Designing the Mobile User Experience Review

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(More customer reviews)Handheld Usability
The above link is to a book that is easily the predecessor to "Designing the Mobile User Experience." The shame of it is that Barbara Ballard and Scott Weiss did not collaborate to produce a second edition, sharing both of their insights. Instead, Ballard writes the same book, but in 2007 instead of 2002, with many of the same weaknesses, and many of the same strengths. Readers who liked "Handheld Usability" will enjoy "Designing the Mobile User Experience," but will be frustrated by the lack of detailed WAP design advice. Also missing is detailed advice for FlashLite, UIOne, SVG, tat, Java, and other environments. Ballard is a very strong writer, with very strong opinions. Fortunately, she is very smart and knowledgable, with extensive experience working at Sprint and since, providing services to Sprint. Wiley did her a disservice by printing the book in black and white, and does a crazy disservice to readers by charging so much for the book. However, designers who want to learn about mobile will benefit from this book. Experienced mobile designers will be frustrated, as they were with "Handheld Usability." Even experienced mobile designers should consider purchasing this book, as a reference and as a supplement to their own knowledge.

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Gain the knowledge and tools to deliver compelling mobile phone applications.
Mobile and wireless application design is complex and challenging. Selecting an application technology and designing a mobile application require an understanding of the benefits, costs, context, and restrictions of the development company, end user, target device, and industry structure.
Designing the Mobile User Experience provides the experienced product development professional with an understanding of the users, technologies, devices, design principles, techniques and industry players unique to the mobile and wireless space. Barbara Ballard describes the different components affecting the user experience and principles applicable to the mobile environment, enabling the reader to choose effective technologies, platforms, and devices, plan appropriate application features, apply pervasive design patterns, and choose and apply appropriate research techniques.
Designing the Mobile User Experience:
Provides a comprehensive guide to the mobile user experience, offering guidance to help make appropriate product development and design decisions.
Gives product development professionals the tools necessary to understand development in the mobile environment.
Clarifies the components affecting the user experience and principles uniquely applicable to the mobile application field.
Explores industry structure and power dynamics, providing insight into how mobile technologies and platforms become available on current and future phones.
Provides user interface design patterns, design resources, and user research methods for mobile user interface design.
Illustrates concepts with example photographs, explanatory tables and charts, and an example application.

Designing the Mobile User Experience is an invaluable resource for information architects, user experience planners and designers, interaction designers, human factors specialists, ergonomists, product marketing specialists, and brand managers. Managers and directors within organizations entering the mobile space, advanced students, partnership managers, software architects, solution architects, development managers, graphic designers, visual designers, and interface designers will also find this to be an excellent guide to the topic.

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Mobile Design and Development: Practical Concepts and Techniques for Creating Mobile Sites and Web Apps (Animal Guide) Review

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(More customer reviews)Original review written by Pasquale Granato, JUG Lugano, [...] First of all, let's clear the field from a possible misunderstanding: this book is not about general mobile design and development but it is about web mobile development. The author states a precise, despite arguable, opinion that brutally said is: do not code native applications but prefer as much as you can web applications. This statement is largely discussed across the book and everyone can make up his own opinion about this. Mine is that currently times are not mature to consider to write just web applications both because mobile browser are not powerful enough (on average) to assure a smooth experience on all devices and because of the lack of a good way to make money from your web app.
The first three chapters of the book are a really good introduction to the history of mobile, to the mobile current status and to the reasons that should drive an approach to the mobile development. These chapters are a well written recap of the status of the art and present a lot of data useful to understand the global situation. Unfortunately the book is printed in black and white and several pie-charts and graphs are pretty much impossible to read.
The central part of the book, chapters from four to ten, is devoted to design issues and, despite the lack of an in-depth examination of some subjects, offers a pretty good survey of the topic.
The final part of the book is slightly more technical covering topics such as XHTML-MP, CSS, HTML5, device adaptation, etc. The problem here is that there is nothing really practical and all remains at an introductory level. To give you an example, a capital topic in device adaptation like Media Queries is covered in half a page with just a trivial example. Furthermore the author seems to be unaware of things like XwapProfile or UAProf (that is probably a obsolete and unreliable method but deserve at least a notation).
My biggest complain is anyway about the author's obsession for the iPhone. The Apple's jewel is referenced continuously and always with great glorification: the word iPhone recurs 99 times in the book and out of the 115 pictures in the book as many as 37 depict an iPhone. An entire chapter is devoted to iPhone web applications development even though most of the concepts presented here are common to other modern devices.
This is overall a decent introductory book, if you are completely new to the field, and it's packed with many good advices but do not expect much from the practical techniques promised by the title.

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Mobile Commerce : Opportunities, Applications, and Technologies of Wireless Business Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a broad treatment of M-commerce and is aimed at a broad audience of business and technical readers. Usually books of this nature are mediocre because of the trade-offs compromises in scope and content that need to be made to accommodate a wide audience. In the case of the book, though, it isn't the case.
First, the book is organized by (1) Business opportunity, (2) Applications, (3) Technology, (4) Issues and (5) Directory of M-Commerce Applications. The first four sections are both insightful and invaluable. The directory of M-commerce applications, in my opinion, does not add any value to the book because information of this nature changes so rapidly that it's inaccurate before a book is even published.
What I like about the book is the even treatment of opportunities that are inherent in M-commerce, including some insights into why Europe does not have the advantages that normally come from being early adopters (in spite of the pessimists who cite a "two year head start" while ignoring the U.S. leadership in technology implementation when we do get around to it), and the interesting view of WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), which many believe to be just an interim - the author advises to put resources and effort into WAP and make it part of a business strategy if you want to be an M-commerce player.
The survey of technologies and standards are also useful, even if given somewhat superficial treatment. The value is you are exposed to all of the factors and considerations with which to make informed decisions or gain an understanding of the M-commerce landscape. In this respect the applications and technology sections of the book can be viewed as a primer.
Overall, this is an excellent book for learning about M-commerce from business and technical points of view because it provides a context and keen insights in both domains.

