Mauricio Perez, a Microsoft Technical Account Manager (or TAM), has an extensive survey of creating an effective User Experience for Windows Mobile 5.0 devices at WindowsForDevices.com. The article is fairly broad, covering everything from the evolution of the Windows Mobile UI, to control layout for finger-operation. This is both good and bad, as it prevents the article from making deep dives into any specific area, but it is a great jumping-off point for anyone building mobile applications.

I’ve been using Windows Mobile devices for the past few years now, first with a Smartphone 2002 (Motorola MPX200), then Smartphone 2003 SE (HTC Typhoon), and now Windows Mobile 5 - PocketPC (T-Mobile MDA). The greatest headaches I’ve found are:

  • applications that try to cram too much information into a single window,
  • applications that feel like they were ported directly from Windows, and
  • applications that are not designed for one-handed, finger-based manipulation (Phone UI, I'm looking at you).

Hopefully, with guidance like this out there, the mobile application experience will steadily improve.