Tap Worthy Chp.5-8
Chp.5
‘The standard controls provide a rich and varied set of options for manipulating an app, but because
they’re commonplace, they’re often taken for granted and are sometimes dismissed as visually dull’.
Iphone’s come with controls which are perceived as plain because they are so normal and necessary to have, but overall they are in fact marvelous. Familiarity and consistency lend design authority, keeping things universally standard, like road signs, help the users easily understand that function. Give your app a personality suited to its function, but don’t stray too far from the familiar norms of the iphone environment. Navigation bar helps the user know where they are on an iphone app, it also enables back and forth functions, a title and other functions that help the user in the app. The nav bar is normally divided into three sections, left, center and right, where you can put text or buttons. Toolbars provides the user with onscreen access to all the tools for editing, manipulating, or sharing content, or even other functions that allow you to play around with the specific app. Tab bars offer the user the ability to switch between different pages on the app, in order to get things done more effectively. The icons and controls that fill your app’s crucial control panels have to be visually distinct, so that the user can understand the differences and their functions. The search bar provides the user an ability to search a software or app, to easily find what they are looking for. Table view is simply a list, but the user can touch this list to access different areas or functions.
Chp.6
Iphone’s are personal to the user, though the phone/hardware itself is the same as everyone else's, the software and everything is more personalized. Creating an app personality/brand. By choosing a personality for your app before one starts crafting its visual identity, the designer gives themselves a framework for making consistent decisions based on the emotional vibe. Essentially create a mood board of the feel, vibe, and theme for your app before creating it. Once deciding on a mood, the designer can of course incorporate color,images, etc, but they can also tint toolbars, outline table cells and buttons with crafted graphics. Remember that if you tint one toolbar, tint them all, don't choose obnoxious or difficult colors to look at on your toolbar, add texture or depth into your toolbar if you don't want a flat effect, contrast is your friend, don't put difficult to read fonts on any of your toolbars are functions, a simple font works best there, so that users can easily read labels. Also if your app looks good/expensive, it comes off as more valuable and professional. Use light, shadow, and texture to create some realism to your app, and make it look more touchable. Use subtle lighting effects, and light cast shadows. Overall this chapter gives a lot of advice, but most of the examples are outdated and resemble more of the early 2000’s design aspects.
Chp.7
With the app you created/designed, it is essential that the user enjoys and likes your app within the first few moments because that will ultimately decide whether or not they will continue with it. To draw people in, your app needs to be attractive, trustworthy, and approachable right from the start. Your app icon is the first thing users see, it is the first impression. The icon should be able to stand out from surrounding apps, but also represent your app and what it does. Blue and green are too commonplace, choosing another color will ultimately make you stand out more. Make sure your icon is not too cryptic, so that people are confused by it in the app store. There are several ways for well-designed icons to be descriptively literal, icons for apps with distinctive designs can visually quote that design, creating a kind of preview of the app itself. Also to take into consideration is that the icons come in different sizes, the most common size is medium, but depending on the user's preferred personalized settings, the icon could be either larger or smaller. So when designing you also need to create an icon that fits into different sizes. The name is important for marketing your app, but in the end the users do not care what the app is called, but the best thing to do is keep your app name short, so that it fits nicely underneath the icon. The launching or loading image is also important for your app cause it's what the user will be staring at while they wait, having fun or animated parts makes the waiting page more fun.
Chp.8
The touchscreen aspect of a phone closes the distance between software/computing and the user, by making it more immediate and personal. Strive to make gestures easy to discover and use, a balance which is more complex than it sounds. Unlike desktop interfaces, touchscreens create the expectation that the user can work not only on individual buttons but also on the screen’s canvas. The less a gesture resembles something the user does to a physical object, the less likely it is for them to figure it out on their own. Do to past gestures that users might use frequently, they might expect the same thing when coming on to your app, so when designing the function of a gesture, one needs to think what that gesture is commonly used for. Also remember that iphone’s have built in motion detector, so when designing take that function into consideration as part of a concept to your app, like a game app for example.
Comments