Month: September 2013

App development is more than just writing code – design is just as important. Here’s a collection of links to some recent articles on mobile design, most of which date from this year (mobile’s such a moving target that design articles on the topic tend to date rather quickly). Enjoy!

• An Insider’s View of Mobile-First Design: Don’t Make These Mistakes – Luke Wroblewski, CEO and co-founder of Input Factory, and creator of the iOS app Polar, reminds us that the tried-and-true rules of design for the desktop don’t necessarily apply to mobile.
• Smashing Magazine’s collection of guidelines for mobile development – A couple dozen of their articles on mobile design. Most concern themselves with mobile web app development, but a lot of that is just as applicable to native mobile apps as well.
• Designing a Mobile App? Don’t Make These 10 Mistakes – Ryan Matzner, lead strategist as Fueled, reminds us to “think through what your users are trying to achieve and let that inform your designs”.
• 6 Things You Should Do When Designing for Mobile – Moment’s John Payne talks with Forbes’ Diane Mehta about taking a clinical app running on feature phones and turning it into a commercial app for smartphones and the lessons learned along the way.
• Tale of a Top-10 App, Part 1: Idea and Design covers the idea and design behind Jeremy Olson’s translation app, Languages. Also worth reading is the follow-up article: Tale of a Top-10 App, Part 2: Marketing and Launch.

• 11 Tips for Developing a Mobile App That Users Will Love – Scott Gerber talks about practices for developing mobile apps that you, the mobile app developer and designer, shouldn’t ignore.
• 90% of Mobile Apps Have Inadequate Help – Michael Mace, Mobile Strategist at UserTesting.com, brings up a problem that a lot of app developers seem to have ignored: help accessible on every screen, that’s context-sensitive and searchable.
• Want a Better Mobile App? Use Wireframing and Flowcharts – I’ve used some apps that are visually beautiful, but workflow-wise, pretty scrambled. here’s a quick reminder that you can’t ignore the basics.
• Use of Flat Design in Mobile App Interfaces, Best Examples – The “flattening” of mobile UIs, what with Windows Phone, Android, and now iOS, is in full swing. If you’re looking for inspiration for the UI for your next app, these examples are great places to start.
• Designing for Mobile: Responsive Design vs. Mobilized Sites vs. Mobile App – A basic consideration when starting out: which should you go with?
• How to Design a Mobile App – Good guidelines for mobile app designers, starting with conception all the way to follow-up.
• 5 Pillars of Successful Mobile Design – General principles you should embrace.
• 7 Usability Guidelines for Websites on Mobile Devices – Equally applicable to native apps.
• Mobile Website Design: 30 Pro Tips – Things to think about when designing your app.

Seen at BarCamp Tampa. The obvious joke is that third prize is two Nexus 7s.

Remember when they ruled the world and a lot of quiet evenings at home?

Click the photo to see it at full size.

What’s New in Objective-C and Foundation in iOS 7

The latest post on Ray Wenderlich’s ever-so-useful iOS development site at the time of this writing is What’s New in Objective-C and Foundation in iOS 7, which is the Reader’s Digest version of a chapter from their new iOS 7 by Tutorials book. It gives you a quick look at the following new goodies:

• Modules: “We’re all guilty of being lazy developers though, and nobody has time to tune their PCH [pre-compiled headers] file for each project they work on. That’s why modules were developed as a feature of LLVM.” For more about modules, see this video and these slides from the 2012 LLVM Developers’ Meeting.
• instancetype: It’s the return type that replaces id (and the problems that come with it) in most cases.
• NSArray::firstObject: Arrays have a lastObject method, and finally, there’s a firstObject method, which gets around the error you get when you try to access element 0 of an empty array.
• Built-in Base64 encoding methods: Now you don’t have to go look for a third-party library or roll your own.
• NSTimer tolerances: Lets you specify how late a timer can fire after its scheduled time.
• The NSProgress class: “In essence, NSProgress aims to deliver progress reporting throughout Objective-C code, neatly separating the progress of individual components. For example, if you perform a few different tasks on some data, then each task can monitor its own progress and report back to its parent task.”

NSBrief

NSBrief bills itself as “A brief Podcast for Cocoa Developers, discussing interesting developer-y topics” with 108 podcasts under its belt dating back to October 2010.

Among their recent podcasts are:

• 108: Phil Letourneau and Olivier Charavel talk about the Human Interface Guidelines for iOS and Mac OS X and what the document does for developers.
• 107: Michele Titolo talks web APIs, what to do when writing apps for them, and her work to encourage women in technology.
• 106: Kirk van Gorkom on his experiences in consulting and what he thinks is the future of indie consulting.
• 105: Pete Hodgson talks about the principles and practices of agile developers, and using his automated iOS UI testing tool, Frank.
• 104: Jean McDonald, a Partner at Smile on My Mac and the Founder of The App Camp for Girls, an initiative to help introduce girls to the dirty work of making iOS apps.
• 103: iOSDevCamp 2013 – a chat with organizer Dom Sagalla and developers at the dev camp.

My Appventure

My Appventure is Scotty Ruth’s blog chronicling the highs and lows of his experiences developing iOS apps. Lately, his blog has evolved into a podcast series. Here are his latest podcasts:

• 017: Mobile Design Tools – “I share a bit about my personal app design workflow, and I also review 3 great tools that can help you preview designs on your device in real time.”
• 016: Photo Editing with Aviary – “In this interview we discuss the Aviary SDK which enables developers to quickly add powerful photo editing features into their apps.”
• 015: Dave Klein: The Joys of CocoaConf – Today’s guest is Dave Klein, the lead organizer behind the oh-so nice CocoaConf conferences for iOS and Mac developers. If you’re looking for a high-quality conference closer to home, then you need to check out these events.  CocoaConf travels the country and hosts regional conferences, making it much more affordable for Indie developers. CocoaConf focuses on quality and community, listen in to find out why I enjoy their events so much.”
• 014: Grab Bag: Clarity, App Annie, and More – “On today’s show I talk about how I use a service called Clarity to GIVE and GET professional advice over the phone.  I also provide a quick update on Quotely.”
• 013: Xavier Veyrat: Cooking Up Apps with AppCooker – “Today’s guest is Xavier Veyrat, designer of AppCooker, an amazing tool to manage all of the pre-production work that goes into your app.  Cook up interactive prototypes, icons, keywords, and even pricing models.  If companies like Disney, EA and even Apple are using AppCooker to make their apps, then yeah… you might want to check this thing out!”
• 012: Jonathan Penn: UI Automation Jedi Master – “Today’s guest is Jonathan Penn, an Indie app developer, tech-talker, author and contract consultant.  Jonathan has become an authority figure on the subject of UI automation and testing for iOS and he recently authored a book on the subject.  Whether you’re working on an app idea, or you do consulting to pay the bills, there’s something for you to glean from Jonathan’s experiences on today’s lighthearted interview.”

Now that I’m done installing all 1713 floppies of Windows 8, it’s time to install this game…