Book description
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
Publisher resources
Table of contents
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Introduction
- 1. Touch and Go
-
2. Is It Tapworthy?
- There’s Not an App for That
- What’s Your Story?
- What Makes Your App Mobile?
- First Person: Josh Williams and Gowalla
- Big Talent for Little Icons
- Get to Pixels Fast
- Making It Work
- Try, Try Again
- Finding Focus
- Optimizing for the Primary Task
- Building for Exploration
- Colorful Personality
- Less Flash, More Function
- The App Doesn’t Have to Do It All
- Mobile Mindsets
- “I’m Microtasking”
- “I’m Local”
- “I’m Bored”
- What Makes You So Special Anyway?
- Wait, Wait, Come Back!
- Throw Out the Babies, Too
- Can’t I Get That on the Web?
- Touchpoints
-
3. Tiny Touchscreen
- A Physical Feel
- Rule of Thumb
- The Magic Number Is 44
- Don’t Crowd Me
- First Person: James Thomson and PCalc
- Designing for Touch
- Give Me Feedback
- Pimp My Calculator: Virtual Keypads
- Pointed Design
- Take It From the Top
- Design to a 44-Pixel Rhythm
- Be a Scroll Skeptic
- Edit, Edit, Edit
- Secret Panels and Hidden Doors
- Touchpoints
- First Person: Rusty Mitchell and USA Today
- All the News That Fits
- Psst . . . Hints for Working Custom Controls
- Big Problem with Tiny Buttons
- Either/Or: You Can’t Fit It All
-
4. Get Organized
- WWJD: What Would Jobs Do?
- Getting Around: Apple’s Navigation Models
- Flat Pages: A Deck of Cards (or Just One)
- Tab Bar: What’s on the Menu?
- Tree Structure: Let 1,000 Screens Bloom
- Combining Navigation Models
- Modal Views and Navigational Cul-de-Sacs
- A Tangled Web
- Storyboarding Your App on Paper
- Put Something Ugly on Your iPhone
- Touchpoints
- First Person: Jürgen Schweizer and Things
- Organizing the App
- Choosing the Navigation Style
- Minimal Graphics
- What Makes the Feature List?
- Rhyme with Apple’s Design Language
-
5. The Standard Controls
- The Power of Standard Visuals
- The Navigation Bar Shows the Way
- The Toolbar
- “So an Icon Goes into a Bar . . .”
- The Search Bar
- Table Views Are Lists on Steroids
- Setting the Table: Indexes and Grouped Lists
- Table View Editing Tools
- Text Me
- Editing Text
- Fixing Typoz
- Is That for Here or to Go?
- Don’t Make ‘Em Keybored
- Multiple Choice: Pickers, Lists, and Action Sheets
- On the Button
- Yes and No: Switches
- Segmented Controls Are Radio Buttons
- Sliders Stay on Track
- Settings: A Matter of Preference
- Is There More?
- Touchpoints
-
6. Stand Out
- What’s Your App’s Personality?
- Gussying Up Familiar Pixels
- You Stay Classy
- Keep It Real
- Designing Custom Toolbar Icons
- Metaphorically Speaking
- I Call My New Invention “The Wheel”
- And Now for Something Completely Different
- Touchpoints
- First Person: Craig Hockenberry, Gedeon Maheux, and Twitterrific
- Taming a Dense Thicket of Options
- Asterisk = Action
- Color Me Unique
- Testing the Bare Bones
-
7. First Impressions
- Your Icon Is Your Business Card
- Building Your App’s Icons
- What’s In a Name?
- While You Wait: The Launch Image
- The Illusion of Suspended Animation
- Put Out the Welcome Mat
- Instructions Can’t Make You Super
- The First Screen
- Touchpoints
- First Person: Joe Hewitt and Facebook
- More Than a Lite Version
- A Collection of “Sub-Apps”
- Physics According to Apple
- Easy on the Chrome
- The Trouble with Notifications
- 8. Swipe! Pinch! Flick!
- 9. Know the Landscape
- 10. Polite Conversation
- 11. Howdy, Neighbor
- Index
- About the Author
- Copyright
Product information
- Title: Tapworthy
- Author(s):
- Release date: June 2010
- Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
- ISBN: 9781449381653
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