Sign in with Facebook
6th out of 67 books
—
29 voters
Mobile First (A Book Apart, #6) (A Book Apart #6)
Our industry’s long wait for the complete, strategic guide to mobile web design is finally over. Former Yahoo! design architect and co-creator of Bagcheck Luke Wroblewski knows more about mobile experience than the rest of us, and packs all he knows into this entertaining, to-the-point guidebook. Its data-driven strategies and battle tested techniques will make you a maste...more
Paperback, 130 pages
Published
October 18th 2011
by A Book Apart
(first published January 1st 2011)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
1,276)
Most memorable quote
"Screens are small, networks are unreliable, and people can find themselves in all kinds of situations when they pull out their mobile devices. But these constraints are not only good for business, they're good for design as well. This is especially true if you subscribe to the adage that design is the process of gradually applying constraints until an elegant solution remains."
Tweet review
LukeW articulates a mindset change in a concise, high level review that prepares a desi...more
"Screens are small, networks are unreliable, and people can find themselves in all kinds of situations when they pull out their mobile devices. But these constraints are not only good for business, they're good for design as well. This is especially true if you subscribe to the adage that design is the process of gradually applying constraints until an elegant solution remains."
Tweet review
LukeW articulates a mindset change in a concise, high level review that prepares a desi...more
Luke Wroblewsky can write well. This book is full of data and precise examples that make a clearly defined case for designing for mobile first. He considers the constraints (such as screen size, frequently lower bandwidth, a distracted audience) and capabilities (such as accelerometers, location detection, and inbuilt cameras) that make designing for mobile unique. He considers how to lay out information in a manner suited to mobile, interpret mobile-specific actions (touches), and collect input...more
As noted in the introduction, this isn't a book with code examples to work from (see Ethan Marcotte's Responsive Web Design if you want more of that). Wroblewski is looking at the big picture rather than implementation - the whys and best practices rather than the how-to.
I was already interested in developing mobile-first, but the first section of the book makes a solid case for it and provides enough statistics to help me convince other people. I found the best practices sections very useful, w...more
I was already interested in developing mobile-first, but the first section of the book makes a solid case for it and provides enough statistics to help me convince other people. I found the best practices sections very useful, w...more
not what I expected, which may have been my fault. this book makes the case for why your business needs to focus on mobile, contains a good discussion of how experiences will differ by device (outside of technical or physical properties), and a popular overview of mobile design patterns. what I was looking for was more a discussion of considerations for implementing responsive web design and more of what it means to start with mobile first. unfortunately, ive heard the book on responsive web des...more
view 1 comment
As a web designer, It's a challenge to design in browser and thinking of mobile first. I get used to the photoshop and absolutely love the tool. I can collect my ideas really quick and just focus on the design. When I am designing in browser and starting with the mobile first, the screen size and making the theme responsive kinda distract my attention and make me feel hard to only focus on designing. But I am happy to start with the mobile first so I am able to notice the contraints of the mobil...more
The first half of the book is largely devoted to why you should make a mobile website, and why to design it ahead of your website for PC browsers. If you are already sold on that idea, you can safely skip it.
The second half of the book is full of really helpful interaction design insights, aimed at UX professionals who work mainly on websites for PCs, and are making a transition to designing for mobile. If that describes you, you should read this book. I also appreciated that its focus is on the...more
The second half of the book is full of really helpful interaction design insights, aimed at UX professionals who work mainly on websites for PCs, and are making a transition to designing for mobile. If that describes you, you should read this book. I also appreciated that its focus is on the...more
Jan 28, 2012
Rian
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
designer seeking to get up to speed on recent trends in the craft of web design.
Wroblewski delivers a solid, if stayed, proposal for a new square one in web design: start from a small-screen context and adapt to other forms. Primarily fixed in the realm of design theory and strategy, the book drifts into implementation.
