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"In her book Designing the iPhone User Experience, Suzanne Ginsburg takes a fresh look at cutting-edge, user-centered design from the perspective of designing mobile user experiences for the iPhone. Her book brings together everything you need to know to design great products for mobile contexts."
—Pabini Gabriel-Petit, UX Strategy & Design Consultant and Publisher and Editor in Chief of UXmatters
“It’s about time! Suzanne Ginsburg takes the best of User-Centered Design (UCD) principles and tweaks them with a dash of mobile and a lot of hints about what it means to implement the Apple Human Interface Guidelines for iPhone. Your idea for an iPhone app has much better chances of being accepted by iPhone owners (and by the iTunes watchdogs guarding entry to the App Store) if you follow even half of the suggestions in this book.”
—Nancy Frishberg, Ph.D., User Experience Strategist and past Chair of BayCHI
Given the fiercely competitive state of the iPhone app landscape, it has become increasingly challenging for app designers and developers to differentiate their apps. The days are long gone when it was possible to crank out an app over the weekend and refine it after receiving a few not so flattering user reviews. Users now have choices -- lots of them. If your app is difficult to use or doesn’t meet their needs, finding another one is just a tap away.
To illustrate, consider the ever-growing field of Twitter clients. There are hundreds of variations in the App Store but only a handful stand out from the pack (such as Tweetie or Twitterific). For most apps, it boils down to one thing: the user experience. The same is true for countless other categories within the App Store; well-designed apps are more likely to attract and retain users. Of course there are other critical aspects of iPhone app development: the coding, the marketing, the customer support. All of the elements must come together.
Designing the iPhone User Experience will help you tackle the user experience part of the iPhone challenge. Three key themes will be reinforced throughout the book: Know thy user, the Design Lifecycle, and Attention to Detail:
- Know Thy User
Millions of people depend on iPhone apps to get them to work, find their next meal, and stay in touch with family and friends. Professionals of all kinds also rely on iPhone apps: doctors look up drug interactions; photographers fine-tune lighting; cyclists find the best routes. To truly understand how your apps can fit into their lives, designers and developers must learn how users do things today, what’s important to them, and what needs have not been met. Part II, Introduction to User Research, will introduce a variety of user research methods. - The Design Lifecycle
Award-winning designs rarely happen overnight; they usually only occur after many rigorous design cycles. To illustrate this point, consider USA TODAY's iPhone application, which went through at least seven iterations for the article view in their app. These kinds of iterations should happen before you launch your app, since it will save valuable time and money, not to mention the headaches a bad design could create for your user. More importantly, you may only have one chance to impress your users -- you do not want to sell them half-baked ideas. Part III, Developing your App Concept, will explain how to iteratively design and test your app concepts. - Attention to Detail
Most professionals know that attention to detail is important, but hundreds of apps fail to incorporate even the most basic design principles. This lack of attention is not merely an aesthetic issue (which is important) it also affects the way apps function. For example, a news article without proper alignment will be difficult to read, and a poorly rendered icon will be challenging to interpret. Apps with a razor sharp attention to detail will stand out because their apps will look good and perform well. Part IV, Refining your App Concept, will show you how to make to your app shine, from visual design and branding to accessibility and localization.
Mastering these three areas will help set your app apart from the crowd. You may not have an award-winning app over night. But knowing your users, iterative design, and attention to detail are important first steps.
From the Back Cover
"In her book Designing the iPhone User Experience, Suzanne Ginsburg takes a fresh look at cutting-edge, user-centered design from the perspective of designing mobile user experiences for the iPhone. Her book brings together everything you need to know to design great products for mobile contexts."
–Pabini Gabriel-Petit, UX Strategy & Design Consultant and Publisher and Editor in Chief of UXmatters
“It’s about time! Suzanne Ginsburg takes the best of User-Centered Design (UCD) principles and tweaks them with a dash of mobile and a lot of hints about what it means to implement the Apple Human Interface Guidelines for iPhone. Your idea for an iPhone app has much better chances of being accepted by iPhone owners (and by the iTunes watchdogs guarding entry to the App Store) if you follow even half of the suggestions in this book.”
–Nancy Frishberg, Ph.D., User Experience Strategist and past Chair of BayCHI
To illustrate, consider the ever-growing field of Twitter clients. There are hundreds of variations in the App Store but only a handful stand out from the pack (such as Tweetie or Twitterific). For most apps, it boils down to one thing: the user experience. The same is true for countless other categories within the App Store; well-designed apps are more likely to attract and retain users. Of course there are other critical aspects of iPhone app development: the coding, the marketing, the customer support. All of the elements must come together.
