Day Two of Four - How to Create an iPhone App

User Experience – understanding device/client user experience and design

The most important thing to do here is simply to read Apple’s HIG (Human Interface Guidelines’) before you begin to ensure you are within their recommended framework.

Don’t feel limited with the HIG, as it’s meant as purely a guide, but keep it front of mind.

Remember that for travel apps, the average user interacts for three minutes maximum, so design actions into small flows for fastest response time.

It is also worth looking at caching in the background of the app, primarily to allow a faster UI.

Other elements to consider:

Iterative and collaborative design to incorporate consumer feedback or a new and creative way to accomplish something you hadn’t initially had in scope.

Collaboration with your development team is important to avoid rejections based on inconsistency.

Remember the mobile screen is much smaller and so you need to adjust your design to accommodate that and not just “squish” your design into the screen.

Consumers, especially Apple users, are used to being empowered and are quick to give feedback. This will help guide you and better understand what they want from your app.

Remember that sometimes you are not your target market, so you need to look at your app on the device in the environment that your users will experience it.

A good – although not immediately obvious – trick is to run through a terminal.

This will mirror users rushing to catch a flight, using GPS to find their hotel from their rental car.

Be thorough on use cases to help capture what is needed in design and UI and assume what the traveler will need or want next so you can make it as intuitive as possible.

User Experience

The next stage is to examine and understand the device/client user experience and design.

One of the most important things to do here is simply to read Apple’s HIG (Human Interface Guidelines’) before you begin to ensure you are within their recommended framework.

Don’t feel limited with the HIG, as it’s meant as purely a guide, but keep it front of mind.

Remember that for travel apps, the average user interacts for three minutes maximum, so design actions into small flows for fastest response time.

It is also worth looking at caching in the background of the app, primarily to allow a faster UI.

Other elements to consider:

Iterative and collaborative design to incorporate consumer feedback or a new and creative way to accomplish something you hadn’t initially had in scope.
Collaboration with your development team is important to avoid rejections based on inconsistency.
Remember the mobile screen is much smaller and so you need to adjust your design to accommodate that and not just “squish” your design into the screen.
Consumers, especially Apple users, are used to being empowered and are quick to give feedback. This will help guide you and better understand what they want from your app.

Remember that sometimes you are not your target market, so you need to look at your app on the device in the environment that your users will experience it.

A good – although not immediately obvious – trick is to run through a terminal, for example. This will help recreate the experience users might have rushing to catch a flight.

Another is to use the GPS systems from a rental car, as a user might as they look for a hotel.

Be thorough on use cases to help capture what is needed in design and UI and assume what the traveler will need or want next so you can make it as intuitive as possible.

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.