(Book Review) Mobile First, 1st Edition

Overview

Review Published: July, 2016.

From designer and user-interface expert Luke Wroblewski, comes a guide to designing digital solutions for mobile devices.

Starting with an overview of why designing for mobile matters, and then explaining how you can meet these specific challenges through a variety of design techniques, this book serves as a primer for tackling user-interface challenges across the ever broadening number of devices available to our users.

Rating:

3.5 / 5

(Good Content, Presentation is Clear)

What does this score mean?

Difficulty:

Intermediate (A basic understanding of UX research, web design, & HTML/CSS is helpful).

Length:

130 pages.

Where to Buy It:

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What's Good

Provides a comprehensive overview of the importance of mobile & best practices; showcasing an impressive array of data about the adoption of mobile, the author points out specific design considerations and why they matter with each technique he introduces.
Lots of references & resources, with some further reading; the author points out specific design considerations and why they matter with each technique he introduces, ensuring that readers know the fundamental “why” behind each example, and includes some additional reading at the end of the book if you want to learn more.
For the most part, implementation techniques and examples are comprehensively explained; with a few exceptions, the author does a great job of layout out how to design various elements for mobile devices, and how they leverage the power of this growing medium.

What Can Be Improved

Some areas could be fleshed out a bit more; after a riveting look at what designers can do with mobile device inputs (Chapter 3), the author sticks to a very brief overview of common input methods and techniques when discussing implementation (Chapter 6), and the discussion of mobile forms is very brief (I’d recommend you check out “Designing UX Forms” to bridge this gap).

The Bottom Line

Explains a shifting digital landscape; as people change the way they consume digital products, designers will need to be more flexible with how they deliver their solutions, and this book does a good job explaining how to do that and why.
For UX design beginners to get a handle on mobile design principles; this book does a fine job of giving the reader a solid foundation from which to learn more (I’d recommend taking a look at “Mobile Design Pattern Gallery” as a next step).
A great introduction to mobile design, but could use a 2nd edition; at $14 this book is a great start for designing mobile apps and interfaces, but it’s definitely beginning to show it’s age and could use an update/expansion to keep it positioned as the initial “go to” resource for this subject.