A Tiny Detail I Like About iOS8

iOS8 is a huge move forward in user experience, especially the continuity experience between iOS8 and Mac OS X Yosemite is a great win. For the ones who don’t know what I am talking about by saying “continuity experience”: it is the ability to continue working on your document no matter which machine you started with, either a mobile device or a Mac. And also answering phone call on your Mac and iPad is a big experience win (more details on Apple's site). 

The thing that I would like to point out in this post is rather different, it is iOS' spotlight, again! You may remember I criticized iOS7 for a single bad behavior which had frustrated me lots of time: Keeping the earlier search query when I open spotlight for second time. iOS8 came with a simple solution for that: Second time you open spotlight it sets the search expression selected so if you time something the earlier search goes away; and in case you want to continue from your earlier type you still can do.

I can hear you are saying I am focusing on a secondary thing but I assure you these tiny details can make your users like or dislike your product.

View fullsize

Step 1. Search something, then select something or cancel the search

View fullsize

Step 2. Drag the home screen for a second search, the text comes selected. You can type something else without need to clean the field, or you can use your earlier expression

Everything Gets Associated with Your Corporate Brand

There is an image circulating on Twitter. It is a photo of Facebook A/B testing on its loading icon on the splash screen. In A group the loading icon resembles Facebook's loading icon (on the left) and in B group the loading icon resembles iOS' loading icon (on the right).

Facebook A/B Testing Its iOS App's Loading Icon

There is an interesting find out of the test: If the loading is slow and the icon is the Facebook's own one (left) the user thinks that the slowness is because of Facebook's itself. On the other hand, if the user feels slowness and the icon is the iOS' one (right) user thinks that the slowness is due to her device. This leads us to the conclusion that "every single detail different from the masses attributes to your corporate identity".

Actually it is not new. In social psychology this is known as attribution bias:

"People constantly make attributions regarding the cause of their own and others’ behaviors; however, attributions do not always accurately mirror reality." [from Wikipedia]

Hence try to make the best design decisions in order not to hurt your brand.

Pttrns: More than 2100 Mobile User Interface Patterns for Design Inspirations

We, UX designers, need inspirations for the sections of the apps that we work on. And we know that majority of a new application's parts consists of similar patterns as in other applications, like signup, login, activity feed, search, share. Almost all UX designers check different applications before (re)designing an application part. This means downloading a lot of applications just to check some parts of the applications.

Pttrns.com is the solution for this repetitive checking task. There are more than 2100 mobile UI patterns grouped into 3 main categories (iPhone, iPad, iOS7) and bunch of subcategories (Activity Feeds, Maps, Logins etc.).

Pttrns.com for mobile app UI patterns

Top part of the left panel is dedicated to the broad category selection: iPhone, iPad and iOS7.

Top part of the left panel: main category selection

Bottom part of the left panel: subcategories under the main category

Bottom part of the left panel is dedicated to different subcategories under the main category you have selected. Let's say you are on designing settings section of a iPhone application and would like to check what other apps' settings sections look like. You click iPhone section then click the settings subsection on the panel. Then lots of applications' settings sections are listed in the same page.

Settings examples from different applications

One cool feature of pttrns is the magnifier when you hover your mouse on the images.

Hope pttrns.com accompany you in your current and next journeys of mobile application design.

Good UX is In The Details

Have you heard the saying "the devil is in the detail"? It means that you have to put effort on the details to catch the devil and evil for the sake of good. It is the same for user experience design. In order to do it good or better you have to put enough effort to the details. 

There is a site, called "Little Big Details", dedicated to curating these UX details. So get your daily dose of design inspiration.

A Good UX Pattern Candidate: Providing Users Progress Tracking Ability

Online education has become an important part of our lives. Right now, whatever you want to know is available online. And my husband works for one of these an online education startups and this detail is pointed out by him a couple of days ago. It is a todo list of a curated article list about a JavaScript framework called AngularJS: http://www.thinkster.io/

Well, why is this site is mentioned here? It is because of one tiny but powerful detail: Their way of keeping user's progress. This site is all about written content and links to outer site contents curated in a way that it is like an actual curriculum. And this tiny power detail is that it has check buttons for the user to keep track and it asks for the credential after  the user's first check.

This is a simple yet powerful way of keeping track of what you have learnt on the site. You don't have to manage the article tracking by yourself, site helps you to do it. Loved it! Now the question: Is this possible to generalize such a concept for all content-heavy sites?