The Study Of Prototyping For Mobile Phone User Interface Design

"Ubiquitous computing"is an important feature of information-based society. As one of the greatest handsets, the mobile phone has developed from embedded system and is increasingly becoming an indispensable part of our life. The fierce competition in the design of mobile phone is turning from technology to user experience. Therefore, we should think how to improve the experience of user interface (UI) of the mobile phone from now on.This paper mainly discusses the methods and tools of the UI prototyping of the mobile phone. Firstly, as to the human cognition, the thought of "Prototype-Centered Design, PCD" which based on "User Centered Design, UCD" has been introduced. Then detailed limitation of mobile phone to which should pay attention in the UI design process has been suggested. Secondly, the paper introduces three sorts of prototypes: horizontal/vertical, top down/bottom up, precision level of prototype. Then four tools of prototyping: paper and pen, fa?ade tool, interface builder, programming language. Thirdly, it sorts the prototypes by the object of prototyping: for desgigner self, for team and for end user. Lastly, it recommends "personas and scenario-based approach"as useful techniques or methods for the iterative process of the UI design of mobile phones.The most significant method was used in the practice of the prototyping of mobile phone application development. Then the hi-fi prototype was tested in the mobile phone simulation of Flash lite version 1.1. This thesis provides a new thought to technologists who fall over themselves for the development of mobile phone application, which is "User satisfaction objected and prototype-centered design".