Teams make some basic mistakes in the way they are designing their apps. In this episode, we will go through everything I have learned designing multiple iOS and Android apps that have gone on to be included in Apple's Human Interface Guidelines and more.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-42-app-design-how-to-design-a-great-mobile-app/
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Teams make some basic mistakes in the way they are designing their apps. In this episode, we will go through everything I have learned designing multiple iOS and Android apps that have gone on to be included in Apple's Human Interface Guidelines and more.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode-42-app-design-how-to-design-a-great-mobile-app/
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
Here it is the 42nd episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership design, and a whole host of other things that matter to creative people. The last episode, I'll admit, was probably a little bit heavy. We talked about insecurity, we talked about frustration and how those emotions can really affect your creative process. So today, let's change it up a little bit. Let's make it a little bit more fun, a little bit more concrete. And let's actually talk about something that has been dominating the creative and the design landscape for the past decade. And I want to talk about app design. And I actually want to talk about how do you design great apps, because I see a lot of apps out there. I see a lot of creatives who are going out and working on building these apps. And I see a lot of them making the same mistakes. I see a lot of them, not thinking it through the way that they should And so I want to share all the things that I've learned in building apps and designing apps. And this is one of those places where I'll let my ego jump up a little bit and say that this is actually something I know quite a bit about. And it's something I've had a lot of success with. I've been lucky enough that the apps that I've designed have spent years with five star ratings from the people who use it. They've been voted as some of the world's 100 greatest app designs. I've had my apps featured in nine different Apple keynotes for different TV commercials. They're still in the human interface guidelines and a whole bunch of other stuff. I want to share what I've learned that let that work happen that let it connect with consumers that it got good reviews, it worked for the clients, it made money and it made a difference. That's what we're going to talk about today is how can you learn from that stuff so that your app designs can get better? Now we're gonna have to cover a lot of ground because the problem is designing an app is not simple. And so we're going to cover a bunch of different things. We're going to start with just a basic, I always call it like a user primer of just like, what are the things that you need to think about? And how do you get your head right? Before you start designing anything, then we're gonna spend a little bit of time talking about a mobile app design platform strategy, some of the basics of app design, some of the basics of interaction design, visual design, branding, a whole bunch of stuff beyond design. And then finally, we're going to talk about key moments. Because I think that's one of the really most important things that I've done with my work is to try to define and really only a few key moments. So a lot of stuff to cover today, a lot of things we're going to go over. So let's just kind of jump in and get started. Now, the place where we always should start, we've talked about design thinking we've talked about the need for empathy, is to start by really understanding who's going to use this app, who's your user going to be? And I'll actually pause there for a second but I continue to find it funny and I I'm just as guilty of it as anybody, we need to come up with a better term than user because I often will joke that the only people who I know who refer to their clients as users, are designers and drug dealers. So at some point, we need to figure out a better term than just user customer, maybe I don't know, we'll figure that out. But the first thing to do is you start to kind of do that primer is to understand where does an app sit in a user's or consumers brain? Because they have a digital ecosystem that they're working inside of. And so this is usually the first place where I start is to think about what is it that I'm designing? And then what is the goal that the average person would want to get out of this? This is really and we've talked about this in a lot of other shows. It's looking for the trend line, not the headline, that what's the thing that's really beneath What's going on? That's gonna give me an insight about how do I position this and what's it really gonna need to be successful? If you think about your average device ecosystem. It probably is made up of if you're like most of us five different segments of devices, you have kind of the big cloud storage device, the big, you know, just kind of like environment in the sky, you've got a desktop or a laptop computer, maybe you've got a tablet, you've got a phone, and maybe you're wearing a wearable, an apple watch or something like that. We have five different segments. And the thing that I see is that too often, creatives will treat all of these as if they're exactly the same. And that's a huge mistake, because you need to stop and you need to think about how are people? How are you using these different platforms and these different devices? If let's just talk about, whenever you're on them, what are you doing, what's the time horizon that you're looking at whenever you're going through and doing this work? Obviously, if you're doing stuff that you're keeping in the cloud, that the horizon on that may be for forever, because a lot of times, that's where you're storing things you've been working on for a long time, it may be where you're archiving things off. So you know, that's just sort of the more than Big Picture stuff. So let's just actually concentrate on the devices. If you have a laptop or you have a desktop, and this applies to websites or desktop apps or things like that, what I found is, in general, you're working on things that are for the next year in the future, or you're storing things and continuing to tweak things that were up to a year in the past. So all these time horizons are about a certain amount of time into the future and into the past. So laptops are about a year. Whenever you look at a tablet, tablets are about a three to five month horizon, especially as we can see, tablets continue to evolve and get better. They're getting a little bit closer to laptops, but they're still immediate grazing device. There's still something that people like to game on, that