Best Practices in iPhone UI Design
When you are designing for iPhone, there are several best practices to keep in mind:
??‘ Remember the touch! Perhaps no tip is more critical in iPhone UI design than always double -
checking every design decision you make with the reality of touch input. For example, ESPN ??™ s
Podcenter, shown in Figure 2 - 14 , uses a UI that roughly simulates the Apple navigation list
design. However, the rows are thinner, making it harder to touch the correct podcast item,
especially if the user is walking or performing another physical activity.
??‘ Make sure you design your application UI to work equally well in portrait and landscape modes. Some
native applications, such as Mail, optimize their UI for portrait mode and ignore any changes
the user makes to orientation. Third - party iPhone developers do not have that same level of
control. Therefore, any UI design you create needs to work in both orientation modes.
??‘ Avoid UI designs that require horizontal scrolling. If your interface design requires the user to scroll
from side to side within a single display screen, change it. Horizontal scrolling is confusing to
users and leaves them feeling disoriented within your application.
Table 2-7 (continued)
Name Example
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Zapfino
Chapter 2: Designing a User Interface
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Figure 2-14: The shorter cells make it easy for fat
or shaky fingers to select the wrong choice.
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