Designing for Others

Often as an independent app developer, it’s easy to forget what others expect from apps and how they use them. While this is something that I would argue we all hold as an important aspect of our designs and apps it can be easy to forget.

Take, for example, the most recent update to Step It Up. I made a few small changes, that will make a huge difference in the life of my users. First, each data point that is displayed now stretched the whole width of the screen, before it they were in a 2 column grid. The design looked and worked great, for me. However, if you increased the font on your phone even slightly more than the default, the design fell apart and looked confusing.

Next was how users can go back to view past activity. In prior designs, there were three arrows and a button that said Today. This was the design for several years and I always understood how to use it. However, when my friend was reviewing it he said “It’d be great if you could see prior activity.” Ouch, that’s a major discoverability problem. To me, it was very obvious and easy, but to others, they had no idea what the arrows did or why pressing them wasn’t going back in time. The “Today” button stayed the same so you could always jump back to today as quickly as possible. 

Lastly, the Settings button. In my opinion, I hate seeing the settings button in the bottom bar on the iPhone, also known as the Tab Bar. To me, the tab bar is where the core features of your app go. Settings aren’t so much as a feature in my mind as it is something that allows modification and tweaks of the core features. In past versions of Step It Up, I had the settings button in the top right-hand corner. But, again, when asking others about the app I heard, there are no settings, what’s up with that? 

All of this is to say, we all have different experiences in life and different expectations. Something that I’m very familiar with from my clinical psychology training. However, this knowledge has to be kept in mind when designing as well. Just because you might think this is the best way and looks the best, might not actually mean anyone else agrees with you. 

So how do we fix this? Well, for starters, we ask others to test our apps and give their honest feedback. One thing I always will ask for feedback is to please tell me your honest opinion of something. If we make a bad app or anything in life, and we don’t get the feedback we need, well no one will use your app and it’ll be a waste of time.

Finally, more specific to programming, we can start to use SwiftUI in more places. In the case of the grid looking out of order with increased font, it’s the only time I’ve said to myself “It’s okay, SwiftUI will handle it” and SwiftUI did not handle it. It’s a great tool for developers to make easily accessible and localizable apps, that work across devices. Something that wasn’t even possible just a few years ago.

Interested in hiring me to make sure your apps are up to speed for your users? Sounds great, in touch with me here.

Interested in seeing what I have discussed? Download Step It Up on the App Store.