers to get carried away with looking “different” to the point that the interface dynamics are no longer easily recognizable to the user. While users can be visually stimulated by “difference”, this only lasts a short time–until the first time the user does not immediately know how an interface works or what to do next. Mobile applications must be visually stunning but also follow established patterns in the way they are constructed, so the user feels a sense of familiarity. If this rule is broken, the world is left with an application that initially might be downloaded a thousand times but only used by each user a few times before users get frustrated and download an application that is less stunning but lets them get the job done faster.

Matt Gallagher posted a great article on network data requirements that can affect an application being accepted or rejected in the AppStore.

A commenter mentioned an open source library called ASIHttpRequest, which uses the lower level CFNetwork API, which enables the library to provide advanced features like throttling for bandwidth when streaming large data sets.

After many failed attempts at entering the “blogosphere,” I have finally dumped all attempts to find a suitable ASP.NET based blogging system and go with WordPress. The feature set is just too comprehensive and the support for standards too compelling to keep messing around with Graffiti and other inferior publishing platforms.

WordPress also provides an iPhone application that enables me to blog from anywhere. It is open source, so I can customize versions of it and install it locally on my personal iPhone device. Cool stuff!