Resumen
It can be argued that the focal point of every smartphone is its GUI. The Graphical User Interface is the aspect of any touchscreen smartphone with which users directly interact. Of late, the touchscreen smartphone has become ubiquitous. As such there is a myriad of smartphone platforms, each of which boasts a user-friendly GUI in its own accord. This paper outlines the design and development of an open source touchscreen smartphone GUI, implemented on an Embedded Linux development board, which serves as a hypothetical smartphone. It gives an overview of GUI design theory and mobile usability studies and shows the application of this theory in the programming process for an embedded platform. This paper goes in depth into the development process for an ARM-based Linux platofrm. The major outcomes of this study include the successful formulation and design of a hierarchical, touchscreen GUI suitable for a smartphone, as well as successful development and target-specific implementation of this GUI on an Embedded Linux, ARM-based platform, by adopting of an open source philosophy.