A Factor Combination Approach to Developing Style Guides for Mobile Phone User Interface

Abstract

This paper proposes a systematic approach to developing comprehensive guidelines for mobile phone user interface, and presents a case study to validate the approach. The approach applies a systematic combination of three critical factors: general usability principles, UI components and guideline properties to developing guidelines. In the case study, this factor combination approach was very effective in collecting experts' ideas, creating guidelines and editing them. The resulting style guide can provide comprehensive and useful guidelines for designing mobile phone UI. Relevance to Industry: UI designers can use the results of the study as a practical method to develop style guides for mobile phone UIs. The approach taken in the study will also be helpful in managing complex guideline information systematically. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.