Chapter 2
Designing Your User Experience
What's In This Chapter?
- Defining a functional scope for each screen
- Evaluating what data should be displayed
- Whiteboarding exercises to facilitate app design and identify discrete pieces of functionality
- Prototyping to get stakeholder and user feedback
- Using Agile to get software into the hands of beta testers
Almost as diverse as the development languages and mobile operating systems of the targeted devices, the User Interface (UI) controls that make up the user experience on today's mobile platforms vary greatly. A common thread is the complete abandonment of the DataGrid layout. Made famous in Windows Forms, the DataGrid quickly made the migration to the mobile platform when Microsoft ported the UI control to Windows CE. Although DataGrids performed reasonably well in desktop applications, the significantly reduced screen resolution of quarter VGA mobile devices forced the fonts used within DataGrids to be too small when rendered on the device.
When Apple launched the iPhone, it included some data-intensive workflows. The first killer app for iOS was iTunes. The application provides users with a rich experience while they browse a vast array of digital entertainment content. By implementing a linear application workflow, Apple enabled iTunes users to browse through the details of each song by drilling through lists. Using the linear paradigm enables developers to display information in a more readable fashion when it is displayed on ...