Wroblewski is well known for his work researching and expressing best practices in web form design, and the later chapters find him wandering off course to discuss specific details of web form design for mobile contexts. While valuable, the web form details w...more
Wroblewski is well known for his work researching and expressing best practices in web form design, and the later chapters find him wandering off course to discuss specific details of web form design for mobile contexts. While valuable, the web form details w...more
I expected more of a UI and UX centric book, but it's more of a "why" than "how" book. It gives you a lot of resources and good points I can see myself using to explain clients why they need to think about mobile first. There are a few purely design related bits and pieces, but it's more a higher level overview of the web landscape and how it relates to mobile. An interesting and concise read, but if your looking for UI/UX stuff, you're better off going through blog posts on the subject.
While not entirely what I expected, lukew gives readers a lot to think about when considering a mobile strategy. Since I'm more of a developer than a biz devguy, I would have appreciatedmore technical examples. To the author's credit, he did point out in the intro that Mobile First was not a technical book andtheexamples he did useperfectly illustrated the issues he wants website architects to consider. Overall, this book isa good primer for anyone new to thinking about the mobile web experience...more
A good overview book about why you should take Mobile into the first stages of your design process. The gigantic market is often over looked and this approach solves that by focusing on the most concise version your design could have and branching out based on capabilities of the browser you are in. Ignoring mobile is a quick way to headaches down the road, and with this book in your repertoire you can explain the thinking behind the approach a little better.
Luke's presentation slides on mobile first have more hard data and examples than the entirety of this book. I am disappointed that I don't like how elementary everything seems. Also, it seems like he mentioned something about building in points rather than pixels and never explains the how. I like the event apart books but this is more like how to convince your boss title than a real education for web professionals.
Part 2 (How to go Mobile), while not wildly technical, focused on the considerations on how to go mobile. Things like responsive design, big buttons, and organizing for action. This will probably be less interesting for most, however Part 1 (the first 3 chapters) I'd highly recommend.
In Part 1 (Why Mobile First?) Luke talks about the amazing growth of mobile, the user experience improvements you'll discover as you embrace the mobile constraints such as the screen size, and then he talks about th...more
In Part 1 (Why Mobile First?) Luke talks about the amazing growth of mobile, the user experience improvements you'll discover as you embrace the mobile constraints such as the screen size, and then he talks about th...more
Quick, concise, and really gets you to thinking about designs in a mobile first fashion. Luke doesn't discuss code in this book (A Book Apart books are meant to be short and sweet) this does give you a great idea of where to start looking when you are ready to start learning more about the codes for mobile applications. This is a great read alongside Ethan Marcotte's 'Responsive Web Design'.
A designer's first view on mobile plus an introduction to mobile design to non-designers.
While it is not an in-depth guide about mobile. The book tries to show you the issues you will face while developing mobile web sites (and even mobile applications).
It's is a must for anyone working with mobile, as it is a small book you can read in 2/3 afternoons. It will help you to work with designers when building mobile sites.
While it is not an in-depth guide about mobile. The book tries to show you the issues you will face while developing mobile web sites (and even mobile applications).
It's is a must for anyone working with mobile, as it is a small book you can read in 2/3 afternoons. It will help you to work with designers when building mobile sites.
Great overview on mobile first as a design philosophy. Luke draws on years of form design experience and provides good examples of what to do and what not to do when designing for the small (and medium) screen. Not very technical, but I think that makes it successful and accessible as a book that people will actually read. If you want in-depth development instruction, look to http://oreilly.com for a book on mobile.
Even though some statistics about mobile usage are nice I found the book was too much trying to convince me that mobile is important. I'm a mobile user myself so I don't need to be convinced that mobile is important.
I still liked the book because it does also give good advice on what's important in mobile design and what should be avoided , illustrated with helpful examples.
I still liked the book because it does also give good advice on what's important in mobile design and what should be avoided , illustrated with helpful examples.
