What Does it Take to Be a Mobile Designer Today?

Mobile is here to stay, with its own set of rules and constraints. At the same time, it’s a rapidly evolving platform, with new technologies and capabilities being added by the quarter. We can’t design for mobile like we used to do for posters and Web pages. So what toolkit and mindset does a mobile designer need to thrive?

Challenges and Constraints

Every medium has its limitations. Even mobile—one of the richest canvases a designer can dream of—still has particularities that need to be addressed:

Device fragmentation

There are countless smartphone and tablet models out there, each one with a different screen size, pixel density, and physical input (not to mention screen orientations). This means we can’t just pre-assume an iPhone 5 screen-size and design tightly to it. In mobile Web, responsive design allows us to plan for variations and make the design adjust to different screens with little effort. In native mobile design there is less liquidity, so we need to think our designs as tolerant to screen differences, and document the way such variations impact the layout. Read more...