Everything starts with clicking-how do we use the iPhone app?

Everything starts with clicking-how do we use the iPhone app?

Ah! Beautiful dream!

Sweet iPhone App designer dream! When a user is immersed in the applications he designed, the designer is dreaming that he is walking in the sunshine. Our fingertips slide, click, zoom, rotate, and fl on the screen, just like the beautiful step of the ballet girl. We quickly understood every icon on the screen and the meaning of each click; we quickly saw every button; we were able to control all the changes and gestures on the iPhone. We understand applications, because we learn how to use and immerse ourselves in them, just like Application designers.

Unfortunately, the story is purely fictitious. The cold fact is that most people do not have to think seriously or seriously about application design. The best application design is invisible, and the operation itself seems to be back to the background, putting users' tasks or entertainment at the center. Creating such a simple and effective design is really ten minutes on the stage and ten years of success. However, the habits of mobile users make such a design highly important.

Generally, you will not spend too much time on applications. Quickly click on the screen, do not want to explore all the details, and then switch to other applications. They use iPhone applications on a treadmill, in a car, or even in supermarkets. They only take a look at the screen, because they also need to take into account the changing multi-end environment-the road ahead, the date in the table, and the reality TV show tonight. They do not know all the standard touch-screen gestures and are not interested in learning new gestures. This means that the icons you carefully crafted will be ignored by them. It is also possible that they just accidentally discovered the functions in your application.

But don't be discouraged. This doesn't mean that everyone is indifferent to your application. In fact, they are even fascinated by your application. In the long history of electronic devices, few products are as popular as the iPhone. In addition, the iPhone and its big brother iPad are the most private PCs in many aspects. The application collected in this book is a good interpretation. The icons of these applications are as close-fitting as they are in our handbags. Our iPhone. Our application is aliyun.com. As long as you are well designed, we will also use your applications.

It is precisely because of the relationship between iPhone and iPhone that we should pay attention not to make users lost in the program, not to make users unhappy, and not to cause too many misunderstandings to users. Even if a user loves an application, he will not feel every tiny detail at all. When guiding them to further explore your application, you must also forgive and anticipate some minor mistakes that users will make. Through this book, you will understand the specific practices.

This book will explore the specific elements on the interface and the small part of design decision-making in most sections. Before you fully understand all the "what", this chapter will first explore the "why ". Before organizing your screen content, selecting features, or even selecting a color scheme, you must first know what you are facing. This chapter describes how to understand iPhone users through fast behavior surveys and mobile behaviors. The next chapter will help you determine your audience needs based on user characteristics, and then adjust your function points. From this point on, you will think deeply about user requirements and corresponding user interfaces.

Walking: one hand, one eye, always shaking

Imagine that people use mobile apps because they are moving. We will play with applications in a strange environment. The iPhone can be carried with you. This kind of convenience allows the iPhone app to play whenever it is needed, but it also brings a lot of design challenges. Your application is competing with the surrounding environment for the user's attention-you are using a 3.5 inch-inch screen to fight a fierce battle against the surging world. We call it human contact ). Even if people concentrate on your applications, they may be interrupted at any time in crowded subways, noisy restaurants, or living rooms.

That is to say, people only use one hand to operate your application. They only use one eye to view the screen and focus only a part of your attention on the carefully crafted interface, this is totally different from what you see as a designer.

 

 

 

The application of this fuzzy version should be taken as a precaution. You should arrange the information on the screen more carefully. Use beautiful, big, and eye-catching visual styles and reduce input. In the next chapter, we will discuss these topics. In addition, the time and place when the audience starts the application will also tell you how they are used.

Get it done as soon as possible

The mobile environment prevents users from being concentrated. When users use the iPhone in such an environment, the process will be segmented and inserted into other activities. When a friend invites you to go dry ice on Saturday, you stop talking, enter the location you have made an appointment in the calendar, and then continue talking immediately. When you are at the post office, several minutes before the call, you checked the email, looked at Twitter, and your favorite website. This is the way to open the customs.