This book certainly hammers home the reasons for thinking mobile first, but somehow forgot to really explain some of the design and design thinking behind each example. I felt I was left with half a story, backed up by too many examples, as though questions might be raised. I'd have preferred more steps and thinking on fewer mobile examples.
Richer version of Luke's presentation (at least compared to WebExpo 2011 in Prague). Really hard to identify with because of the specificity of Czech mobile carriers with their 150 MB FUP and so on. Otherwise quite a nice argument for why mobile first is a good approach to design.
I didn't find much new in this book, but it did inspire me to really take the Mobile First approach to heart and start designing for mobile before even considering the 'regular web' version for a project I'm working on.
So, don't read this to learn something, read it to do something.
So, don't read this to learn something, read it to do something.
There isn't a lot new here if you've read about Luke's Mobile First ideas over the past few years, but that's the only real knock on this book. It reads like a long blog post and is well written, carefully researched, and well documented. You won't go wrong making Mobile First part of your workflow.
Ce que j'aime de ce livre c'est que ça se lit rapidement et que l'auteur va droit au but. Ce que j'aime moins c'est que la 1re moitié du livre est gaspillée à me convaincre des bienfaits du design adapté au mobile. J'en suis déjà convaincu si je lis ce livre. Le contenu vraiment utile est donc un peu dilué.
Was looking more for a how to than a reasons why. I was already convinced going in that I should be thinking about mobile first and the first chunk of the book is spent doing some convincing. There is some great info in this book but I wouldn't consider it a MUST READ.
A good, solid overview. I didn't expect more from a 130 pages long book, but I didn't learn anything new either. This title would be perfect for someone who gleans information from articles scattered all around the web and who wants it all in single place.
I wish all my clients would read this book!
After all, they are the ones who need convincing at this point; we who've been following Web Dev have got the message already (er, except those in the hinter lands that are still using Table based layout...).
After all, they are the ones who need convincing at this point; we who've been following Web Dev have got the message already (er, except those in the hinter lands that are still using Table based layout...).
An excellent overview with enough meat to be inspiring without getting bogged down in minutia. This is a book for someone with solid skills in design and development (or who has a team of such people) that is looking for an overview of the problem and approaches to solving it. It is not a how-to by any stretch and I think someone just learning about developing for the web would be frustrated by quick light pace. That said, there are many jumping off points (I haven't pursued yet) that probably h...more
This book was okay. It's good to have a book that discusses the merits of mobile first, and I enjoyed the sections pertaining to usability on mobile devices. Besides that, I didn't really learn anything new. A quick read.
This book is mor about getting your in a mind set for designing with mobile (and the variety of screen sizes in general) in mind. Not as detailed as Responsive web design, it's still worth a read as a web designer.
Great insight about why this "mobile first" focus is important.
Why we should focus in the essential and how the mobile platform is calling to the designers to be concise, efficient and to the point.
Why we should focus in the essential and how the mobile platform is calling to the designers to be concise, efficient and to the point.
This book makes an excellent companion for 2012 mobile web/app design. After completing this short yet informative book, I was compelled to find the author on Twitter and thank him.
Insightful book, with good, practical examples. The "One Eye, One Thumb" rule is memorable and extremely helpful. Best of all, I read the book cover-to-cover in 2 1/2 hours.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hass and associat...: hass and associates cyber security | 5 | 6 | Feb 08, 2013 02:24am |
LukeW is an internationally recognized digital product leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 700 million people worldwide.
Luke was Co-founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Bagcheck which was acquired by Twitter Inc. just nine months after being launched publicly. Prior to this, Luke was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital and the Chief Design...more
More about Luke Wroblewski...
Luke was Co-founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Bagcheck which was acquired by Twitter Inc. just nine months after being launched publicly. Prior to this, Luke was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital and the Chief Design...more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“Your time is precious so this book is short and to the point.”
—
2 people liked it
More quotes…
