What makes Essential Mobile Interaction Design different from other mobile app design books?

[John Wetherbie]

Hi Josh & Cameron,

Just wanted to start with a general question - What differentiates your book from similar books in this area?

[Cameron Banga]

Great question here.

To simply put it, our book is most different, in my opinion having read many, because we focus on mobile in general with respect to building. So we discuss and focus on the paradigm change between moving from the web/desktop computers to mobile, rather than focusing on a specific platform. Most books tackle either Android or iPhone, but rarely both. We discuss nearly everything in a way that makes the lessons valuable irregardless as to if you're programming on Android or iPhone, or even Windows Phone, Blackberry, the mobile web, etc.

Our goal isn't necessarily to make you think about building better Android designs (although you will get better at Android designs), but to help you think more critically about why pieces of interface should be placed in specific ways. iPhone and Android are the two platforms we most specifically get into detail on, but anything you learn in the book should be relevant for any phone/tablet platform you need to build for, now or in the future.

[John Wetherbie]

Cool. Given the title of the book I expected it to focus a lot on design rather than implementation. Do you provide code examples that show how you implement the design concepts you present on the different platforms?

[Cameron Banga]

Not many code examples, mostly because we try to tackle a handful of platforms in general, and the code would be useless unless written in a handful of languages.

In lieu of that though, we do include many photos/screenshots/visual examples of what we're discussing, with guidance on how to achieve them on various platforms.