5 suggestions for designing excellent iPhone applications

When users look for new apps in the Apple App Store, they often consider whether to buy them based on design. In our life, many may warn us not to judge a book by its cover. Since we cannot try an application, it becomes an important basis for us to judge the quality of an application.

Since users cannot judge the ease of use and code robustness of applications by browsing the App Store, it is reasonable to use the design as the basis for judgment, which means that when similar applications compete, applications with excellent experience design are often more popular.

How can we design excellent iPhone applications? The following five suggestions are provided.

1. application line diagram

When discussing application design, we usually have two main factors: user experience design and user interface design ).

Experience design includes the intent of the application (such as the functional points included) and how the user completes the intent.

The user interface design focuses on experience visualization, including colors, textures, fonts, and other elements.

These two factors are crucial when designing an iPhone application. Of course, first you have to spend time building the entity for user experience, which is often implemented through a line diagram. Wireframe can be used to briefly outline application creativity and focus on experience while ignoring visual effects. (For more information, see benefits of wireframing your designs.) I like to use a pen to draw a sketch on paper. of course, some people like to use Illustrator or Balsamiq Mockups.

It should be noted that the tool is irrelevant and does not need to be entangled. You need to focus on planning application functions to make them more harmonious. You need to consider how users are presented for the first time. You need to think about the user's operation logic. Draw buttons and write text, especially to make the learning process more intuitive.

Only by focusing on style at the beginning can you be sure that your wiremap is presented with a clear and easy-to-use application design solution.

2. Click the target of the finger size

This is the most significant improvement in application usability: Expand the clickable area of each button. You are designed for the thumb, not the mouse arrow for exact clicks.

The minimum vertex operation area recommended by Apple is 44x44px. This does not mean that the button needs to be large. The clickable area can be expanded based on the visual size of the button. This eliminates the headache caused by multiple attempts. Pay special attention to the multiple buttons that are close to each other. Other buttons cannot be covered in the extra clickable area.

3. Each interface has only one main target point.

An application interface should focus on the main purpose you want to convey. For example, on the email list page of the iPhone mail application, you can browse emails. Although there is a second operation to write emails, the buttons are placed in the corner and are not highlighted.

A designer's task is to make decisions: which are the most important and then highlight her. Reduce the visual proportion of secondary elements to make the main operations clearer.

Read the following articles to help you create excellent visual hierarchies and priorities in your applications:

Working with Visual Weight in Your Designs

Creating Focal Points in Your Web Design

Using Power Structure and Gestalt for Visual Hierarchy

The Art of Distinction in Web Design

4. Avoid the default button style

The default style of the UIButtons control in the iPhone can be considered as the design pet peeves ). It seems that all default iOS controls look good.

Unless your application style is unpleasant (not excluded), avoid using the default button style whenever possible. The combination of buttons and UI will make you shine, and keep you away from the title of a lame designer.

You can use the background image to set the button style or re-draw a new button using the code.

There are many tutorials and materials to help you create more attractive buttons, as shown below:

Designing Buttons in iOS 5

UIButton Glossy

5. Provide additional views for bloated Information

It is easy for users to move to another view (via push or view animation. So when you try to add more information to a view, you may want to perform subtraction and transfer it to another view.

On the iPhone, you can often encounter this kind of application scenario in the "Create" view. For example, on the new contact page, When you select ringtone, you will enter the new Ringtones view, which displays the list of selectable Ringtones.

Click the phone number label and you can set the label name.

By adding an additional view, only the required information is displayed, which can avoid confusion caused by a large number of view elements. This design concept is also known as progressive disclosure ).

Note:

First, many people may already know these points, so you can ignore them. After all, the purpose of translation is mainly self-confirmation.

After reading this, please do not move the flowers and trees. These points are limited to the iPhone. Whether they are applicable to Android or iPad cannot be considered. At least in my opinion, some points on the iPad are not reasonable.

In addition, from the resources recommended by the author and related design patterns, we can find that in fact, mobile application design still draws on a lot of Web design methods and concepts. Therefore, when learning mobile design, you cannot simply discard the Web design patterns and related methods. Although the scenarios are different, the processing skills can be used for mutual reference and change.

Via: sixrevisions

(Huyipeng is for the record of Lei Feng network. For details, refer to "from Lei Feng network" and "author)