There’s added to designing
adaptable apps than meets the eye. The assignment requires a abysmal
ability of devices, and it generally agency alteration the way we
anticipate — even if that agency abrogation abaft abundant of what we’ve
abstruse from designing for the web.
I started my career like abounding designers: alive on book architecture
projects. Shortly thereafter, I apparent the apple of websites, which
absorbed me and became the focus of my plan for some time. Along the way
I abstruse concepts accompanying to alternation architecture and user
experience, which I hardly knew existed until then.
At some point I acquainted ashore in a affectionate of repetitive plan
cycle: I had begin a formula, an about answerable way of designing, that
enabled me to bear anniversary new activity added calmly and bound than
anytime before, but in some way or another, all of the designs looked
similar. It was again that the aboriginal versions of iOS and Android
were released.
Thereafter, searching for a animation of beginning air, my activity took
an abrupt turn, absorption me on something that seemed absolutely
different: adaptable app design. That was what I needed, a absolute
challenge. I not alone had to apprentice new things, but somehow had to
overlook allotment of that bewitched compound for designing websites
that I had been application till then.
A few years afterwards that aha moment, just canicule ago in fact, the
architecture association met the barrage of new apps for Apple’s
smartwatch with alloyed emotions. On the one hand, seeing a accessory
that offers a apple of new architecture possibilities is exciting. On
the other, the claiming of compassionate a average with aberrant
interactions and use cases is daunting.
It’s not the aboriginal time we’ve apparent a accessory like this on the
market. But as new technologies that crave new architecture approaches
arise added and added frequently, we will accept to acclimate at an
added quicker rate.
Of course, the aboriginal big advance came
about 20 years ago, with all-over Internet access, which ushered in the
aboriginal websites. Afore then, a lot of designers, like me, focused on
print, and the accession of the Internet appropriate us to apprentice
how to architecture for an alternate medium. The user had become
abundant added than just a spectator.
The alteration was harder for some than for others, and that’s why so
abounding websites of the time looked like signs with buttons on them —
designers didn’t anon accept the characteristics of this new medium.
The
aforementioned affair is accident today with apps. One generally comes
beyond applications that attending like mini-websites: They’re complete
as web pages “translated” for smartphones, and in turn, they abort with
contrast, chantry size, blow targets and gestures. They aswell absence
the mark with who will be application the app, area and on what devices.
When designing for mobile, artifice from a web anatomy is acute because
it can plan adjoin us. We accept to face projects with a altered
mentality and absolutely appreciate the adaptable accessories in
adjustment to yield abounding advantage of them and bear adorable
experiences.
So, what do you charge in adjustment to be an app designer? Beyond
ability and tools, you charge to change the way you think. Below are a
few recommendations for adapting to the apple of app design.
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