a lot of times you will still see consumer mindsets that if they want to do something serious, they're still going back to their desktop. So you've got about three to five minutes in the future three to five minutes in the past a phone, specifically a smartphone, that window narrows into about a month. A month in the future month in the past, we start to get much more task focus, we start to get much more about kind of doing something more specific. We want to talk with somebody right now we want to be able to get social media, we start to get a little bit closer that instant gratification. Now, wearables wearables shrink that time horizon even smaller, because wearables are about what are you doing right now? What are you doing in this moment? This is why I think most designers get wearable designs wrong and why they devolve into these like clumsy messaging platforms, because they don't know how to curate the content in their apps in a way that will actually make it useful in the moment. That's the place where I would start to think about is understand if you're really going through and designing a tablet app, a phone app or a wearable app, understand what is the focus and what's that expectation so that you don't design some big grandiose experience for a phone whenever it'd be better suited for a tablet, vice versa. Beyond that, I really think that you probably should go through and spend some time as you go through this entire process. To make sure that you have or that you are building three very important artifacts, because this is what we've talked about in the past, one of the most important things that I think you need to do is to really make sure that you're empathizing with that you understand the person who you're designing for that I see too many designers who take the false arrogance of thinking, Oh, well, I'm the consumer, I think that you can be the consumer to get insights, but you need to be able to kind of step out and be able to look at this through the lens of somebody else. And so I think the first artifact that you need to make sure that you have are personas. If you don't know what a persona is, a persona is basically just a fictional character that really has been created from what are the the behaviors that you would expect your target user to have? And the reason why you want to do this is because they allow you to determine what will drive that users decisions within your app. It'll let you be able to kind of have this person around and you can look at it to say Oh, Look, is this what this person would do or not? I actually know some creatives who have gone so far that they actually will create life size cardboard cutouts of these fictional people and keep them in the room whenever they're working, or their team is working. So at any point they can reference, Bob, or Jim or Jane or whatever you want to name them. And is this something that that person would actually want? Because by having this sort of physical edifice of them, it allows them to be able to constantly check in and say, Look, is this what people really want? The next thing I would tell you that I think is a really good thing to do is to make sure that you're working through and thinking about user scenarios. These are scenarios that really just are there to provide insight for how that persona is going to act. Because with user scenarios, you'll be able to design an interface that really best suits the goal of what these people want to accomplish. And I think that this is where user scenarios are really good. So sometimes they're user stories sometimes like people can call them a whole host of different things. But I think to be clear about what really is the point of what this app needs to do, what are the few things where we really feel like we can differentiate. And we'll talk about that a bit more at the end of the show when we talk about kind of ownable moments, because that's really what this is leaning towards are, what are the things that you're just gonna do different and do better. And the last one really, is to go through and do experience maps. Sometimes these can be called app maps. There again, there's so many different phrases that people use for all these things. But whenever I talk about this, what I'm talking about is some sort of a document some sort of a map that's really gonna let you explore what are all the possible different conditions for a single interaction? Because the reason why I think this is important is because most of the businesses that I've ever worked on most of the apps that I've ever worked on, are rarely one dimensional, meaning that they only do one thing all the time. Because consumers aren't one dimensional. They may come with different motivations at different times. So that sort of an experience map will let you chart out each of those steps that personas are most likely to take while they're using that app. And they help you understand all the emotions and circumstances surrounding those steps. And so I think that these are three things that have been incredibly instrumental for me. And it led to some of the better breakthroughs that I've ever had in my work and have led to what may seem like really simple things. But the ability to have that persona to be able to think through these sorts of different user scenarios. And these experience maps led to things like whenever I worked on the star preferred guest app for Starwood Hotels, a really simple thing, which was that one of the scenarios that people would need would be if you ever jumped in the back of a cab in a foreign country, and you needed to get to the hotel, you're most of the time faced with a cab driver who more than likely does not speak English. So what do you do? Why don't we give you the address of that hotel in the local language to just get rid of that barrier. such a simple thing. But it was driven out of the work that we did through personas through user scenarios and through those user maps. And it was one of the most beloved features, and I got more people who came up to me, and would talk to me about how much that saved them or how much they love that and how incredibly important it was. Take the time to do the diligence against those things. Let's move on. And let's start getting into a bit more of the meat of the problem here. And one of the first immediate problems that you're going to find is designing for different platforms. Because if you've ever spent any time you know that iOS has one particular Look, they have one particular set of usability patterns, that all those consumers really like. Android has a very different set of usability, very different set of those patterns. And the one thing that I would tell you to do that may be incredibly tempting, but is a massive, massive mistake, is the fact that if you're going to design for both of these platforms, design for