Iphone App Design Trends
For the past two years, the elegant iPhone has housed some of the most poorly designed applications you could imagine. The hype surrounding
iPhone has prompted many designers across the globe to try their skills with the new mobile medium. The result are literally thousands of various iPhone-applications that are often hardly usable and counter-intuitive. However, some designers invest a lot of time and efforts into creating usable and original user interfaces (yes, there are usable and creative UIs).
This article explores the ways in which designers use graphical elements and screen interactions to create iPhone-applications that are easy on the eyes and mind. The aim of this article is to display common trends and design approaches in iPhone app design – please notice that they are not necessarily optimal ones from the design or usability point of view.
1. Mirroring Native iPhone UI Elements
“Tell them what you’re gonna tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.” Creating a whole new OS within your app can be fun, but when you’re dealing with the mobile medium, people just want to get stuff done. Getting stuff done means that the designer has to get into the flow of the OS and create an app that requires zero explanation for the end user to operate. Mirroring the layout and UI elements that the user is already familiar with saves time and energy. So it seems quite convenient to use this approach when designing iPhone-applications.
Facebook (iTunes Link)
In the new Facebook 3.0, you’ll find a grid layout that users can swipe left and right to access more categories. Because it mirrors Apple’s native UI, users do not have to “learn” how to use it all over again. A similar approach exists in Web design: users expect to see a logo in the top left, navigation along the top, etc. Facebook has taken this concept mobile, using large buttons that are easily distinguishable and tap-able.
Where (iTunes link)
Where has a similar concept, allowing users to swipe left and right to access more data.
2. Simplifying The Interface
Simplifying user interfaces may sound like a mechanical task, but what lies beneath the surface of user interface design? The answer is simple: users. And what do users want? What makes them all warm and fuzzy? How do you deliver what they want so that they don’t even notice how they are consuming information?
Facebook’s first release did a great job of fitting a lot of core functionality into a small space. The problem, of course, is in laying out all that data and creating an intuitive interface. Compare 3.0 with the first release, and you’ll see how they took a “springboard” approach to streamlining the interface, keeping it intuitive and maintaining functionality.
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3. Hardware-ish Look
Many utilities are breaking out of the conventional iPhone UI to take advantage of the device’s unique ability to respond to finger gestures. Many of these have hardware-ish interfaces that users are familiar with but come with perpetually shiny exteriors and clicks and pops that maintain their newness from the first to one-thousandth click. Next up, though: an app that gets dirtier the more you play with it.
Convertbot (iTunes link)
Convertbot reminds us of the proportion wheel we all used in grade school, except it’s more distinctive, original and creative.
Little Snapper (iTunes Link)
Little Snapper mimics the wheel that you turn on a typical digital SLR
iHandy Level (iTunes Link)
iHandy Level simulates the look and functionality of a real, well-used leveler.
4. Rich, Padded And Pretty List Views
You know that you are a geek designer when you get excited about the latest trends in list view design. And what do people do when they encounter a list view? Of course, they skim. And how do we make it easier for people to decide what interests them? That’s right: more visual cues!
Essentially, users are asking for a snapshot of what’s next, and then decide if they want more information. One way to do this is with big pretty buttons. Large and in charge, elegantly designed big buttons give the user a lot of information through their color, icons and typography.
Delivery Status Touch (iTunes Link)
Check out how Delivery Status uses appropriate colors on its big buttons to identify each brand. And it uses typography well to establish a hierarchy of information.
Be Happy Now (iTunes Link)
Be Happy Now’s big buttons convey the “be happy” mantra through a mellow color scheme and light, calm and clear typeface.
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5. Layered Interface
Several applications take advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities by layering the interface and making some elements stationary and others vertically or horizontally scrollable. This approach has several benefits:
- It reduces the number of traditional navigation elements that are necessary (i.e. fewer buttons help to avoid a cluttered interface).
- It gives users a faster route to the information they want.
- More screen space is available for information.
Tweetie (iTunes Link)
Tweetie uses layers to organize information specific to each of your Twitter friends. Just look at all of the information packed into this one screen!
6. Icons For The List View
Icons aren’t just for springboard-loving folks. On small screens, icons can give a huge boost to an application’s usability and navigation. Let’s now take a look at some examples of applications that use icons to their advantage.
iStudiez (iTunes Link)
This application uses various educational metaphors as icons to clearly communicate the purpose of the application. Excellent visual cues tell the student what’s happening today at a glance.
Top Floor (iTunes Link)
Top Floor uses simple and easily recognizable icons to quickly guide users to their category of choice.
New York Times
Isn’t it great when applications just let you do whatever you want to do? For an app with as much information as the New York Times’, users are bound to have their favorite sections. Well, guess what? The New York Times cares: it lets you customize the tab bar’s navigation to include only your favorite sections of the paper. Drag an icon down the tab bar and you are set. The downside of the design is, of course, its lack of visual appeal.
7. Illustrations in use
Applications that rely on graphics not found in the standard user interfaces are increasing in popularity, as developers try to set their apps apart from the crowd. Sometimes it works, but often it doesn’t. The more unconventional a design is, the more likely it is to have usability problems. Please always conduct usability testing before releasing a product with a “creative” user interface.
Magnetic Personalities (iTunes link)
An excellent example of how buttons don’t have to look like standard buttons.
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8. Using Gestures
Classic linear navigation may look boring: a button that links to other buttons, which leads you to a list of something, which leads you to such-and-such an interaction. Not really spectacular. The possibilities for creative interaction in utility apps are huge and largely untapped (no pun intended).
Mover (iTunes link)
Mover exemplifies how to use gestures for sharing contacts, photos and bookmarks. Open two devices, and flick the shared files from one handset to the other.
(http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/09/iphone-app-design-trends/)
