there are several things that I noticed while studying the IOS design guide lines. I also looked at material design by google, but in this post, I will focus on the IOS interface.
— By default, all bar buttons are borderless.
It is interesting to see all the guide lines that apple suggested, one of them was
normally, if you are a user, you don’t pay a lot of attention to design, you pay more attention to whether it functions well, and is it simple enough to use it. I was one of them, and I realized even though without a borderline, it can also distinguish between bar button by color. Also, the texture of the bar button(if you have one,) can make content distinguishable with contents too.
–Today’s date remains highlighted and the year appears in the back button, so users know exactly where they are, where they came from, and how to get back.
One of the things that I noticed was when a user tries to go to the view or function of what they want and if the path does not exist or the path is too hard for the user to find out, user gets frustrated. He will less likely to use an app. That what I do, when I download an app, I want to test to see if the app have what I want ; for example, I downloaded an app to write something quickly, but if the app requires me to tap 3-4 times to write something simple, I would not use the app. I believe “paper53” is well-designed, and also has a good path of navigating one to another. Designers have to vision the path that a user will take for the first time, and simplify what is the most important reason for the user to use this app and what is the function that the user want. So the user can quickly access the function whenever they want.
—users navigate by making one choice per screen until they reach their destination.
This is what I do when I download a new app. After hitting the destination, I want to go back to where I was. Designers(I was a designer) tend to focus more on the interface than the path that a user will take, but thinking of the path and function first and integrate with interface design will make them a better designer.