Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps

by Josh Clark

Overview

So you've got an idea for an iPhone app — along with everyone else on the planet. Set your app apart with elegant design, efficient usability, and a healthy dose of personality. This accessible, well-written guide shows you how to design exceptional user experiences for the iPhone and iPod Touch through practical principles and a rich collection of visual examples.

Whether you're a designer, programmer, manager, or marketer, Tapworthy teaches you to "think iPhone" and helps you ask the right questions — and get the right answers — throughout the design process. You'll explore how considerations of design, psychology, culture, ergonomics, and usability combine to create a tapworthy app. Along the way, you'll get behind-the-scenes insights from the designers of apps like Facebook, USA Today, Twitterrific, and many others.

• Develop your ideas from initial concept to finished design
• Build an effortless user experience that rewards every tap
• Explore the secrets of designing for touch
• Discover how and why people really use iPhone apps
• Learn to use iPhone controls the Apple way
• Create your own personality-packed visuals

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449381653
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/08/2010
Pages:	310
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Josh Clark is a writer, designer, and developer who helps creative people clear technical hassles to share their ideas with the world. As speaker and consultant, he has helped scores of companies build effective websites and mobile apps. When he's not writing or speaking about clever design and humane software, he's building it. Josh is the creator of Big Medium, friendly software that actually makes it fun to manage a website. He's also the author of Best iPhone Apps and iWork '09: The Missing Manual, both published by O'Reilly. Before the rise of the Web, Josh worked on a slew of national PBS programs at WGBH-TV in Boston. He shared his three words of Russian with Mikhail Gorbachev, strolled the ranch with Nancy Reagan, hobnobbed with Rockefellers, and wrote trivia questions for a primetime game show. Now Josh makes words and spins code at his hypertext laboratory globalmoxie.com. He divides his time between Providence, Rhode Island, and Paris, France.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; Introduction; But First . . . Breathe; No Geek Credentials Required; Advice from the Real World; Chapter 1: Touch and Go; 1.1 On the Go: One Hand, One Eye, One Big Blur; 1.2 Get It Done Quick; 1.3 One Tool in a Crowded Toolbox; 1.4 Bored, Fickle, and Disloyal; 1.5 Double-Tap, Pinch, Twist, What?; 1.6 Clumsy Fingers; 1.7 So, What, Do I Design for Dummies?; Chapter 2: Is It Tapworthy?; 2.1 There's Not an App for That; 2.2 What's Your Story?; 2.3 What Makes Your App Mobile?; 2.4 First Person: Josh Williams and Gowalla; 2.5 Big Talent for Little Icons; 2.6 Get to Pixels Fast; 2.7 Making It Work; 2.8 Try, Try Again; 2.9 Finding Focus; 2.10 Optimizing for the Primary Task; 2.11 Building for Exploration; 2.12 Colorful Personality; 2.13 Less Flash, More Function; 2.14 The App Doesn't Have to Do It All; 2.15 Mobile Mindsets; 2.16 "I'm Microtasking"; 2.17 "I'm Local"; 2.18 "I'm Bored"; 2.19 What Makes You So Special Anyway?; 2.20 Wait, Wait, Come Back!; 2.21 Throw Out the Babies, Too; 2.22 Can't I Get That on the Web?; 2.23 Touchpoints; Chapter 3: Tiny Touchscreen; 3.1 A Physical Feel; 3.2 Rule of Thumb; 3.3 The Magic Number Is 44; 3.4 Don't Crowd Me; 3.5 First Person: James Thomson and PCalc; 3.6 Designing