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Wireless and Mobile Network Architectures Review

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(More customer reviews)The reviewer was in search of a book that could provide the basis for a course on mobile communications at the graduate level for students from a mixed (EE and CS) background. The new book by Lin and Chlamtac fits the bill perfectly. It assumes neither knowledge of wireless physical layer, nor knowledge of higher layer applications and application interfaces. In fact, it is a book with an original approach, being the first to present mobile networks by emphasizing the services that can be provided and the mobility management schemes needed to support such services. Because of its particular focus, the book is also an excellent text for systems and systems software developers as well as the senior undergrad or grad level science and engineering reader who is curious about the particular subject. Certain decisions were necessary to keep the book focused. For example, it stays clear of elaborating on modulation, coding and modeling for wireless communication (presenting just the essential info). It also avoids being IP-centric, although, naturally, it cannot escape discussing data services, such as SMS, GPRS, WAP etc.
An aspect that weighs in favor of the book is the inclusion of research results from the research of its two world renowned authors. The included research results can help the graduate level reader appreciate the available research opportunities, and the context in which solutions can be developed. The researcher will also find the collection of references (as recent as 2000) extremely helpful in studying the area. The teacher can use the material to develop simulation and analytical models for students to gain better insight to the workings of mobile services.
Another objective of the book, is to function as reference material. Its authors have done the hard work of distilling the essence of a large collection of standards documents related to mobility management. >From this point of view, the book will be of value in the longer term as well, making it an a perfectly sound investment.
A challenge dealt with successfully in this book is that in order to present mobility management, it ultimately needs to discuss about signaling protocols, and SS7 in particular. The book takes an approach of presenting background material on signaling on "as needed" basis. A reader not familiar with signaling, will likely progress slowly when signalling is first introduced, but, at the end, will have the double benefit of being exposed to signaling's central role in advanced communication services, and gain understanding on how mobile networks really work. Certainly, there are parts of the text where the density of acronyms calls for careful parsing of the sentences, but such is the case for any technical book that maintains a formal presentation style. It still beats reading standards documents.
After a short review and classification of the systems covered in the text, the book introduces the need and nature of mobility management followed by the most important aspect of mobility management, that of handoff management (detection, assignment and radio link transfer). Following the introduction, extensive attention is given to IS-41 (where, in a way, AMPS, IS-136 and IS-95 "meet" together) and to the GSM counterpart, the Mobile Application Part (MAP). Covered GSM services include the Short Message Service (SMS), International Roaming, and Operations, Administration and Maintenance. In this, first part of the book, what may appear odd at first is the inclusion of low-tier systems with few mobility management capabilities (such as CT 2, DECT etc.) but it serves as a reminder that little gems of protocols can be found in places one may not think looking at. Certainly the point is justified by the discussion of PACS signalling in a separate chapter. Another topic placed in this first part of the book (due to its relation with AMPS and IS-136) is CDPD's architecture and its radio resource allocation and roaming management.
The remaining half of the book is service-oriented. It covers how different types of services can be supported. The services include mobile number portability, VoIP service for mobile networks, GPRS, prepaid mobile phone services, and WAP. Following are two chapters covering the topic of heterogeneous PCS systems integration and the new (3rd) generation mobile services. The final three chapters cover three addition services that follow their own evolution path. Namely, paging systems, the wireless local loop and wireless enterprise networks.
Overall, this book is worth having. Whether you approach it as a student, as an instructor, as an engineer or just as interested to expand your knowledge, it has something to give you. It is unique in its approach and future books on the topic will be measured against it.

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A comprehensive guide to building wireless and mobile networks and services. Based on advanced wireless and mobile network architectures, Personal Communication Services (PCS) offersthe enterprise freedom of communication through mobility. This book gives network engineers and managers a window on the world of wireless and mobile networks, from the enabling technologies and protocols to creating and managing mobile services. Lin and Chlamtac use a unique sustained example approach to teach you how PCS concepts apply to real network operation. For example, they use location update to illustrate concepts in chapters on network signaling,- Mobility management for different systems- Wireless Application ProtocolNetwork signaling for IS-41-based systems, PACS, and GSM- Roaming procedures and international roaming- Operational management- VoIP service for mobile networks- Mobile number portability- GPRS- Third generation (3G) mobile systems- Wireless enterprise networks- Wireless Local Loop- And much more

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Mobile and Wireless Design Essentials Review

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(More customer reviews)I am studying towards a Ph.D. in Information Systems. I was given an assignment to research wireless technologies. I decided to read this book to refresh my memory about the topic. The information in the book is better presented than any journal article on the topic that I have read to date, even articles from world renown researchers from MIT, Stanford, Duke and alike. The author takes a very difficult topic and presents in a crystal clear manner that can be understood by virtually anyone. Moreover, the information is not watered-down. To the contrary, it is the single most valuable resource that I have found on the topic after conducting a thorough literature review. I would recommend it to anyone who deals with wireless networks or wants to increase their knowledge about the topic.

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Describes mobile and wireless design techniques from the developer's perspective, offering in-depth analysis of the complete range of network technologies
Details development options for building Smart Client, Thin Client, and messaging applications as well as PIM (personal information management) and location-based services
The author is an experienced trainer who leads seminars and workshops worldwide for iAnywhere Solutions, a subsidiary of Sybase

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