Self-Conscious Developers and Inner Bosses
In this issue:
8 App Design Tips for Self-Conscious iOS Developers
The Productivity Paradox: Letting go of Your Inner Boss
8 App Design Tips for Self-Conscious iOS Developers
How do you build good-looking side projects and indie apps if you don't know anything about design? When it's just you, but you still want your app to look good. For many developers, what designers do feels like magic. Surely, it's not done on the fly as you go, right?
Building apps is hard enough.
Don't worry; here are 8 simple steps that will get you off to a great start:
Spend time with the system apps and Apple's other applications. Notice how they function and flow. This understanding is crucial in designing intuitive interfaces.
Read the HIG. Apple publishes and maintains its Human Interface Guidelines, packed with great advice, guidance, and best practices for how Apple thinks interfaces should work. The HIG is essential reading for anyone looking to develop on Apple's platforms.
Sketch out a UI draft. Don't overthink it. Just draw an ugly napkin sketch. The less realistic, the better. One thing I've done a few times is to print out this handy phone template, which Matthew Stephens, one of the founders of DeviantArt, shared back in the day.
Use system components. SwiftUI (and UIKit) provides components for navigation, menus, layout, input, and more. If you find yourself looking for some element that doesn't exist, and you're considering building a new one, then that's a red flag that you're trying to do something too complicated.
Use default padding and spacing, and be consistent across views. If your components are spaced differently from one screen to another, your design looks clumsy.
Use system fonts, and only use the built-in text styles. Check how your app looks when using a larger text size. Remember that some 20-30% of users use larger-than-standard font sizes.
Use SF symbols. Apple provides over 5000 icons and symbols that work seamlessly in all sizes.
Colors: use as few as possible, and stick to the system colors like you did with the text styles.
If you follow these steps, you will already be ahead of most other apps. Your app will be functional and fit well on the platform.
​Remember that all those well-designed apps that you're looking up to have been iterated on for a long time.
The Productivity Paradox
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to get into a state of productivity. I have a near-infinite number of things I want to explore and work on; the list is not getting any shorter. Yet, frequently, I catch myself just daydreaming or staring blankly at the world (or the wall). Do you feel guilty when you're not productive? After quitting my job, I don't have a boss anymore, but often, it's like he's still there, telling me to hurry up. I have to keep reminding myself that it's okay to not do anything right now.
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While trying to be productive, I read this great post by Ayon Bhattacharya called How to beat creative block every time, and I just wanted to quote him here because this speaks to me:
It’s interesting that children rarely seem to have creative block. They don’t expect themselves to produce something spectacular. They’re just playing and having fun.
​To create quality work, you have to restore your sense of play. To restore your sense of play, you have to release expectations and get into the flow of the work.
How do you get into The Flow?
Speaking of The Flow, something else that spoke to me last night was this Tweet by Kyle Lambert about the Focus Blast Radius of meetings. I would sit at my desk between two meetings, staring at the wall, just waiting for the next one to begin.
Finallly let me leave you with this wisdom in tweet form, by Suhail, the founder of Playground AI:
Have a great day!
-Steffen
P.S. You can reply to this email; it will get to me, and I will read it.