for Touch; 3.7 Give Me Feedback; 3.8 Pimp My Calculator: Virtual Keypads; 3.9 Pointed Design; 3.10 Take It From the Top; 3.11 Design to a 44-Pixel Rhythm; 3.12 Be a Scroll Skeptic; 3.13 Edit, Edit, Edit; 3.14 Secret Panels and Hidden Doors; 3.15 Touchpoints; 3.16 First Person: Rusty Mitchell and USA Today; 3.17 All the News That Fits; 3.18 Psst . . . Hints for Working Custom Controls; 3.19 Big Problem with Tiny Buttons; 3.20 Either/Or: You Can't Fit It All; Chapter 4: Get Organized; 4.1 WWJD: What Would Jobs Do?; 4.2 Getting Around: Apple's Navigation Models; 4.3 Flat Pages: A Deck of Cards (or Just One); 4.4 Tab Bar: What's on the Menu?; 4.5 Tree Structure: Let 1,000 Screens Bloom; 4.6 Combining Navigation Models; 4.7 Modal Views and Navigational Cul-de-Sacs; 4.8 A Tangled Web; 4.9 Storyboarding Your App on Paper; 4.10 Put Something Ugly on Your iPhone; 4.11 Touchpoints; 4.12 First Person: Jürgen Schweizer and Things; 4.13 Organizing the App; 4.14 Choosing the Navigation Style; 4.15 Minimal Graphics; 4.16 What Makes the Feature List?; 4.17 Rhyme with Apple's Design Language; Chapter 5: The Standard Controls; 5.1 The Power of Standard Visuals; 5.2 The Navigation Bar Shows the Way; 5.3 The Toolbar; 5.4 "So an Icon Goes into a Bar . . ."; 5.5 The Search Bar; 5.6 Table Views Are Lists on Steroids; 5.7 Setting the Table: Indexes and Grouped Lists; 5.8 Table View Editing Tools; 5.9 Text Me; 5.10 Editing Text; 5.11 Fixing Typoz; 5.12 Is That for Here or to Go?; 5.13 Don't Make 'Em Keybored; 5.14 Multiple Choice: Pickers, Lists, and Action Sheets; 5.15 On the Button; 5.16 Yes and No: Switches; 5.17 Segmented Controls Are Radio Buttons; 5.18 Sliders Stay on Track; 5.19 Settings: A Matter of Preference; 5.20 Is There More?; 5.21 Touchpoints; Chapter 6: Stand Out; 6.1 What's Your App's Personality?; 6.2 Gussying Up Familiar Pixels; 6.3 You Stay Classy; 6.4 Keep It Real; 6.5 Designing Custom Toolbar Icons; 6.6 Metaphorically Speaking; 6.7 I Call My New Invention "The Wheel"; 6.8 And Now for Something Completely Different; 6.9 Touchpoints; 6.10 First Person: Craig Hockenberry, Gedeon Maheux, and Twitterrific; 6.11 Taming a Dense Thicket of Options; 6.12 Asterisk = Action; 6.13 Color Me Unique; 6.14 Testing the Bare Bones; Chapter 7: First Impressions; 7.1 Your Icon Is Your Business Card; 7.2 Building Your App's Icons; 7.3 What's In a Name?; 7.4 While You Wait: The Launch Image; 7.5 The Illusion of Suspended Animation; 7.6 Put Out the Welcome Mat; 7.7 Instructions Can't Make You Super; 7.8 The First Screen; 7.9 Touchpoints; 7.10 First Person: Joe Hewitt and Facebook; 7.11 More Than a Lite Version; 7.12 A Collection of "Sub-Apps"; 7.13 Physics According to Apple; 7.14 Easy on the Chrome; 7.15 The Trouble with Notifications; Chapter 8: Swipe! Pinch! Flick!; 8.1 Finding What You Can't See; 8.2 Pave the Cowpaths; 8.3 Shortcuts and Backup Plans; 8.4 Piggybacking Standard Gestures; 8.5 Shake, Shake, Shake; 8.6 Two's a Crowd; 8.7 Awkwardness for Self Defense; 8.8 Phone Physics; 8.9 Touchpoints; Chapter 9: Know the Landscape; 9.1 Why Do People Flip?; 9.2 A Whole New Landscape; 9.3 Making a Complicated Turn; 9.4 Don't Lose Your Place; 9.5 Touchpoints; Chapter 10: Polite Conversation; 10.1 When To Interrupt; 10.2 Remain Calm and Carry On; 10.3 Pushy Notifications; 10.4 No Stinkin' Badges; 10.5 Yep, I'm Working on It; 10.6 Bending Time: Progress Bars and Other Distractions; 10.7 Touchpoints; Chapter 11: Howdy, Neighbor; 11.1 Public Square: Coooooontacts, Photos, and Events; 11.2 Tag, You're It: Passing Control to Other Apps; 11.3 Roll Your Own: Browsers, Maps, and Email; 11.4 Happy Trails, Neighbor; 11.5 Touchpoints;