10 Commandments of App Development

© Sue Hasker (Creative Commons)

1. App must be fast : should start quickly and should not lag.
2. App must be polished : it should look very professional, beautiful, or both.
3. App must be intuitive : most if not all should learn to use the app in two minutes.
4. App must be simple not complex : remove unnecessary features, merge the rest, use progressive disclosure.
5. App must offer free or lite version if is not free: people should know what the get for the money.
6. App must not crash : should handle with grace all kinds of expected and unexpected events.
7. App must not waste device resources : respect the fact that memory, network speed and battery juice are finite.
8. App must not trick : people, especially kids should not be tricked to purchase things.
9. App must not use user information without approval: private things like location, contacts, history, purchases.
10. App must be launched when the time is right : the app must under no circumstances be launched in total anonymity, enough people should know and care about it.

So what is a app that matters in my opinion? It is an app that respects all the above ten commandments. That's all.

It is not required to be downloaded by thousands, it is not required to gross in millions or be the latest meme on the net.

But it must be great and people should know about it.

Why we loose a bit of humanity

Yesterday I found another brilliant TED talk: Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.

Yesterday I didn't knew who Chip Kidd is. Today I'm grateful that I heard him, that he shared his love and passion for his trade, for the design of printed book covers.

Wikipedia says:

Chip Kidd (born September 12, 1964) is an American author, editor, and graphic designer, best known for his book covers.

I would at least say he is a brilliant and passionate book cover designer. Look at him, look at the way he talks about his covers and tell me you don't feel the urge to touch those books, to smell them, to feel them.

When you listen to him you suddenly feel that you wake up from a dream, like a new dimension of reality is regained.

He is more a priest than a geek, his word is more an incantation than a statement. Maybe that's way I keep hearing his words over and over again:

Much is to be gained by eBooks: ease, convenience, portability. But something is definitely lost: tradition, a sensual experience, the comfort of thingy-ness -- a little bit of humanity.

Navigation in Apps for Kids

Smashing Magazine has published an article called " A Dad’s Plea To Developers Of iPad Apps For Children." It was a real eye opener for me. Having two kids that love the iPad all I can do is confirm what 'Dad' is suggesting: a standard, recognizable navigation in apps, at least in those for kids.

Indeed some of the apps have that terrible tab based navigation at the bottom, and those tabs are frequently touched by mistake.

Not only the article but some of the comments are great too, here is what one of the best is suggesting:

• Support multi-touch and then ignore the touches that don’t matter. The most frustrating thing for my 2-yo is putting one hand (or palm) on part of the screen and trying to touch something else that doesn’t work.
• Undo. Unintended actions should be easily reversible.
• Timers. Allow parents to specify how much time can be spent in the app. Our kids get 20-min a day of iPad time.
• Ads in kids apps are EVIL! Especially banner ones. Charge extra if you have to. If the app is good I’ll happily pay.
• Same with in-app purchasing. I totally agree with the author. Any app targeted at small kids with in-app purchasing better have it buried somewhere hard to reach and even then double and triple password protected so only parents can authorize them.
• Variance: an app gets old really fast unless each time the child touches something, it does something slightly different.
• Please, no splash screens or startup menus. Small kids do not have the patience to sit through a 15-second promo video for the software publisher. Having to start something via a startup menu means a parent has to be involved each and every time the app is launched.
• Support app backgrounding. Can’t tell you how many times my kids accidentally hit the ‘home’ button and exit the app, then come running over. It’s really not that hard to support backgrounding so the app maintains state and when brought back to the foreground just picks up where it left off.
• Volume control: please have mercy on the rest of us. Let us set a maximum volume for music and sound-FX.
• Finally: if you put device rotation or shake input in an app targeted at small children, be prepared to get a bill for the smashed iPad screen :-)