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iPhone User Interface Design Projects

I, Michael Parker, own this book and took these notes to further my own learning. If you enjoy these notes, please purchase the book!

Chapter 1: App Cubby

  • pg 5: Read the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines book, and conform to Apple's UI conventions.
  • pg 8: Because the keyboard takes up so much space, have data entry focused on a single field or a small group of fields that fit above the keyboard.
  • pg 11: Don't worry about minimizing taps; confusion about where to tap wastes more time than an extra tap.
  • pg 17: Every touch of the screen should have some visual reaction, even if it doesn't actually accomplish anything.

Chapter 2: Yet Another Google Reader

  • pg 29: The navigation view paradigm is not adept at moving from sibling to sibling; an auxiliary menu can provide this functionality.
  • pg 32: Apple's Application Definition Statement can help make right design decisions along the way, and has the format [Your differentiator] [your solution] for [your audience].
  • pg 34: The apple-touch-icon.png is a 57x57 image used when you make a home screen bookmark from Mobile Safari.

Chapter 3: Brightkite for the iPhone

  • pg 49: A more tab on the tab bar can expose features not worthy of the tab bar in a table view.
  • pg 52: Make signing up for a service as minimal as possible; move any additional tasks to perform after sign-up somewhere else, like the settings tab.
  • pg 55: A user can't tell the difference between a crash caused by a code defect and one that occurred at the hands of the memory watchdog.
  • pg 56: The address book is a natural resource for discovering friends who use your service.

Chapter 4: Outpost

  • pg 63: Templating kits for OmniGraffle or Illustrator provide quick wire-framing abilities.
  • pg 71: You can take screenshots of buttons from native applications and recreate them using purely vector shapes and layer effects
  • pg 72: Textile is an alternative markup script to Markdown.

Chapter 5: TanZen and Zentomino

  • pg 84: Work with a real device as soon as possible; the iPhone screen is smaller than you expect.
  • pg 87: Text can be explanatory, but it takes up screen space and needs to be internationalized.
  • pg 96: It's easy to see a visual element under a cursor in the simulator, but not one under your finger on an actual device.
  • pg 103: Give users what they need, not everything they want; otherwise your application will lack focus.
  • pg 105: A lower price app sells more copies, which places you higher on rankings lists, and that visibility is important.

Chapter 6: Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab

  • pg 117: The Info button that comes with the iPhone API may be too small for many users to use; to fix this, put a big clear UIButton on top of it in Interface Builder.
  • pg 120: Without a decent icon, no one will ever look at your application; without a good one, you don't get noticed.
  • pg 122: Using UIWebView allows better control over typography with the risk of combining native and web elements in a messy fashion.
  • pg 125: Using an UIAlertView to explain something is not optimal but gets the job done; just don't use more than a few.

Chapter 7: Postage

  • pg 131: Your application will be used on the go and for only a few moments at a time, so the interface must be streamlined.
  • pg 134: Every application preference represents a point where the development team could not make a tough choice.
  • pg 136: Do everything you can to delay or prevent having the user enter account credentials when using your application for the first time.
  • pg 138: The navigation bar can be repurposed to guide the user through a series of steps in accomplishing some larger task.
  • pg 147: Ensure that one partially obscured cell or item is visible in a list or table view to hint to the user that it can be scrolled.
  • pg 150: If an icon can't entirely describe a concept and requires a label, consider dropping the icon to increase the label font size for clarity.
  • pg 158: All lighting on the iPhone is from the top of the screen down; make your gradients, highlights, and drop shadows consistent with this.

Chapter 8: Falling Balls and Gravity Pods

  • pg 170: The accelerometer is a natural replacement for a directional pad on game controllers.
  • pg 178: Sending messages to nil in Objective C is allowed and more efficient than explicitly checking if the receiver is nil.

Chapter 9: Font Shuffle

  • pg 184: A typeface comprises an alphabet of letters, and build a family with members such as Roman, Bold, Italic, etc.
  • pg 187: The baseline is the only property of a digital typeface that is interpreted in a common way.
  • pg 188: In metal type, the em was the height of the metal body from which the letter arises; it's comparable the bounding box from digital type design.
  • pg 192: Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as Grotesque or Gothic, and serif types as Roman.
  • pg 200: The Lucidia typeface is a superfamily that covers all design styles, so the capital heights, x-heights, and main stem weights are coordinated.

Chapter 10: Snow Reports for the iPhone

  • pg 217: Make the 1.0 release minimal; when you have feedback, decide features for the next version and release it, which assures users you're listening to them.
  • pg 218: Identify and acquire your third-party resources up front; not getting them can be a dealbreaker for your application.
  • pg 230: Avoid splash screens and only use loading screens if necessary.
  • pg 231: Always include a UIPageControl if your application has paging.
  • pg 232: Your application icon should have only one focal point; don't make it busy.