Being able to understand the different ways for designing for non-PC devices such as mobile phones and other consumer electronics is something that continues to evolve. One of the things that I try to do as a developer is to learn from others what's worked and things to avoid. The more knowledge and information I have the better I feel my applications and projects will be.

Over the past 2 weeks I've been reading and referencing "Designing for Small Screens" - a very good book that does an excellent job of explaining the complexities and nuances of small screen devices. You can think of small screen devices as being mobile phones, PDAs, navigation systems, MP3 players and game consoles. One of the great things is there's at least 2 devices in each of these categories that uses the Flash Player or Flash Lite (obviously there are more mobile phones). Even if you're not currently or planning on designing for small screens there are some good ideas in here that may assist you in your PC based designs.



The book does an excellent job of providing real world examples, best practices and exercises covering topics such as physical interaction, layout and color, text and icons, and design considerations. Over a dozen of the examples referenced were Flash Lite applications (T-Mobile News Express) and user interface (NTT DoCoMo iMode menu) among others. There were several things that I learned from the book and so far have improved some aspects of mobile content that I'm developing.

If you're at all interested in designing UIs or developing applications for small screen devices, I highly recommend you purchase this book. You can also check your local library to see if they have it available.