Excellent applications can integrate themselves into users' busy schedules. This requires you to focus on the efficiency of the interface, and try to do it with only one or two clicks. Of course, this also requires subtraction visually. The environment is so distracting that you can't expect everyone to spend time and energy learning the interface.

 

 

 

Of course, there are exceptions in everything. Some people will spend hours indulging in the game. Some people may spend a long time reading novels and e-books, or recording some ideas in memos. However, for games, e-book readers, memos, and other applications, the same person may only rush 30 seconds for the next time. This means that for such applications that have a long usage cycle, you also need to perform in-depth interaction and design for quick clicks.

A box full of tools, you are just one of them

Why are users in a hurry? It turns out that users are eager to switch to another application. When designing your own applications, you will naturally focus on your applications, and naturally think that your users will concentrate on using your applications: but in this case, it would not be an iPhone, but a Super invincible notepad. You should be more aware of this as an iPhone user. All applications are just a long play, and there are many roles. And you are not the director of this drama.

Not only will the user jump to other applications, but other applications will interrupt the running of your applications by pushing notifications. The call will be sent at any time, and the text message will pop up at any time. You may also want to copy the content in your application to another application or copy it back. That is to say, as an Application Designer, You must imagine that your application is not isolated, but in a neighborhood with all applications. Your apps also share mobile phone space with other apps, transfer information to each other, and occasionally fight against each other.

A user's iPhone has many applications, which also tells you that you must be aware of the role of your application. Perfect applications focus only on one job. The more out-of-the-box the idea of your application, the more confused your audience will be about when to use your application. Think of the iPhone as a toolbox with various tools. "Tools do their jobs ". Assume that you have many other tools. That is to say, your application does not have to finish everything. Select one of them, concentrate, and try to make your application simple enough, and then improve and continuously improve. In the next chapter, you will learn how to make your application do a good job.

Bored and changed.

When your applications coexist harmoniously with other applications, they sometimes have to compete with them. IPhone users will have a lot of applications, but few will remain faithful. If your application cannot satisfy their interests, they will change to another application without mercy. This also means that they will not introduce your applications to their friends (say goodbye to word-of-mouth marketing ). In the face of reality, users' attention to applications is faster and faster. You must do everything you can to improve the user experience to meet user needs. If you fail to make a good first impression, most users will not go back.

Users of the application enjoy early adopters. They download about 10 apps every month, but they are rarely used or used for a long time. According to research, users usually delete an application within 20 times after it is started. Nearly 15% of the downloaded applications won't last a week on the mobile phone. Only 1/3 of the applications will continue to be used two months after the purchase. Some apps are popular, but they use gimmicks to attract users (such as playing fart sound, fabricated iqtest, and ringtones). They will be deleted if they are not played several times.

If you want to develop a new graph application, it may have no impact on you. You may have expected that your application will only be played several times. With laughter passed, the task was reached. However, if you want to keep your app downloads growing, there is a bad news: According to a survey, nearly half of the apps are downloaded for friend recommendations. Loyal users spread over 10 million lines, but few applications can have large groups.

Double-click, zoom, and rotate. What is this?

If you are an iPhone expert and have tapped into all the corners of the iPhone, there is toutiao news: Most people are not the same as you. Take a moment to get into touch with normal iPhone users (if you want to be pleasantly surprised, you can look back at new iPhone users ), let's see how they know about standard iPhone controls and special touch-screen gestures such as clicking, swiping, and swiping.

The iPhone touch screen is a revolution. This innovation makes iPhone use easy. Therefore, users are also interested in touch screen gestures. Indeed, even users who use the iPhone for the first time can immediately discover this obvious physical metaphor: sliding the screen, clicking a button, flinging a digital wheel, and dragging a map. You can rely on these interactions with confidence because they operate exactly the same way as objects in the real world. You can move it with a drag and a click.

