UX Designer

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1413137690549{padding-top: 20px !important;}”]

The Problem

A UX Designer posted a usability question on a Stackoverflow forum:

“I’m working on a iPad project with a linear process. At the moment I have a ‘linked’ style navigation sat at the top [right of the screen] in the ‘navigation bar’. I’ve been doing some early test and the verdict is inconclusive. Any Ideas for an alliterative navigation?”

When I first saw the mockup (see at right) a Windows Installaton Wizard came to my mind. A Wizard is a user interface type that presents a user with a sequence of dialog boxes that lead the user through a series of well-defined steps (Wikipedia).[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”950″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1492110082431{padding-top: 20px !important;}”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1492109996163{padding-top: 20px !important;}”]

The Play Around

As the project was about the iPad, I thought it would be interesting to do some research on Wizards in Apple’s iOS Human Interface Guidelines, a must-read manual that every user interface designer should download and read carefully before starting a UX project for iPad or iPhone.

To be honest I couldn’t find any Wizards or any similar user interface in the manual. But I did found some very interesting usability guidelines that I would like to share with you:

 

“To sum up: Apple wants the user to play with the app but not with the settings.”

 

However this doesn’t mean that settings shouldn’t be used at all. In fact, at Apple they state that you can “decrease the need for settings when you design your app the way most of your users expect”. Find below how a Wizard would look like in a “Real State” iOS app mockup that I did as a sample. [/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”939″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1412524889856{padding: 20px !important;}” img_link_large=”yes”][vc_column_text]As you can tell, a Wizard will add a new hassle to the list of hassles that we already have:

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1412667089799{padding-top: 20px !important;}”]

The Workaround

If there is no need for so many settings, how can we defocus settings when building an app ? Again, Apple’s HCI Guidelines to the rescue:

Extra guideline of my own:

 

“The mockup I pasted below shows an iOS app user journey that follows the Human Computer Interface Guidelines from Apple.”

 

  1. App Store: User taps install button and app starts installing.
  2. Real State App: User launches the app and immediatly they can take a look at some apartments.
  3. Settings: User can always go back to settings and change the app setup if needed.

[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”938″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center” css=”.vc_custom_1412523201642{padding: 20px !important;}” img_link_large=”yes”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *