iPhone User Interface Design Projects

iPhone User Interface Design Projects Review

Love it or loathe it, the iPhone and iPod touch have been a stunning success, largely due to the App Store -- over 100,000 apps at current count. It is, by all accounts, the largest gold rush to invade the application development scene since ... well, ever. Apps that pay attention to design and usability stand out from the rest of the detritus, and quickly become a success.

"iPhone User Interface Design Projects" devotes a single chapter to each of ten developers/designers who've stood out from the crowd. They talk us through their thought processes and workflows, their failures and ultimate successes. You can teach someone to write code, but can you teach something as subjective as interface design? Apple's "Human Interface Guidelines" document goes some way to achieving this goal, explaining what users expect from an iPhone app's interface, and how the various controls behave and interact. The HIG is an essential reference and fits the bill perfectly for most use cases, but doesn't offer insights into more creative interfaces. "iPhone User Interface Design Projects" augments the HIG by bringing the authors' experiences into the discussion. They explain what worked and what didn't - there's nothing like learning from other people's mistakes.

A common thread throughout the book is that design and usability is an iterative process - very rarely will your first design concept reach the App Store. Though the individual authors refer to it differently - wireframing, prototyping, mock-ups, etc. - you get a sense for the importance of knowing what the interface will look like and how it will behave before committing it to code. The book's technical reviewer, Joachim Bondo, contributes a chapter on the design of a prospective Google news reader. Refreshing in presentation, this isn't a post-development retrospective. As he explains in the chapter's introduction, he has a few ideas in his head, and he fleshes the designs out as your read along. You don't get to see the final interface, but that's not the point. What you do get is insight into his design decisions. Bret Victor presented the excellent "Prototyping iPhone User Interfaces" at WWDC '09, and Bondo's narrative is very similar in content.

Though I enjoyed (almost) all ten contributions, Chapter 7, for me, was the highlight of the book. Chris Parrish and Brad Ellis cover - in great detail - often overlooked concepts of user context and application flow, and the undeniable value of prototyping and specifications. Parrish and Ellis rightly won an Apple Design Award at WWDC '09 for "Postage", a visual and highly intuitive postcard creator, and they approach their chapter with similar attention to detail.

The odd-one-out is Jurgen Siebert's detailed discussion of typefaces, the implications of their usage on small-scale devices such as the iPhone, and a walkthrough of his "FontShuffle" app. As informative as the history and anatomy of typefaces was for me, I didn't see how it specifically related to the very restricted set of fonts on the iPhone. Siebert even goes so far as to mock up a Contacts screen with a font that isn't available on the device, suggesting that the screen's readability has improved as a result. I don't disagree; however, the iPhone's fonts are baked-in, and unless you want to implement a custom glyph rendering routine, it's a pointless argument on a closed device. This chapter represents a missed opportunity, in my opinion. I was initially looking forward to reading about the author's choice of available fonts under different scenarios, but was ultimately let down.

Where the book falls short is in its use of black and white screeenshots throughout. We're talking about the design of applications which are displayed on a full colour device. Colour clearly plays a very large part in the design of any user interface, so cheaping out with black and white screenshots was a mistake. What's even more unforgivable is that the downloadable eBook (which isn't free) doesn't have full colour plates! Come on, Apress! I think given the context of the book, we'd be prepared to pay a bit more for colour.

Who's this book for? Everyone who develops or designs for iPhone, novice to expert alike. Even if you've had success on the App Store, I guarantee there's something in here for you.

iPhone User Interface Design Projects Features

• ISBN13: 9781430223597
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Rating :

Price : $39.99

Offer Price : $22.25

Overviews

With over 100,000 iPhone applications and 125,000 registered iPhone developers, is it still possible to create a top-selling app that stands apart from the six-figure crowd? Of course, but you’ll need more than a great idea and flawless code—an eye-catching and functional user interface design is essential. With this book, you’ll get practical advice on user interface design from 10 innovative developers who, like you, have sat wondering how to best utilize the iPhone’s minimal screen real estate. Their stories illustrate precisely why, with more apps and more experienced, creative developers, no iPhone app can succeed without a great UI.

Whatever type of iPhone project you have in mind—social networking app, game, or reference tool—you’ll benefit from the information presented in this book. More than just tips and pointers, you’ll learn from the authors’ hands-on experiences, including:

• Dave Barnard of App Cubby on how to use Apple’s User Interface conventions and test for usability to assure better results
• Joachim Bondo, creator of Deep Green Chess, beats a classic design problem of navigating large dataset results in the realm of the iPhone
• Former Apple employee Dan Burcaw tailors user interfaces and adds the power of CoreLocation, Address Book, and Camera to the social networking app, Brightkite
• David Kaneda takes his Basecamp project management client, Outpost, from a blank page (literally) to a model of dashboard clarity
• Craig Kemper focuses on the smallest details to create his award-winning puzzle games TanZen and Zentomino
• Tim Novikoff, a graduate student in applied math with no programming experience, reduces a complex problem to simplicity in Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab
• Long-time Mac developer Chris Parrish goes into detail on the creation of the digital postcard app, Postage, which won the 2009 Apple Design Award
• Flash developer Keith Peters provides solutions for bringing games that were designed for a desktop screen to the small, touch-sensitive world of the iPhone
• Jürgen Siebert, creator of FontShuffle, outlines the anatomy of letters and how to select the right fonts for maximum readability on the iPhone screen
• Eddie Wilson, an interactive designer, reveals the fine balance of excellent design and trial-by-fire programming used to create his successful app Snow Report

Combined with Apress’ best-selling Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK, you’ll be prepared to match great code with striking design and create the app that everyone is talking about.

What you’ll learn

• Optimize your design for the iPhone’s limited screen real estate and the mobile environment
• Create a user interface that is eye-catching and stands apart from the crowd
• Maximize your use of typographic elements for style and readability
• Perfect entry views and display large amounts of data in an exciting way
• Translate games made for the desktop’s big screen to the iPhone
• Strike the perfect balance between simplicity, beauty, and features

Who is this book for?

iPhone application developers of all experience levels and development platforms

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Customer Review

Sexy design sells! - H. Wu - Brooklyn, NY USA
Apple's iPhone SDK/Cocoa Touch framework provides some very elegant UI widgets out of the box. It's a beautiful thing when you design your app's interface, and it comes great-looking already. However, us programmers tend to be lacking skills in interactive design and awesome usability. This book comes in for the rescue.

Authors of this book have been to the trenches, and they wrote their own experiences and their thought processes here in their chapters. It's amazing how a little app has so much design decisions involved.
Chapter 1 - How and why design apps that have similar look and feel like the default built-in Apple apps, and some tips on whether to tap or not, and usability testing.
Chapter 2 - The author takes on the Google news reader, and improves the navigation and re-structured his app design to be more efficient.
Chapter 3 - The author talks about the differences between web and native apps, and some best practices and tricks
Chapter 4 - The author shows how the design evolved along with design decisions and adjustments
Chapter 5 - This is my favorite chapter. The author discuss in depth of how to design UI interactions with iPhone's unique size and features. The discussion on rotations is especially thought-provoking!
Chapter 6 - This chapter shows that even designing a very simple and basic app, it still takes consideration on usability and appropriate user interactions.
Chapter 7 - This chapter is great in showing you many ways to tune your app details into great enhancements to your apps. Little details you would otherwise take for granted or ignored.
Chapter 8 - As a programmer, I'm happy to see some codes behind the app. This chapter shows you how to build a simple but interesting game, with the focus of how to receive user interactions with minimal efforts. Codes are provided so it's a great read!
Chapter 9 - The author talks about different font styles and typefaces.
Chapter 10 - The author shows us many tips and tricks during the entire app development life cycle.

Overall, this book shows us how iPhone apps are developed from a different angle. Many great tips/tricks and real-world experiences. It's a great read w/ about 240 pages. Any iPhone programmer would learn a thing or two from this book. My only complain is that some chapters are too short. Hopefully 2nd edition of this book can include additional iPhone app designers/developers :)

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