both of these platforms, there is nothing worse there is no faster path to a horrible review. By simply porting your iOS app straight on Android or vice versa, because users know they know if something has been designed as a native experience or not, or if it's something that was just simply ported over. So I think that this is one of those things that you need to be able to really be clear about, and spend the time to understand spend some time to understand the human interface guidelines for iOS, spend the time to go in and really go through all the documentation in material design, so that you can understand things like when and how to use floating action buttons, and a lot of the other nuance that is going to be specific just to Android, and especially for the fact that Android often is more challenging, because of the device fragmentation. Because they aren't Apple, they aren't just simply one manufacturer that's making one device they have one operating system that's on a lot of different devices. So where are the different buttons are the way that they invoke different menus and different things like that changes, and that is a huge, massive, sometimes wonderful, sometimes insanely frustrating problem, but it's one that you have to know and understand. The other thing that I'm going to tell you to do is while you're going through and you're looking at The Hague, and while you're going through and looking at material design, you also need to use your brain. And what I mean is that you need to go through and figure out for the app that you're designing for the brand that you're designing for, what are the areas of each of those visual systems that you're going to want to keep? And where are the places where you're going to want to break the rule, maybe you're going to want to do something different. Maybe you're going to create your own interaction pattern, your own button style, something that is different that may not be standard to the platform. And this freaks so many people out. And to me it is it's been a really funny and sort of an interesting thing over the years as I've gotten to know the design evangelists and the teams at Apple and at Google, because most people will think that if you want to work with Apple, if you want to get featured by Apple, oh my god, I have to design like apple. The funny part is nothing will actually make them more irritated and probably less likely to feature your app. Then if you're designing for your brand, and like this is an app that Apple did, because what they want is they want your brand, they want your experience. And they want you to use your brain. So that if you're going to break something in the human interface guidelines have a reason to think it through, be consistent about it so that inside of the ecosystem of your app, it makes sense. And it is consistent. If you do that, you'll be fine. Where you get into trouble is if you just simply start blindly breaking things, doing things because they're pretty or cute or interesting, or have a nice animation build, and there's not a reason behind them. So that's the thing that I would tell you is to decide when and where do you stick to the operating system to the conventions that are established across all the ecosystem, the entire app, and where do you go out on your own? from there. Let's jump into just some of the basics basics of design. And these are things that I would think you should think about first, but the thing that I see time and time again, app after app company after company designer after just Under that I see are these things that I think you should think about first tons of people think about last. And that is a huge, huge problem. Because these are things that if you think about them last, it's probably gonna be too late to do a damn thing about it. And so there are really four things here that you need to think about and focus on. The first one could not be any simpler. But just simply, what is the orientation you're going to build your app in? Is it going to be landscape? Is it going to be portrait? Or do you have the ability to go between both of them? Your tech team is going to need to know this. Your design team needs to know this. But you need to think this through and really think about, how is somebody going to use this app? How are they going to be holding it? What's going to be the easiest way for them to do it? And is there going to be an advantage to changing orientations but choose assembly think through that and make sure that you're clear on it before you start designing anything. The next thing is again, to sit down with your product owner to sit down with your tech team, and to really have a discussion about what is the target app size You want to have whenever somebody downloads this app. And this can become an incredibly important thing whenever it comes to the adoption, and especially the updating of your app, because the reality is going to be that if your app is too big, then it is only going to be able to be downloaded or updated over Wi Fi. And that can be a massive problem. Because what if it's a travel app? What if it's something that you are going to use that is site specific? What if it's something that you may want to download on an impulse? Well, the reality is going to be that if I can only download over Wi Fi, and I'm out in the world, maybe I'll remember to do it later. Maybe I won't. Maybe whenever there's an update that comes out, that's really critically important because somebody screwed up and there is a bug that causes the app to crash, or that there's some great new functionality that we want. If it can only be updated again, when I'm on Wi Fi. That's going to be something that's going to be much more sporadic. So it's just something that you need to think about. And then if you're going to go over those thresholds if you're going to go into Wi Fi only that you have a really damn good reason why you're doing it because it's Going to really affect the way your app is updated and the way it is downloaded and that you need to be prepared for the way that those numbers might shift. The next one is going to be to spend some time and have a long and serious and well thought out discussion about whenever you think about the smartphones that you're going to support, what are the models? And what are the screen sizes that you're going to be supporting. And every time that you come out with a new release, or every time there's a new generation of hardware that comes out? How are you going to respond to that, because the older models may have a lot of proliferation, but they may also come with tech constraints, they may also not be able to quite do as much. But so this is where you need to be using tracking, you need to be using data and analytics to show you where are the bulk of your customers. And if they aren't upgrading that hardware fast