Week 2

Hi! I’m a designer from San Francisco. I like sci fi and kayaking.

PROJECT

App Map & Wireframes »

HIG NOTES

1. Avoid customizing core components without a great reason.

“Don’t create custom UI that prompts users to sign into Game Center.”

Apple constantly reminds people to avoid customizing iOS fundamentals. My guess is that this is to make it so that people enjoy using iPhones. For example, it wouldn’t be the worst thing if one or two apps customized how game center login works, but if every app did, people might start to be confused about what game center is.

2. Write good copy

“Write a title that makes it unnecessary to add a message,” “Avoid sounding accusatory or judgmental when you need to deliver negative news,” “The best button titles consist of one or two words that describe the result of tapping the button.”

Apple gives a lot of great copy advice. They seem to care deeply about making clear labels that people will understand, not duplicating text, and making sure that punctuation and capitalization is appropriate.

3. Don’t make people think

“If you vary the transition styles for modal views in an app, do so in a way that makes sense to users. Users are quick to notice behavioral differences in an app and will assume that they mean something.” “[Having more than two options in an alert] …is a disconcerting experience for users, because they must spend extra time to distinguish the choices.”

Apple finds lots of ways to drill in the idea of reducing cognitive load (via recognition over recall, reducing options, shortening copy, etc). They constantly suggest ways to avoid making users think in unnecessary cases. At the same time, they also say things like:

“Give users different ways to sort multiple transit options. Lots of factors influence people’s transit decisions—such as time of day, weather, and how much they’re carrying—so it’s important to make it easy to compare transit options.”

In this case, Apple is saying that 80% of people actually want multiple sort options, so having more options is necessary.

4. Make simple load screens

Load screens should be a text/imageless version of an app’s main screen, not a splashy intro page.