Hot answers tagged iphone
45
Some phone numbers are tailored to use a mnemonic "lettered" version to be more easily remembered.
Think of an insurance company running a commercial on TV and its goal is that you call their number.
If they use 1-800-INSUR-ME, it'll probably be more easily remembered than 1-800-4678763.
26
If a multiplatform app has an iPhone-ish UI because it was first developed to iOS, I see that as a cheap solution and negligence of the other platforms. If a vendor takes the time to develop the application to integrate properly with the OS, have a native UI, use differentiating features (like notifications in Android) etc., that's much more appealing than ...
15
If you are going to be prototyping for iPhone, there is a very interesting iPhone Mockup tool I found recently.
You might also want to consider the listing provided by this article, it has a lot of stencils and tools on the subject.
15
Because whitespace is important. Being able to quickly skim the list and pick out who said each response is important. By adding left and right whitespace it makes the list of messages far easier to scan. It also makes the application instantly accessible from the very first sight; if it were just white and green with no justification, then people seeing the ...
14
Less an answer and more a word of caution:
Be careful not to let your personal experience and preference cloud your judgment for what's best for the actual users of your products and devices. Which orientation helps them get shit done? Prefer that.
I find it a little concerning that the first few answers are all: "I like portrait better. I like landscape ...
12
You shouldn't rely on just color for this. Most colorblind people cannot differentiate red and green, especially on very small icons. One possibility is to have some sort of network connectivity symbol to show when the connection exists and put a large red "X" over it when the connection is off. Use color to reinforce the symbol shape. Even spell out ...
11
This blog post links to the Windows Phone 7 Series UI Design and Interaction Guide, which is probably of interest to you.
If you are building a native app, you probably want to make it in accordance with the device's UI guidance. An exception might be if you are making an application that provides an interface to a website (like the Twitter and Facebook ...
11
Apple calls it a "Picker" in its iOS Human interface guidelines.
Picker
A picker displays a set of values from which a user picks one.
To learn more about defining a picker in your code, see UIPickerView
Class Reference. Appearance and Behavior
A picker is a generic version of the date and time picker. As with a
date and time picker, ...
10
Option B is better for the user of the device at hand. There's no way that device is going to suddenly get a camera on it, so there really isn't a reason to show the user a function that they will never be able to use.
The reason that people recommend graying out options not currently available is so that a user will know that it is there and they could use ...
9
Try this:
http://www.evernote.com/pub/ikonux/stuff#v=t&n=544d5d02-e7df-4efe-b4ba-9ce74717cc43&b=0
9
They do this because it is easily recognizable by their users. Apple stresses using standard interface elements in their iOS Human Interface Guidelines:
In iOS, the UIKit framework provides a wide range of UI elements that you can use in your application. As you design the user interface of your app, always remember that users expect the standard views ...
9
Here is what I would do to have A/B Testing done on Existing Customers / People who already have my app:
Both the flows of the App you have in mind should be bundled as a part of the same app.
You use the code injection to send information to Flurry.
Use the same method to check how many users have downloaded the latest version of your App with both ...
8
Good question - Balsamiq Mockups may be your best bet. They have iPhone controls built in, and someone has contributed controls for Windows Phone 7. They also have stuff for Nokia platforms, etc. Not sure about Android options here. Keep your eye on Balsamiq's Mockups To Go blog for further contributions from the Balsamiq community.
I also created two lists ...
8
Yes, it is using the right affordance (to be consistent with OSX Lion).
This is slightly confusing implementation of what I think they are trying to achieve. I agree, it does look like the slider/switch control used in iOS. Sad news is, this is what OSX Lion is going to look like. They are changing the look of these "tabbed" controls. See below:
At this ...
8
If the gesture is easier than the code, why haven't website login pages adopted this?
Accessibility: How is someone supposed to draw a squiggle if they can't use the mouse?
