Design an App

We’ll make no bones about it – good design is hard. AppFurnace makes it easy to actually make an app once you have figured out a great design, but it can’t replace the skill and flair of a great designer.

As more and more apps get developed best practice design and interaction techniques will become more established. A good start is to read Apple’s own design guidelines – but remember as an AppFurnace user you don’t have to worry about information about xCode or using Apple’s development environment.

You should also try out apps that are similar to the one you have in mind to see if there are already some familiar styles that users might have come to expect. For example it is common for a lot of guides and business apps to have links at the bottom of the screen – see Guardian screen shot for an example. It is also common for information screens to have “Back” buttons at the top to take you back to the overview or menu screen.

We’ll be building up our own set of design guidelines over the coming months but one area we are very familiar with is location aware apps. Take a look at some of our research papers and published design guidelines.