 

 

 

Once you start to throw your tail, it is not limited to the use of click and slide, you begin to deviate from the masses. Even some standard built-in gestures have never been used by many people. In particular, it requires a multi-point touch gesture with more than one finger. The test found that many iPhone users felt difficult to operate when talking about multi-touch, even the standard dual-finger zoom-in or zoom-out gesture. Therefore, try to use a single finger, for example, double-click to enlarge the map. It is recommended that your application be optimized for single-handed operations.

Of course, because the gesture is not displayed on the interface or with tags, it is especially difficult for users to find out. For example, in a built-in "map" application, it is often difficult for a user who claims to be an expert to narrow down a map with a double finger. In addition, it is difficult for users to find the Landscape mode. For example, in the "stock market" application, you never wanted to rotate the screen to view operation charts. No matter how simple, Multi-standard, and multi-consistent gestures you use, you cannot think that these gestures will be discovered. Just use gestures as a shortcut to complete an operation, and make sure that this operation can be completed in another way (although the efficiency is generally lower), so that people will always have a way to complete the task.

 

 

We can understand that users cannot give gestures immediately because they are invisible after all. However, the icons and buttons associated with tags cannot be recognized. New users of your application may be hard to understand the meaning of icons and buttons. This happens not only to custom icons. Even the consistent icons used in some built-in applications are hard to understand at half past one when they have no labels.

Clumsy "finger"

Finger is a brilliant engineering invention that can take good care of various things: a finger can measure the wind direction, can dig holes in the walls, can measure the temperature, you can even direct an elevator to a specified floor. However, the interaction between fingers on the touch screen is very clumsy. Touch screen pen or mouse pointer can easily click the desired target between one or two pixels. In contrast, your fingers will not work properly. This clumsy tool will point to a large pixel each time you click it. Even worse, your fingers will block the screen: when your fingers are difficult to operate on the screen, even the things are covered by your fingers.

In addition, the user is in a hurry and confused mood, causing great trouble. No button found; click the wrong place; or you want to scroll the screen, but draw more, click the icon at the bottom. If you put a few more clickable items on the iPhone screen, the user will accidentally make a mistake sooner or later. To design touch operations, you need to work carefully and focus on Human Engineering (human engineering is a fresh discipline for many software designers ).

So, should I design it for Dummies?

Fidgety, two-hearted, clumsy "Fingers", impermanence, boredom, and ignorance, these arguments may not be used to describe ideal users. Like you, iPhone users are not stupid. Maybe when you are clicking on your favorite device, many of the rhetoric just now is describing you. The only thing we can do is to play with the iPhone. Our inherent iPhone usage habits naturally inherit the concept of mobile applications, which is to get things done while walking. This concept can be implemented only when the device is easy to use and does not bother.

What are the costs? If most people never subconsciously follow your design, and if they don't even care about it, what is the purpose of design? Why do we give users a blind eye to the details with painstaking efforts? If users (like you and me) are indifferent to your interface, the answer is that we only need to make a simplified interface, right?

In fact, indifference is simplified.

Others do not want to simplify your applications; they want ease of use. We only want to use the iPhone for work, study, and communication. Excellent applications are transparent and will not block our path. Good applications won't let us think-at least not let us think about how to use them. Excellent applications won't make us feel complicated tasks, and excellent applications will make us get twice the result with half the effort. Click the "departure" button to fly the plane. Click the "land" button to land the plane.

It is difficult to be simple and easy to use. However, being simple and easy to use is an excellent design quality assurance. Unfortunately, the user always reports "Worry" and does not report "happiness ". They are nitpicking, but the small screen zoomed in on the interface. So, you really need to elaborate on the details. Your task is to ensure that every page and every action can be carried out in the user experience design process, improve efficiency and achieve the goal, so that every element can touch people's hearts.

 

 

This article is based on the book "touching people-designing excellent iPhone applications ".

Book details: http://blog.csdn.net/broadview2006/article/details/6905981