enough. Do you give them a really a value proposition of why to do that? Do you start to look at you know, you might not have to evolve as quickly as you want to, or maybe they're adopting really quickly and it lets you move much faster than you thought you could. But it's just something you have to think about because the trap that's So many designers I see is that most of us have, if not the latest phone within one generation of the latest phone. And we think that that's what the world is like, we get test flight, we get all these different apps. That's where we test the app. And we think, well, this is what the experience is. But for so many people, if your users are three, four or five generations behind, it's going to be experienced that is very, very different. And so you just simply need to make sure you're thinking about this stuff, you have the test devices to look at it, and really make sure that your design hums where it needs to. And now the last one is to think about and this is more just simply an overarching design principle that I think about is that depending on which screen orientation I'm using, if it's portrait, if it's landscape, most of mine have been portrait apps. There is a, I guess it's an ergonomics that you need to think about. Whenever you go through and whenever you design for this stuff, because there are going to be areas of the screen that are going to be very easy to reach. They're going to be ones that are a little bit of a stretch, and then there are ones that are really going to be an effort to get to if you think about using anyone I Phone, seven plus are one of the ones that has one of the bigger screens. Anything that basically is in kind of the bottom half of the screen is probably a natural, or maybe just a little bit of a stretch, whenever you start to get to anything that is in the top real part of that real estate, especially the top left, whenever you're holding it, you rarely can reach it with one hand. I mean, I'm six foot four, and I have big sausage fingers. So the I can kind of barely get to it. But that may be something where now I need to use two hands to be able to get to a key part of the experience or a back button or something like that. Just take some time and think about that. And there's actually a graphic that I use that you can overlay on top of your designs. And I'll post it in the show notes. So you can go and actually take a look at it. And it will demonstrate on four different screen sizes. What are the things that you really need to be thinking about and have this overlay on top of your design, because there's just some basic ergonomics that can really affect the way the app gets used. Let's actually start to move and look at some of just the interaction design basics and these are going to be some of the Things that, honestly are just gonna be six of the ways that whenever we're designing an interaction when we're working with our tech team, whenever we're designing what we want it to be, we need to think about. Now the first one is really going to be that we need to have a goal driven design, I hit on this a little bit earlier. But the thing is, is that you need to create specific goals for your user and tailor your apps workflow to suit those needs. Because the reality is, is that you know, yes, people are multi dimensional. Yes, they may want to come and do a lot of different things. But there need to be a few things that you do really well. These are the most common most use things and man, you better just smoke the way that those things work, and have them be better than anybody else. But to be clear about what those goals are so that whether it's the first generation or the 15th version, you aren't mucking up the app, you aren't putting stuff in the way of that, that you aren't really diminishing the value of the app, because you're getting in the way of those goals. The next one should seem one should seem incredibly obvious. But in a lot of cases, use apps, they're ones you'll think of as soon as I say this, that, you know, don't adhere to this. And it's just simply frickin usability people. Because usability as dumb as it may sound makes a product useful, which is the first step in being desirable, because that's what apps are. apps that are kept are useful. They demonstrate value, they are desirable, they are things that people want to use. But to be able to do that they have to be simple, they have to be easy, they have to be usable. So don't get so caught up in your own head and all these design tricks and all these different interaction flows. And this thing that looks really cool for the screenshot that you want to put on frickin dribble or on Pinterest or something else. Because if it looks really cool there, but you actually go in and you people can't use your app. Who cares? Yeah, you got a cool screenshot and a one star review. Congratulations, dude. Like I don't know what to tell you. The other extension of that that I would really talk about when we talk about goal driven design. That one of the things that I think about a lot whenever I'm doing interaction design is how do I define? I'll probably call them like signifiers. And then how do I repeat them? And for me as a signifier is what are the things that I'm going to teach people that whenever they see it, whenever they experience it, that it means something, a really common example for one would just be color. So that I'm sure that every time I show them the color blue, whether it's on a piece of text, whether it's on a button, whether it's there's something that then that signifies that that piece of content is something that you want to interact with. It's something that's actionable that you can touch. And it's one of those sorts of things of, Okay, now, if I repeat that enough times, I'm going to suddenly work into people's brains that everything is blue is then interactive, and everything that is blue is actionable. And so again, I don't have to have tons of Chevron's I don't have to have big explanatory copy or blinking eat at Joe's arrows so that people understand what to do because I've trained people That blue means actionable. And then this can be other sort of signifiers. It can be that the padding that's around something can be a particular type size. But there are just these certain patterns and colors and different things like that, that I want to signify something. And I want to be clear on it, and I want to protect it because what you can't do and the most common mistake is we're going to say that blue means that it's interactive. Well, but then we get to this one screen and Well, you know what, this little eyebrow piece of copy that's up above the headline, I feel like you'd really poppin it would look really good if that was blue. Because you know what the screen is a lot of white space in the photo is not really dynamic. And