Customer Reviews

iPhone User Interface Design Projects

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Love it or loathe it, the iPhone and iPod touch have been a stunning success, largely due to the App Store -- over 100,000 apps at current count. It is, by all accounts, the largest gold rush to invade the application development scene since ... well, ever. Apps that pay attention to design and usability stand out from the rest of the detritus, and quickly become a success.

"iPhone User Interface Design Projects" devotes a single chapter to each of ten developers/designers who've stood out from the crowd. They talk us through their thought processes and workflows, their failures and ultimate successes. You can teach someone to write code, but can you teach something as subjective as interface design? Apple's "Human Interface Guidelines" document goes some way to achieving this goal, explaining what users expect from an iPhone app's interface, and how the various controls behave and interact. The HIG is an essential reference and fits the bill perfectly for most use cases, but doesn't offer insights into more creative interfaces. "iPhone User Interface Design Projects" augments the HIG by bringing the authors' experiences into the discussion. They explain what worked and what didn't - there's nothing like learning from other people's mistakes.

A common thread throughout the book is that design and usability is an iterative process - very rarely will your first design concept reach the App Store. Though the individual authors refer to it differently - wireframing, prototyping, mock-ups, etc. - you get a sense for the importance of knowing what the interface will look like and how it will behave before committing it to code. The book's technical reviewer, Joachim Bondo, contributes a chapter on the design of a prospective Google news reader. Refreshing in presentation, this isn't a post-development retrospective. As he explains in the chapter's introduction, he has a few ideas in his head, and he fleshes the designs out as your read along. You don't get to see the final interface, but that's not the point. What you do get is insight into his design decisions. Bret Victor presented the excellent "Prototyping iPhone User Interfaces" at WWDC '09, and Bondo's narrative is very similar in content.

Though I enjoyed (almost) all ten contributions, Chapter 7, for me, was the highlight of the book. Chris Parrish and Brad Ellis cover - in great detail - often overlooked concepts of user context and application flow, and the undeniable value of prototyping and specifications. Parrish and Ellis rightly won an Apple Design Award at WWDC '09 for "Postage", a visual and highly intuitive postcard creator, and they approach their chapter with similar attention to detail.

The odd-one-out is Ju'rgen Siebert's detailed discussion of typefaces, the implications of their usage on small-scale devices such as the iPhone, and a walkthrough of his "FontShuffle" app. As informative as the history and anatomy of typefaces was for me, I didn't see how it specifically related to the very restricted set of fonts on the iPhone. Siebert even goes so far as to mock up a Contacts screen with a font that isn't available on the device, suggesting that the screen's readability has improved as a result. I don't disagree; however, the iPhone's fonts are baked-in, and unless you want to implement a custom glyph rendering routine, it's a pointless argument on a closed device. This chapter represents a missed opportunity, in my opinion. I was initially looking forward to reading about the author's choice of available fonts under different scenarios, but was ultimately let down.

Where the book falls short is in its use of black and white screeenshots throughout. We're talking about the design of applications which are displayed on a full colour device. Colour clearly plays a very large part in the design of any user interface, so cheaping out with black and white screenshots was a mistake. What's even more unforgivable is that the downloadable eBook (which isn't free) doesn't have full colour plates! Come on, Apress! I think given the context of the book, we'd be prepared to pay a bit more for colour.

Who's this book for? Everyone who develops or designs for iPhone, novice to expert alike. Even if you've had success on the App Store, I guarantee there's something in here for you.

This book is a collection of "useful" tips for designing iPhone User Interfaces, but it comes up way short. This is just a random number of topics that are not tied together at all. There are a few Apress books that are good, but this is by far one of the worst ones I have read. I own about 10 Apress iPhone books, and this one probably ranks last. The chapters are not descriptive and reading through the book really did not give me any concrete insight. I really have no idea what audience this book was meant for, if any at all. This book is not worth the price. Save your money and your time, there are many better books out there.

I bought this book thinking it was a interface design reference book. This is not an interface design reference book. This book shows how different developers and designers created their iPhone application. Each chapter is from a different company or developer. So basically you can read the book in any order that you want to. I read it chapter by chapter just to be organized. I read the entire book except chapter 9. Chapter 9 goes into details about fonts.

Having said that, I think every NEW developer on the iPhone should read this book. The experience of these developers is written down in the pages of this book. They speak about what worked, what didn't work and what they did in each case to make it work or fail. This will save you trial and error. There are a couple of chapters that stand out from the rest. I really liked the last chapter on the snow reports application.

One last thing to mention, if you are going to start developing on the iPhone, this should be your second book. First pick up a book on programming on the iPhone or Objective-C on the iPhone. This book will be more towards "polishing" your application and how to get it ready for the app store.

Apple's iPhone SDK/Cocoa Touch framework provides some very elegant UI widgets out of the box. It's a beautiful thing when you design your app's interface, and it comes great-looking already. However, us programmers tend to be lacking skills in interactive design and awesome usability. This book comes in for the rescue.

Authors of this book have been to the trenches, and they wrote their own experiences and their thought processes here in their chapters. It's amazing how a little app has so much design decisions involved.
Chapter 1 - How and why design apps that have similar look and feel like the default built-in Apple apps, and some tips on whether to tap or not, and usability testing.
Chapter 2 - The author takes on the Google news reader, and improves the navigation and re-structured his app design to be more efficient.
Chapter 3 - The author talks about the differences between web and native apps, and some best practices and tricks
Chapter 4 - The author shows how the design evolved along with design decisions and adjustments
Chapter 5 - This is my favorite chapter. The author discuss in depth of how to design UI interactions with iPhone's unique size and features. The discussion on rotations is especially thought-provoking!
Chapter 6 - This chapter shows that even designing a very simple and basic app, it still takes consideration on usability and appropriate user interactions.
Chapter 7 - This chapter is great in showing you many ways to tune your app details into great enhancements to your apps. Little details you would otherwise take for granted or ignored.
Chapter 8 - As a programmer, I'm happy to see some codes behind the app. This chapter shows you how to build a simple but interesting game, with the focus of how to receive user interactions with minimal efforts. Codes are provided so it's a great read!
Chapter 9 - The author talks about different font styles and typefaces.
Chapter 10 - The author shows us many tips and tricks during the entire app development life cycle.

Overall, this book shows us how iPhone apps are developed from a different angle. Many great tips/tricks and real-world experiences. It's a great read w/ about 240 pages. Any iPhone programmer would learn a thing or two from this book. My only complain is that some chapters are too short. Hopefully 2nd edition of this book can include additional iPhone app designers/developers :)

I just couldn't read some chapters... The one about TypeFaces, what is that?? I had absolutely no will to know that kind of info, I wanted to know about the project... Although, some are really good. I loved the last one ("Snow Reports") and the first ones. The ideal thing is to make a veridic report about everything you dealt when developing your app.

I liked it, but it's kind of pricey. $15 bucks would already be well paid.

I didn't like this book. Buyer's remorse comes to mind. I'm deep into an iPhone design project for a productivity app. I was expecting expert advise and perspectives that were different from what's available in other books, Apple and the internet. What I got instead was a series of unenlightening essays written by multiple authors. I'm unable to recommend this book to any serious iPhone design or development practitioner. However, it does address gaming user interfaces, if that's your thing.