Recordability: Look at a numeric keypad (1 in the lower left corner). "183456" is easy to write down in a text editor for the memory-challenged. Furthermore, the only squiggle I ...
8
Working on the assumption that you've addressed the information architecture issues and determined that there are infact this many primary and secondary navigation options required for the application there are a few routes you can take for displaying multiple options in a tab-panel (or similar control).
The first example here is from Snapseed:
Here ...
8
Apple's iOS guidelines say to "Think twice before hiding the status bar if your app is not a game or full-screen media-viewing app." I think their attitude is that if you don't really need the extra space, leave the status bar visible so people can see the time and battery life. Also, from same link above, "don't create a custom status bar."
7
The question to be answered, preferably through paper prototyping, is whether the user is confused about this inherent modality of your system. (If you are ever able to switch between roles as a user, then they're modes in disguise.)
In general, invisible modes confuse the heck out of users at all levels; even experienced users who understand modes want to ...
7
You might follow the Gmail web app for iPhone example. It combines pull-to-refresh, a top control bar, and search (hidden by a button):
This arrangement allows search to compactly reside in the toolbar until it's required, completely skirting the confusion that might arise around a mechanism where you pull once for search and pull again for refresh.
I ...
6
This is a very broad topic. What's the context? Is this for a standalone app or a website? It depends a lot on the platform -- a touchscreen works quite differently than a trackball interface for instance, and a hi-resolution device will behave differently than a low-res one (and remember screen size varies widely, too!). Be sure to check the web - Jakob ...
6
Also check out Pencil for Firefox.. and the Android stencils over at the android-ui-utils open source project (blog post here).
I also hear Adobe Fireworks is very good for UI prototyping (apaprently with support for interactive mocks and 9-slice shapes) ... I haven't tried it myself though.
6
The presence of a submit button is a large part of what makes a form apparently a form; excluding it on Mobile may confuse users who prefer to touch buttons or are unaware of the Enter key to submit.
The submit button is also a lovely visual indicator of the end of a form; if I saw a form without a submit button on a web page I might assume the page didn't ...
6
There is nothing wrong with calling a tabbed page a "something"-Tab. It's a commonly accepted term and been in use for a long time. If however you are really bothered by it, you could use the word page, but that can be a little less informative as the page paradigm doesn't really fit with a tabbed GUI.
You might consider how you phrase your sentence. ...
6
Apple apps have a translucent progress display, but it’s an undocumented API. Here is an open source version I came across recently. I haven't tried it yet, but it may meet your needs. The picture shown below is an example given on the github site.
https://github.com/jdg/MBProgressHUD
6
I think Apple's guidelines suggest to minimize the number of those intro screens (preferably not have any), hence users have come to expect not many (if any) startup/setup screens. You should definitely let users get into the app as soon as possible.
From Apple's iOS UX guidelines:
Avoid asking people to supply setup information. Instead, follow these ...
5
Emphasize the button by
making it the only button
making it the biggest button
adding an animation to it (e.g squiggling, or bulging).
(With the latter, don't overdo. A set of different, small-scale animations, played infrequently, probably increases the cute factor. Also, you might remember thatthe user has already reviewed the app and disable the ...
5
This is similar to the problem of resorting paginated search results: if I'm on page 3 and I re-sort, should I move the user back to page 1? The answer is yes: since my context has changed, I no longer know where I am. Also, I'm not likely to say "hey, I'm on page 3 of results sorted by name, but I wonder what page 3 of results sorted by date looks like" - ...
5
Learn to use Photoshop - making graphics look good on the iPhone is no different than making graphics look good for anything else.
To conform to the standards for iPhone apps, read the Apple guidelines. It's all right there in the documentation you received when you join the app developer program.
5
Your decision should take into account the target platform and it's local norms. In order to best serve your users, you need to take into consideration all the other ways they use their devices, not just your app.
For example, on Android, all apps should have both horizontal and vertical layouts. As an app developer, you must consider that your software ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
