A New Reference for Touchscreen UI Work
With over two billion portable touchscreen devices in active use and traditional mouse-and-keyboard machines increasingly displaced by phones and tablets, mobile has become the default computing environment for most people. Yet many designers continue to rely on outdated assumptions about how touch actually works. The new Smashing Book, Touch Design for Mobile Interfaces, aims to replace those myths with evidence-based guidance for better mobile and touchscreen design.
Written by Steven Hoober, who has spent more than 20 years designing for phones, tablets, kiosks, and computers, the 400-page book draws on observational research into how people genuinely hold and interact with devices. It covers topics such as rage taps, visibility and interactivity failures, and common usability pitfalls, offering practical strategies for addressing accessibility concerns in real projects. A free PDF sample chapter is available for download (14MB), and the printed edition is shipping now.
Print + eBook
$44.00
Quality hardcover with free worldwide shipping and a 100-day money-back guarantee.
eBook
$19.00
DRM-free, available as ePUB, Kindle, and PDF. Included free with a Smashing Membership.
Get the eBook — download the PDF, ePUB, or Kindle version.
What the Book Covers
The book examines human behavior and common design challenges across 13 chapters, explaining why many long-standing assumptions about touchscreens no longer hold and how design patterns need to adapt. Key areas of focus include:
- How people actually hold and touch mobile devices — and why there is no single “correct” grip.
- Design requirements for common patterns and components such as menus, lists, floating bars, and tabs.
- How touch intersects with human behavior and how people adapt their touch for different actions like tapping and scrolling.
- Ways to handle visibility and interactivity problems, including how fingers obscure content.
- How to prevent catastrophes when rage taps or mistaps occur.
- Why human vision is not as reliable as designers tend to assume.
- How to build well-organized, usable templates for touchscreen design.
Specific chapters walk through the underlying technology — from the early history of direct screen interaction in the 1950s through the rise of capacitive touch — and then address why specs, norms, and principles from earlier eras are often unreliable given outdated technical assumptions. Later sections shift toward tactics: designing interactive elements that attract the eye, afford action, and inspire confidence, then turning research into a simple formula for creating templates. The book closes with a look at the broader process of designing digital touchscreen products, from teams to strategy.
Who Should Read It
This is aimed primarily at designers working on mobile or touchscreen interfaces who want either better mobile designs or concrete, evidence-based data to back up their decisions. It also suits product designers, managers, and analysts, as well as developers and engineers building mobile touchscreen interfaces. For those moving from desktop projects to mobile, the book offers a path to reconsider design decisions for touch and mobility — planning for what Hoober calls the “touch-also” world, where work has moved from predictable cubicle computers to devices used everywhere, anywhere, and anytime.
Print + eBook
$44.00
Quality hardcover with free worldwide shipping and a 100-day money-back guarantee.
eBook
$19.00
DRM-free, available as ePUB, Kindle, and PDF. Included free with a Smashing Membership.
Get the eBook — download the PDF, ePUB, or Kindle version.
Bonus: Physical Templates Inside
Every printed book includes durable plastic templates for planning type and touch sizes, so designers can build usable, efficient interfaces with less guesswork. A printable version of the same templates ships with the eBook.
