Tapworthy

Chapter 4. Get Organized

STRUCTURING YOUR APP THE APPLE WAY

AS YOU BEGIN PLANNING your app’s design, set aside the pixel-by-pixel nitty-gritty of your app’s buttons and colors and icons. Let go of the look of your app, and consider how it works—its big-picture organizational design. When you pull way back to look at your app from a high level, you’ll see that its essential operation depends on easy movement from screen to screen. All but the most simple iPhone apps are collections of multiple screens, each one dedicated to an individual task or to specific content. How you choose to string those screens together determines how people will steer their way through your app, and it’s one of the most fundamental choices you’ll make when planning your design.

Figure 4-1. Photo: Paul Goyette

This chapter tours the iPhone’s navigation styles to explore the options for arranging your app’s content and tools. Specifically, you’ll get an overview of the several prefab organizational approaches that are baked into the iPhone SDK, the coding toolkit developers use to build apps. You’re not obliged to use any of these methods to build your app—you’ll explore custom alternatives in Chapter 6—but leaning on the built-in navigation models gives your audience a structure that’s instantly familiar. It helps your app blend both visually and organizationally with other apps. Blend in? Of course you want ...