man, if that little eyebrow was blue, it really pop it look really good. Well, yes, you can solve that as a visual design. But then the problem is now you've confused the hell out of your user because every other place, blue means that it's interactive, but in this case, it means blue is just a design element. And so that lack of consistency creates confusion. Just be clear about what are your signifiers, repeat them and then also just be really strict about making sure that you adhere to what they are. The next part about an design that I think about a lot is learnability. And this is not just the visual design, but this is design patterns. So that users honestly, we get to the point where they instinctively know how to use your app. Because these are patterns that a lot of cases you can borrow, steal, lend from other places. This is where the design system of an iOS or an Android can become really useful. Because these systems have certain animations, they have certain patterns, they have things that people are used to doing that you can then port into your app, and that you can leverage that as well. Because it's always a little bit of a fine line. Because in some cases, yes. discoverability can be fun that oh, I swiped on something. And oh, that's cool. I didn't know that. It did that. And that's sort of now a pro tip that I can find. But I think that in many cases, if you want to design simple and elegant interfaces, you need to leverage what are commonly understood, really kind of conventions and constructs so that people can learn your interface faster. And so you can Keep it simple and elegant, but it's the line you've got to walk is to tap into what it is that is familiar to them, maybe present it in a slightly different design, maybe you present it in a slightly different way so that it feels a bit more ownable. But that it actually is something that you can learn and then you can tap into the next one is gonna be one that you're not gonna be able to do on your own. And I think it's incredibly important that you don't design and you don't create apps on your own. Because the best apps that I have ever created have been a fantastic partnership between design, tech and product. That is that holy trinity that has really brought home the best possible product, the best possible experience. The next one that we want to talk about is going to require that you understand that you do not design and you do not build apps alone. The best work that I have ever done whenever it comes to App design has been between the holy trinity of design product and technology. Because you need all three of them. You need the healthy tension between all three of them to be able to make something great For this next one is going to mean that you need to go and embrace and love on your friendly local technologists to help you with this. Because the other thing that will very, very quickly submarine and really undermine your app is feedback and response time. Because this is one of those things where users have an expectation that apps will respond quickly, and that they can be efficient in all their interactions. But the challenge is going to be that design does not exist simply in a vacuum, that there are times we have to make database calls, there are times where we might have to load images that we may have to do other things to be able to get where it is that we want to go. And this may happen because we've decided that we want to keep the app size small, because we want it to be able to be downloaded over cellular. But to be able to do that we had to make trade offs. We couldn't load all the images pre loaded into that app container. We have to download them after you already get it. Maybe we have to make a few more data calls. But we've decided that it's a trade off it's worth it so that more people get the app. Well then as a designer, you need to To understand that you might have to design constructs or the way in interface loads, or the way screens are set up, so that you know that there's going to be have to be some of that data that gets pulled down in the background. Or maybe I have to cover for the fact that I have to do a big data poll at a particular spot. And that to be able to cover for that the design has to be able to account for it. But that's the thing is that feedback and response time is not just purely a tech issue. It's not purely a design issue. But it's the two of them working together. So there can be a realistic conversation and expectation about how long do we think it's going to be to get this data back or this image back, or to be able to do these different things so that we're sure that we're constructing the the real experience in a way that that's not going to become a barrier that people can still accomplish what they want to do, and that it is really, really simple, but really key part of this whole thing. Now, the last one is one that too many people overlook, and is one that I am definitely a champion for, which is to make sure that your app is accessible and accessible, meaning that this is ADA compliant, the Americans with Disabilities Act compliant, so That is one of these things where people who may be colorblind, people who may be visually impaired people may be hearing impaired can still actually experience the app that they still can go through and to be able to use it and that it isn't a barrier for them. Because I do think that it is a really important thing to do, we need to be inclusive on this stuff. But what I have seen is that far too many designers think that, oh, if I'm going to do work that's ADA compliant, that it's got to look like crap, that it has to be really simple. It has to just look like a search engine, you know, just really basic stuff. And that is not the slightest bit true. You can do great design, you can do elegant design, and still have it be ADA compliant. They're just some simple rules and some simple things that you need to do and that you can go out and educate yourself on this. So that you're sure that you're doing something that everybody can use, but you aren't having to compromise designed to be able to get it done. Let's spend a little bit of time talking about visual design. And let's talk about branding. Because this is really where for so much of it where the app design actually comes into play and a lot of Other parts that lead up to this are incredibly critical. Because great design is a visual expression of great thinking. And if you aren't going through and thinking about some of these basics, if you aren't going through and thinking about these sorts of primers and the consumer and a lot of this other stuff, you're not going to be able to work this out, you're gonna have a really hard time working it out, whatever you get to design, and that's what so many people do is they just want to run and say, Okay, look, I just, I