Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps

Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps

So you've got an idea for an iPhone app -- along with everyone else on the planet. Set your app apart with elegant design, efficient usability, and a healthy dose of personality. This accessible, well-written guide shows you how to design exceptional user experiences for the iPhone and iPod Touch through practical principles and a rich collection of visual examples. Whether you're a designer, programmer, manager, or marketer, Tapworthy teaches you to "think iPhone" and helps you ask the right questions -- and get the right answers -- throughout the design process. You'll explore how considerations of design, psychology, culture, ergonomics, and usability combine to create a tapworthy app. Along the way, you'll get behind-the-scenes insights from the designers of apps like Facebook, USA Today , Twitterrific, and many others. Develop your ideas from initial concept to finished design - Build an effortless user experience that rewards every tap - Explore the secrets of designing for touch - Discover how and why people really use iPhone apps - Learn to use iPhone controls the Apple way - Create your own personality-packed visuals "I'm blown away by Josh Clark's deep understanding of the iPhone user experience. This is an important read for everyone thinking about iPhone apps." Jürgen Schweizer, founder of Cultured Code "It's rare to find a person like Josh Clark who speaks so intently to the topic of interface design and mobile devices." John Maeda, president of Rhode Island School of Design "Having been completely immersed in iPhone UI design for the past 2+ years, and even writing on the subject myself, I was excited to review an early copy of Tapworthy , but didn't expect any grand revelations. Boy, was I wrong. Tapworthy not only summed up just about everything I think I know about iPhone User Interface design, but challenged me to think about the typical iPhone user in new ways. This book is an invaluable resource to ANYONE working on mobile apps." David Barnard, founder of App Cubby Josh Clark is a designer specializing in mobile design strategy and user experience. He's author of Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps (O'Reilly, 2010) and Best iPhone Apps (O'Reilly, 2009). Josh's outfit Global Moxie offers consulting services and workshops to help media companies, design agencies, and creative organizations build tapworthy mobile apps and effective websites, with clients including eBay and Nokia. Josh is a regular speaker at international technology conferences, regularly educating designers, managers, and developers about mobile strategy and designing for phones and tablets. Before the internet swallowed him up, Josh was a management consultant at Monitor Group in Cambridge, Mass, and before that, a producer of national PBS programs at Boston's WGBH. He shared his three words of Russian with Mikhail Gorbachev, strolled the ranch with Nancy Reagan, hobnobbed with Rockefellers, and wrote trivia questions for a primetime game show. In 1996, he created the uberpopular "Couch-to-5K" (C25K) running program, which has helped millions of skeptical would-be exercisers take up jogging. (His motto is the same for fitness as it is for software user experience: no pain, no pain.) Josh holds a B.A. from Harvard College in Cambridge, Mass.