With so many applications coming out every week on the iPhone, users
have become accustomed to a certain style and way of application
functionality on the device.
Toby Boudreaux, is writing a book all
about iPhone application development, which is being published by
O’Reilly. He spoke at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Ca., about
iPhone anti patterns.
An anti-pattern, according to Boudreaux, is a design pattern that
causes at least as many problems as it solves, despite better options
existing.
Here’s a list of main ones to avoid, according to Toby:
Billboards:
Splash screens are evil, even when they are pretty. Nobody wants to
see your logo at the beginning of launching your application. Instead,
the user should be able to use your app immediately. Instead, try
showing the “progressive reveal,” which means a structured screen minus
the data it is fetching, to give the impression your application is
fetching and loading data.
Sleight of Hand:
Consider muscle memory a habit. Always test
your applications by overlaying screens and seeing where the users
fingers will end up. Always test for potential accidents, for example,
Facebook has this back button which ends up being right on top of the
logoff button – doesn’t work very well if the user is pounding away on
the buttons in order to get to the beginning of the application.
App as an OS:
iPhone apps should be specialized, optimized, and
be able to interoperate. Stay away from built in browsers. Make use
of what Apple provides you, such as the Safari broswer, Maps, Mail and
SMS.
Bullhorns:
Don’t use Apple’s standard bullhorns. They are jarring. Keep your notifications passive.
Bouncer:
Don’t
be a bouncer and not let users into your application if they aren’t
registered. Allow users to register within your application.
On phone shaking:
Basically, don’t make me shake my phone, don’t make me share my location. LET me chose to do these things if I want to.
Memory Lapse:
Flushing
data between application sessions is very frustrating – save data in
the application so I don’t have to reload things when I exit.
Gesture Hijacking:
Don’t make your users learn new gestures just
to use your application. Stick to familiar ones. If you make users
learn new touch patterns, you inject a new learning curve which the
user may not want to learn.
Spin Zone:
Yes, a nifty feature of the iPhone is the ability to
rotate the screen if necessary. Don’t implement this functionality
unless your support rotation fully. Match the user expectation for the
type of application you’ve built. Basically, don’t add rotation in
just because you can.
Sound-off:
Here’s a little secret, the iPhone is simply an iPod
with a phone built in. Do not hijack the audio output for exclusive
use. Let the user have an option whether they want to hear your audio,
or the audio they are playing from their iPod. Blending audio is easy.
In the end, plenty of anti-patterns are emerging. You can
differentiate your application but do not differentiate at the expense
of consistency. And always remember, you can compete in the App store,
but you must cooperate on the device.
(image source: 4.bp.blogspot.com)