just want to make something pretty. Let me just make let me just make, you can't just make you need to think it through there has to be a purpose and a value and a lot of this other stuff assigned to it. Or, again, you're gonna have pretty but one star. So for visual design, here again, a lot of it is about how do we create consistency, and how do we create meaning, consistency coming out of the fact that everything needs to exist on a grid. This is the same we would do for any digital design. You do it for web design, you do it for app design, everything in between. But it really is just the fact that you have to have an invisible grid on every surface on every screen. You may not see it but it's there to guide in there to be able to create consistency so that as the user moves from screen to screen from experience to experience, that there are some boundaries, some consistency that is there for them. And yes, it helps with the design. Yes, it helps it make it look better. But it also really helps them because that visual consistency on a very subconscious level means that whenever I get to each of these new screens, I feel like I don't have to relearn things, that the spacing, the orientation, the placement, all these other things, let me feel like I understand some part of what it is that I'm doing. experiences that are the most confusing experiences that are the most all over the place, are the ones where as I move from screen to screen, I feel like with every one of these, I have to stop and have to relearn everything. Where are things how do I navigate What is this screen is this touchable? Can I scroll that all this sort of stuff will start to mount up to really make it feel confusing to make it feel like there's not much value here and I'll tell you the fact I'm just not sure I want to use this thing. The next one is is really the extension of that and we've already talked about consistent See, but to use color use lines, use types and type waiting to create a visual hierarchy. Because this is the thing that what I want to do is I want to whenever you come to the page, I want to show people, this is the most important thing, this is what I want you to look at first, this is what I want you to look at the second, this is the part that I want you to read. This is the photo I want you to look at. And then at the bottom here is the big button that clearly is the call to action for the thing that I want you to do. It's telling a story. And it's creating a visual hierarchy. But that's the problem is in so many apps, you see that there may be a headline, but then past that, if you always just sort of like squint my eyes when I look at the screen. And if everything is just sort of an equal shade of white or gray or a particular color. There's no hierarchy to that there's no break. There's no rhythm or cadence as you go down the page to be able to let me know that oh, this is all one section. That's one story. And so there's a break there. And now there's another section underneath that and I understand the difference between these two. But it's that hierarchy that really created It storytelling. And it lets you minimize the amount of navigation that you need. It lets you minimize the amount of copy. Because you can use a lot of these other things to be able to tell the story. Here, again, I can use color, I can use different things like that to be able to say, okay, when you see this in this color, that means it's actionable, or this is something you want to pay attention to. And so again, think about what this system is so that you can go through and be able to use it and leverage it to tell a story without having to beat people over the head with it. And the last part about just the pure visual design piece of it, and as we start to transition into talking about branding is typography. And what I would tell you is to keep keep typography simple and keep it consistent. Because what you want to do is you want to figure out, where are the places that I just want to use the system fonts. I just want to go through and use San Francisco for iOS, because I feel like you know what, it's readable, they've designed it for mobile. If this is just gonna be for body copy, I don't need my particular brand font, but maybe if it's for the headline if it's for That mean promo if it's for the menu that I do want this to feel a little bit different. So in that place, I want to make sure that I want to go ahead and you know what I will use our brand font to be able to really bring that to life. So it feels more on brand. But the thing that I would tell you is to make sure that you do the due diligence about any type holography that you use to make sure that you actually go in and make sure that the face that you are actually giving to your developers is as small as possible. This may mean going in and taking out alternate languages, alternate characters, ones that you aren't going to use to to make sure and make really get this down to the smallest possible file size that it can. Because here again, as a designer, if I'm going to ask that that be included, if I'm going to take on that tech debt of that font, and I'm going to take on that file size, then it's my responsibility to make sure that I'm making it as small and as simple as it possibly can be. And I think again, there are these are all these worlds of these little details and these little mistakes that people make that add up to bigger problems. Now, really as we kind of transition to talk about It's a good bridge for us to be able to talk about branding. Because I think branding and especially in apps can be a funny and interesting thing. Because this is where I see a lot of clients get very hung up and start to look at designs like their web pages. And the biggest place where I see this is with their logo. Because in a lot of cases, whenever I design apps, once you've actually downloaded the app, and once you've launched it, there is not a visible logo in any of my designs, because I think that the visible logo on the homescreen of an app is a remnant of a way of thinking from web design. Because let's think about this, because most time clients will see a homepage like oh my god, where's the logo? That's not the start of this interaction. That's not the start of this journey to be able to use the app. where it started was I was in an app store, or I saw an advertisement and I said, Oh, you know what I would love company X's app, went into the App Store, did a search, got a search result and then had an app icon which more than likely did have your logo on It, clicked on it looked at some screenshots went through saw a little bit of about what the app was downloaded it, now have an icon that sits on my home screen that has the logo on it. So I've now gone through identify the company x, oh, there's their app and their little logo there says company