Things I learned designing my first iPhone app

Joshua Kaufman

At the end of 2008, I began designing the Radar iPhone app.

Being an iPhone carrying designer, I felt like I knew what I was doing.

It turns out the design process was a great learning experience.

Here are a few things I learned.

First app? Stick to the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines unless you have a really good reason not to.

Emulate iPhone OS apps.

Say hello to your bible.

Get it atdeveloper.apple.com

Some apps that have good reasons

Games

Highly Visual Utilities

Music,Entertainment,Photography

Design for immediate access: if it's not a button, most people won't know about it.

Think: tappable first, swipeable second.

What can I do here?

Buttons make it clear.

How can I filter posts?

Buttons make it obvious.

Confirm actions that have unclear buttons or make actions easy to cancel/undo.

Be polite and don’t piss the user off.

Another quiz: name that button!

Easy

Privacy

Set as ProfilePhoto

Email

Like

Comment

Action sheets and confirmations are your friends

Content caching and saving the app state are extra work, but they’re worth it.

Apps that don’t save feel broken.

Saving content

in the app

So you can start where you left off

Why? All iPhone OS apps work like this!

Tweetie saves the app state nicely.

Hey this is where I left off!

Cool!

But when I want to read it while underground...

Twitteriffic gets it right.Even when there’s no internet!

Hey this is where I left off!

Cool!

Thanks!

@jmkjoshuakaufman.org