iphone-user-interface-design-projects.markdown

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.