x. So I'm going to touch on that. And oh, below that icon, it also says company x again, so that now whenever I've launched it, so that's the thing is don't fall into this trap of thinking like, Oh my god, there's no logo, there's no branding, they don't know who it is, they do. It's just getting people to have a larger view of the ecosystem and the different steps that they've gone through to be able to do this stuff. And so get that real estate back, use it for something else, use it for something that is more informational. Use it for something that people can actually action on, instead of just seeing a logo for an app that they already know what it is that they opened. And again, it's just that's not the place to that you're gonna make a big brand impression or do something like that. So just again, think about that and whether or not you genuinely really need it. But then a lot of it for me is also then the way that I look at design. And the way they look at interaction design is also looking at how do I reinforce this brand's attributes. Design is really simple, because this is going to be the color, the type, you know, a lot of those sort of things that the tone of voice that we use, those are going to reinforce the brand attributes. So that's a pretty low hanging fruit one. But the other one that I will look at is in the interaction design, in the animation and the way that something moves can also be very indicative of the brand. Again, if we go back to my days at Starwood Hotels, if I was going to design an app for a brand like St. Regis versus a brand like W, I would animate those very, very differently. St. Regis is about old school luxury, it's about the spoke and really kind of like hands on the sort of attention to detail. It's going to be slower, it's going to be more deliberate, it's going to be more meaningful. Whenever it happens. It's going to have a bit more of a flourish than something like WWE is about design, music, fashion, very contemporary, very the What's New and next. So the animations are going to be snappier. They're going to be crisper. They're going to be sharper. They're probably going to happen more often there's going to be more movement in what that app is to reinforce the brand position. This may sound like little stuff, but it all adds up in the aggregate to really give you an effect to give you a feeling about really what's going on in this app and, and all this other stuff that it really adds up to a much richer experience than just a flat design on a page. And let's actually talk about that, because a lot of what we talked about is what people generally focus on, they want to focus on design, they want to focus on some of the technology basics, they want to focus on interaction. But there's some of this stuff that goes beyond visual design that you have to pay attention to. And you have to think about, because I've found that a lot of these little little details really make the experience. These are going to be things like what we just talked about animation, the way your interface moves, the way that different things come in, and they load can really set the personality to tone and make it feel special to think about gestures to think about some of those interaction patterns that are there shortcuts for pro users, people who use this app a lot. Is that going to be a segment you're actually going to have or is this Gonna be seeing where people always just use it occasionally. And so it's probably wasted effort to be able to do that. To think about sound and audio that is there whenever I'm actually going through and using this. Is there an audio part of this experience? Not everybody has their headphones on all the time or not everybody has their sound off. So again, how do I make it work with and without sound? How do I start to think about other dimensions and different aspects of interaction for things like haptics, which is really the vibration that you can feel in your phone, if you have one of the newer iPhones and if you have iOS 10, or 11, they're actually interactions that whenever I go through and scroll, or I delete an email, or I do something like that, you feel that little thump as as a reinforcing feeling in the phone. So again, how am I gonna incorporate haptics in to be able to be part of the interface to again help just add another dimension to that. And then the last piece to really think about that every designer needs to do and most of them don't, is to think about how important content and especially the tone of voice what it is you're doing is in your app, because again, if I want to get stuff done I want it to be personal. I want it to be relatable. I mean, this is the device that I have with me all the time. But this is the problem is that too often? We just simply design it we I locked so much space for copy. And then so okay, well now go in and just write me two sentences, because that's what it has there. It's an idiotic way of approaching things that we need to think about what is it that we're trying to communicate? How can we use content and tone of voice to be able to really leverage that and to make sure that that's part of our process and not simply an afterthought? And because you also need to realize that copywriters are, I think put in one of the most difficult positions in this entire process, because as designers or IAS, or even developers, we have a product that people get excited about. They like seeing prototypes, they like seeing designs, they like seeing wireframes these are visual artifacts that they feel like they can really interact with that they can use and get excited about. They can pin it up on a wall, they can show their boss or their friends or their family. Coffee is very different. I don't know that anybody has, you know, been really excited run down the hall and pinned a coffee cup on the wall and said, Oh, I love that coffee. They should but they didn't. And they also are then saddled with the fact that everybody feels like they write, I write on social media, I write emails. I'm really funny. I'm hysterical on Twitter. But that's the problem is that everybody thinks they can do it. But nobody really knows how to do it well, and there's an art to it. And there's a science to it that needs to be respected. So I also just want to call out that I think, for all the copywriters out there, you need to make sure that you're giving them their due and that they are part of this process. So the last thing to really talk about with this as we go through this kind of Crash Course, is what I'd referenced in the beginning. And that is ownable key moments. Because a lot of cases, the value that your app is driven by will many times come down to two, three, maybe four key moments at most, that are really going to define its value. They're going to define what makes it different and what makes it special. But