Designing a Great Ultra-Mobile PC User Experience

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This section defines high-level user experience design principles and gives specific recommendations for Ultra-Mobile PC application feature development.

At minimum, your Ultra-Mobile PC application should do the following:

  • Be easy to use and fully functional in the absence of a standard input device, such as a mouse and keyboard.
  • Present information in such a way that users can digest it in a glance. Avoid an overly dense user interface.
  • Launch and run in full screen mode.
  • Provide exit control while in full-screen mode.
  • Run in both portrait and landscape modes.
  • Ensure that all user interface elements are visible and unclipped at 800x480.
  • Ensure that dialog box height is less than 480 pixels.
  • Be designed for multiple resolutions and display sizes. Ensure that user interface elements scale to accommodate a range of display sizes and typical display resolutions.
  • Disable or eliminate all user interface elements that are not required for a specific task, including captions and status bars.

For more information about developing for mobile computing, see Power and Device Awareness, Responding to Changing Network Conditions, and Adapting to a Flexible Display Environment.

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Build date: 2/8/2011