Great iPad Design Presentation by Bill Van Hecke

I just finished watching Bill Van Hecke's terrific presentation Designing Graceful, Gracious Interfaces for iPad.  Bill is the User Experience Lead at The Omni Group, maker of OmniFocus, OmniGraphSketcher, OmniGraffle and other great apps available on the iPhone, iPad and Mac.  Bill's presentation is a fascinating look at the design evolution of OmniFocus and includes lots of great advice for the beginner as well as the experienced developer or designer of iOS apps.  The Omni Group is doing a lot of innovative and exciting things on iOS, so it was a great treat to get a peak into Omni's design process.

Bill gave the original version of this presentation at Voices That Matter.  I was not able to attend the conference and I certainly appreciate the extra effort Bill went to in putting together his talk and slides and posting them on Vimeo.  I wish more speakers at great conferences like this would do the same.

Enjoy the show:

Designing Graceful, Gracious Interfaces for iPad from The Omni Group on Vimeo.

iPhone UI Design Inspiration

Well-Placed Pixels is a simple site that highlights well-designed Mac and iPhone software.  Although not restricted to iPhone apps, iPhone apps with great design like Foobi, The Typography Manual, Newsrack, Voices and Bills have all been featured recently and are well-represented.  

iPad UI Conventions

Fraser Speirs has posted a terrific set of iPad UI screenshots on Flickr annotated to highlight the UI conventions of the iPad.  Have a look here.

Beginning Devs: Start With iPhone or iPad?

The iPad opens up a whole new exciting world to developers and because it shares the iPhone OS with the iPhone, those who have been developing for the iPhone should have no problem transitioning to the iPad.  But what about the someone just starting out with the iPhone OS?  It will be interesting to see how things play out, but I suspect those just starting out will be far better served coding for the iPhone before they attempt an app on the iPad.

It all comes down to constraints.  When you are just learning the tools for developing for the iPhone, the constraints of an iPhone app are a big advantage.  Even with those constraints, it is possible to go overboard and allow feature creep to consume your iPhone app as Smashing Magazine pointed out here.   With the iPad, however, the temptation to fill that gorgeous 9.7" screen is quite likely to lead a number of developers to go nuts and throw everything but the kitchen sink into their app.  I expect that successful iPad apps will take a different approach, flattening out the view hierarchy of existing iPhone apps and taking advantage of the added screen real estate to give users more, and more richly presented, information than is possible on the iPhone.

Read more:

Smashing Magazine Article

Removing Features by Lukas Mathis

MathTime Update With New UI Is Here!

We are pleased to announce an all new version of MathTime is now available on the iTunes App Store.  The latest version features an all new colorful UI and an "About" tab that lets users follow Squibner on this site, Twitter and Facebook.  We hope you like it.  Keep an eye out for more great apps later from Squibner later this year.

MathTime v1.1 Sneak Peek

Two days ago I submitted MathTime version 1.1 to Apple for review.  I'm really excited to get users' reaction to the enhancements that I've made to the UI.  The update also includes links to Squibner's follow-up MathTime EX app and ways to follow the apps that we have planned for 2010 in a new "About" tab.

Mike Rundle on Crafting Subtle & Realistic UIs

If you aren't reading Mike Rundle's blog on Flyosity.com, you should.  Once again, Mike delivers with a great piece about user interface design.  Mike's advice?  Think in 3D:

If you're trying to design a realistic-looking user interface element then you have to think about what that object would look like in the real world. What's the easiest way to do that?Look at it from the side. What would a button look like if you viewed it from the side of your monitor?

Check out the rest of the article, including great examples of rendering 3D UIs on a 2D screen, here.

Smashing Mag On iPhone App Design Mistakes

Smashing Magazine has a nice piece that breaks down iPhone app design mistakes that many developers are prone to make.  The number one mistake?  Forgetting your customer and the context in which your customer will use your app.  Check out the article here.

Cheap and Easy Homemade App Sketchbook

Don't want to spring for one of those fancy app sketchbooks you've seen?  There's no doubt that a dedicated app sketchbook is a great way to prototype your next app, but if you'd rather save a little coin, try the homemade version.

Step 1: Go to Incompetech.  There you can fill out an online form to specify any kind of graph paper you can imagine that will be generated as a PDF that you can print.  I suggest using light grey lines and a relatively small grid with minimal margins.

Step 2: Go to UI Stencils and download a free PDF of the outline of an iPhone.  Note that this PDF is designed to work with their great iPhone stencil ($17.95), which I highly recommend, so it is a little bigger than an actual iPhone.  If you want something the same size as an iPhone, it shouldn't be too hard to mock up in your favorite drawing application.

Step 3: Print the graph paper, put it back in the printer and then print the iPhone outline on top of the graph paper and voila! instant iPhone sketchpad.  Here's what mine looks like:

MockApp: Free iPhone App UI Design