you need to be clear about what are those moments and to make sure that they are truly differentiated. So here again, let's go back to the Star Wars app. The Star Wars app, the ownable key moments were one was booking because we wanted it to be special. We wanted to rethink it, we wanted it to be where you could do it with one hand going through an airport. So it was a really ownable really simple moment. For people who wanted to book a hotel room. The second one was going to be really the Onproperty experience, whenever you got there that we were going to curate your content, we would let you check in without going to the front desk, we would let you open up your room key. So there was that sort of Onproperty experience that that was the moment that we really wanted to own. And those were really the two biggest ones that we focused on. Now. The Onproperty one, I'm sure you could argue had two or three moments inside of that. So maybe an aggregate will say there were four total. But those were the ones we're just really crisp and clear on the fact that those were the places that we were going to excel, the rest of the content was going to be in there. But those were the moments that really mattered. That was where consumers were going to see value. That's where they were going to see differentiation and that's what really was going to matter. Now, the other part that I would argue that really should be one of these vulnerable moments, is your onboarding experience. Because in my in my expertise, and in my experience, what I see is that most Designers go through and they design the entire app, they design the experience all the flows at the end, they go, Oh, crap, we need to have an onboarding experience. Whenever people first launch the app, and we teach them how to use this stuff, it's an afterthought in that case, and that is a really dumb way to approach it. Because the thing that I can tell you is that the average person will decide if an app has value. And they will decide if they're going to keep it in the first two to three minutes of using an app. And that is a incredibly short window. And so if you were chewing that up with a mediocre onboarding experience, then a lot of people are going to abandon or leave your app. So make sure that one of those key moments is to make sure that you're introducing people into the app in a way that makes sense and makes them want to come back and use it again. So all of this really leads to for me, what is a very simple key thought and it is not one that was my insight. It's one that belongs to Steven Krug. If you've ever read his book, which is fantastic called Don't make me think really one of the things that he talks about in that book is the ability to Develop short term memory loss. And I think that to be a great creative to be a great app designer to design anything for the consumer that really excels. You need to have willful short term memory loss. And what that means is that as I'm designing this experience, as I'm doing all this work, I can step out of my own head, look at what it is that I'm doing. And say, Does this make sense? If I knew nothing about this app, if I hadn't been in all the meetings on all the conference calls and all this other crap that goes on? Would I know what to do? Who does it communicate? The better you are at that the more brutal that you are that the more focused that you are on that to look at something with fresh eyes and say, is this really working, and to not get diluted into falling in love with your own work to falling in love with all the amount of work that had been done to rationalizing all the excuses and the compromises that we made? That took a really great idea and kind of launched a mediocre neuter down pilot crap. Those are the things that you have to be able to do is to constantly step back and understand that you have to be able to do that. Because the work when it launches the app when it is on somebody's phone is the only experience that they understand. They don't understand the conference calls, the compromises, the late nights, the all the other stuff that went into it that led to this final product. They don't know or care about any of that. It's just Is it good or not? Does it have value or not? It's a very binary, very black and white sort of way of looking at things. And you have to make sure that you have that level of brutality, that level of discipline in what it is that you do. This is just scratching the surface. This is just the crash course, into app design. But I think hopefully, we try to cover some of the things that maybe you haven't thought about before maybe some of the things that you need to incorporate into your work because there is some subtlety there is some science and there is a lot of complexity to designing something that is very simple. And so hopefully, you've been able to get some thing out of that. If you didn't, if you still have more questions, if there's stuff that you want to get more answers to if there are things you agree with or don't agree with, you can keep the copy conversation going to simply go to Facebook type in The Crazy One podcast and like that page, I'm posting articles every week, every Friday, I post inspirations about the best articles that I've seen that week, people are asking questions, happy to engage as quickly as I can. So go over, give it a like and be part of that community. If you found this show to be valuable at all, if there are notes that you take, if you subscribe to this, and this is something that you look forward to whenever you see it pop up in your feed, do me a favor, go to your favorite podcast platform, head over to iTunes, whatever it might be. And please leave a review. It can be as simple as simply clicking on the stars write a few words, however short or long you're feeling at that particular time is great, but it really helps the show it helps with the ranking brings more people to the show, and lets people know that this isn't me just talking to myself that there might actually be something valuable here and that I just don't think that that other people feel that as well. You can find out more about the show. You can get the show notes that we talked about. Look at some of the diagrams look at some of the related articles. Just head over to podcast Stephen Gates. Calm Stephen is s t e p h e n. Gates like Bill Gates comm you can get all that stuff there. As always the boys done illegal want me to remind you that all the views here are my own. They do not represent any of my current or former employers. And finally, I say it every single time because I mean it every single time. But thank you for your time. I know that time is truly the only real luxury that any of us have. And I'm always incredibly humbled. If you want to spend any of it with me, Go forth, make great apps and until next time, stay crazy.