Things I learned designing my first iPhone app

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 at developer.apple.com

Some apps that have good reasons Games Music, Entertainment, Photography Highly Visual Utilities

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! Set as Easy Proﬁle Like Photo Privacy Email Comment

Action sheets and conﬁrmations are your friends

Saving So you can content start where in the app you left off Content caching and saving the app state are extra work, but they’re worth it. Apps that don’t save feel broken.

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! @jmk joshuakaufman.org

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Things I learned designing my first iPhone app

by Joshua Kaufman on Jun 06, 2009

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