Designing the iPhone User Experience will help you tackle the user experience part of the iPhone challenge. Three key themes will be reinforced throughout the book: Know thy user, the Design Lifecycle, and Attention to Detail:
- Know Thy User
Millions of people depend on iPhone apps to get them to work, find their next meal, and stay in touch with family and friends. Professionals of all kinds also rely on iPhone apps: doctors look up drug interactions; photographers fine-tune lighting; cyclists find the best routes. To truly understand how your apps can fit into their lives, designers and developers must learn how users do things today, what’s important to them, and what needs have not been met. Part II, Introduction to User Research, will introduce a variety of user research methods. - The Design Lifecycle
Award-winning designs rarely happen overnight; they usually only occur after many rigorous design cycles. To illustrate this point, consider USA TODAY's iPhone application, which went through at least seven iterations for the article view in their app. These kinds of iterations should happen before you launch your app, since it will save valuable time and money, not to mention the headaches a bad design could create for your user. More importantly, you may only have one chance to impress your users -- you do not want to sell them half-baked ideas. Part III, Developing your App Concept, will explain how to iteratively design and test your app concepts. - Attention to Detail
Most professionals know that attention to detail is important, but hundreds of apps fail to incorporate even the most basic design principles. This lack of attention is not merely an aesthetic issue (which is important) it also affects the way apps function. For example, a news article without proper alignment will be difficult to read, and a poorly rendered icon will be challenging to interpret. Apps with a razor sharp attention to detail will stand out because their apps will look good and perform well. Part IV, Refining your App Concept, will show you how to make to your app shine, from visual design and branding to accessibility and localization.
Mastering these three areas will help set your app apart from the crowd. You may not have an award-winning app over night. But knowing your users, iterative design, and attention to detail are important first steps.
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For those already familiar with user experience design, Suzanne's discussion of the device capabilities, navigation and interface elements/interplay is equally as valuable. Suzanne's book actually changed the way I approached my soon-to-be-released iPhone App DrivingBuddy. You could spend hours looking for examples of well-designed mobile apps and diagnosing why exactly they are great, or you could just read Suzanne's book :)
This book is clearly written for a designerly audience, but also lays the groundwork for user experience newbies. I highly recommend this book to anyone tackling the difficult task of designing for mobile.
The fact is, there's a huge difference between designing the right thing and designing the thing right. And Suzanne Ginsburg hits the nail on the head as she expertly conveys what's involved in designing for the iPhone, or for any mobile device / app for that matter. She manages to demystify the front end of the design process, the part that most people don't know they don't know.
As the user experience migrates from being browser-centric to being app-centric, it becomes increasingly important for anybody interested in developing such apps -- clever entrepreneurs and enterprise product managers alike -- to understand the fundamentals of good design, the process steps, key distinctions, and best practices.
Designing the iPhone User Experience walks the talk by connecting what some mistakenly think of as abstract theory to irrefutable value of the practice outlined in the case studies she has included.
What I love about this book is:
- How Part 1 orients the reader to the capabilities of the iPhone from the point of view of somebody who might want to take advantage of them; and it does so in a way that inspires and challenges the reader to imagine the possibilities.
- The way Part II demystifies the aspects of the design process to increase the likelihood that you're going to design the right thing. That is to say, by presenting the essentials of user research and evaluating the competition, the author reminds us that there are ways to dramatically reduce the chances the reader (as designer) developer will go awry early on or that the investment will fall flat.
- The focus of Part III to help the reader formalize his or her approach to prototyping concepts for the iPhone app. This is usually where people start, so it's helpful for the reader to understand that knowing what the iPhone is capable of, in concert with doing a bit of up-front research (user and competitive) can save a lot of time, effort, and money. If the book has a weakness, it is that the author presupposes the reader has what I might, for lack of a better term, call the business case. But, alas, that is clearly beyond the scope of this work.
The later half of the book offers the reader design meat and potatoes; well, at least as they relate to iPhone app development. What book on designing user experiences would be complete without a healthy discussion of usability testing, Iterative design refinements, user interface design core concepts, and vis-dev (visual development)?
Highly recommended.
Much of Ginsburg's insights apply equally well to spaces beyond the iPhone as they do to this one device. Android, iPad, and web app designers alike will find a ton of value here.
The case studies are thoughtful and illustrative - not filler.
I have consumed more than my share of design books over the years. "Designing..." is one of the few that will help me both create a better product and a better process.
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