What are these trends, and what do they look like?

1. The End of Skeuomorphism

A controversial topic among certain designers, many people are calling for the end of skeuomorphic design. This style makes visual comparisons with real-world objects, to help users understand how the apps work – like your calendar app that looks like a traditional paper calendar.

Some people argue that these mechanisms aren’t needed anymore now that the majority of users are familiar with smartphones. Many designers want the freedom to present digital interfaces differently, without the (sometimes) clunky metaphors that skeuomorphic design uses. There’s value in this argument, since these metaphors can waste valuable screen space to mimic their real-world counterparts, and sometimes unnecessarily.

But it’s easy to forget that not all users are early adopters. A lot of people are just getting their first smart phones, and interfaces that iPhone users may be bored of already, might be a useful stepping stone into smart phones for the millions of new first-time Android customers.

2. Hidden Menus

Along with less metaphoric interfaces, we’re seeing more and more examples of minimised navigation, hiding menus behind single buttons that don’t take up so much space.

There’s a long-held interface design theory that encourage designers to reduce the amount of thinking that users need to do to find what they’re looking for – and to get them to where they want to be in as few taps (or clicks) as possible. Minimising the interface elements slightly goes against this grain, as it adds at least one more tap for users, and obscures the options from being seen immediately.

But as interface animations get more sophisticated and less clunky, these two-step navigation menus may be worth the lack of visibility in menu items. If users feel a clean interface is worth an extra tap, this trend could introduce an exploration of the use of screen space. As designers though, we should be careful not to sacrifice understanding for space, and to consider the increasing number of new smartphone users entering the audience base.

3. Larger Type

The way we interact with digital displays has come a long way in the past few years, with new format displays at both the large and small ends of the spectrum: large LCD screens, HD, touch-screens, tablet and pocket-sized mobiles.

This sudden diversity of screen sizes has meant that people have rightly demanded flexible content, and alongside this, a growing number of interfaces are incorporating larger type, and images too. Larger type means that users can clearly read content on whichever device they choose, but it also reinforces the trend towards minimising navigation, giving content more room to breath.

Of course, there are rumours that Apple’s iOS platform is undergoing a big redesign when they release the new iPhone later in the year, causing speculation about what aesthetics will be pushed and dropped by the masses. Whatever happens with Apple’s iOS, we’re entering a more diverse period of mobile interface design, which can only be a good thing.

The markets for tablets are increasing in the same way that smart phones did. We’re now seeing more and more tablets at lower price points, and an increasing attitude that tablet sales will overtake desktop & laptop computers in the next year or so. This signals the need for businesses and organisations to start taking tablets more seriously, but the costs of developing for both platforms can be intimidating. So we pose the question, do you really need an app for iPhone and iPad?

The differences between iPad and iPhone apps are significant, and since iPhone apps run on iPad, the decision can be difficult to make. But there are several things to consider about the way your app is presented and used by your audience.

Screen Size & Usage

An obvious difference is the size of each device. At 9.5” x 7.3”, the iPad offers much more screen space for your apps to take advantage of. This size means that users tend to use tablets more for productivity and consuming content via apps.

Although iPhone apps run on the iPad, they don’t have the same quality of resolution, as they’re just stretched to fill the screen (or presented at iPhone size). It’s also worth considering that the additional space doesn’t just give you the chance to make your app bigger, but also provides an opportunity to use the space differently. Tablet apps introduce the possibility for separate panes for content and navigation, and the screen can be comfortably split into sections so that you can maximise what you give to your users in a single moment.

Portability & Business Uses

People carry phones with them everywhere, which means that smart phones will always have a unique sense of immediacy that tablets could be generally left out of (although small tablets may be set to challenge that). This means that tasks and experiences that are spontaneous and time-driven, like checking what time the last bus home is, are suited perfectly to smart phones.

Where tablets have the edge is for apps that don’t need to move around that much. Catalogues and displays in retail spaces, exhibitions and heritage buildings are perfect candidates for static applications of a tablet.

The increase in business uses of iPads, such as the increase in retail stores starting to replace their till systems with tablets, just shows how much potential there is in targeting business markets, as well as consumers.

Start thinking about developing iPad apps

Almost every Fortune 500 company is using iPad apps as part of their strategy, and as tablet sales increase, not just in the consumer, but business markets too – it seems like tablet apps are going to be a crucial part of all organisations that want to keep up.

We’ve recently launched support for iPad apps, so even if you don’t have the budget to pay for custom app development, you can break into the iPad app market yourself by signing up to AppFurnace Plus and using the easy-to-use platform to create an app.

CodeAcademy has introduced courses for many popular services, including Youtube, Bitly and SoundCloud. The free online courses walk you through how you can post and retrieve data from these services through their APIs (aka. Application Programming Interfaces).

An API is just a way for your apps to access some of the functionality of one of these services, using the AppFurnace Code tab.

There are already a few examples of how to plug your apps into Parse, enabling you to store data from your apps online, and then fetch it back from the server. That example is as simple to include in your app as copying & pasting, but with a bit more knowledge about how Parse works, the possibilities are huge.

Integrating your app with a database could mean including High Score tables for games and quizzes, keeping Analytics of how people use your apps and what features they use the most, or even allowing users to share comments with each other whilst they use your app. Some of the AppFurnace users have discussed allowing people to track their GPS routes as they walk around, which could be stored in a database and retrieved later.

All of these things are possible with AppFurnace, and all they require is just a little bit of planning when it comes to organising your database with Parse, and some tweaking to the examples that are already in the Forums.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Whether you’re an AppFurnace developer or web developer, JavaScript should become an essential part of your skill set. To get a better understanding of how it works, we’d recommend these short free online courses at Code Academy. You’ll get walked through the basics, start coding instantly and get a bit of knowledge about things like variables and objects along the way.

We chose to support JavaScript in AppFurnace because it’s so widely used by Web Developers, is flexible, and is quite easy to start using for beginners by copying-and-pasting code. We already have all sorts of example code snippets that you can paste into your apps in our Support  Forums, but you may want to take more control.

By learning JavaScript, you can do all kinds of great thing in your apps, including:

• Collect user input
• Link your app to your website or database on the web
• Add your own pop-up interfaces
• Include more refined sound controls
• Adding game logic to your apps (e.g. keeping scores)

Games & Quizzes

If you want to create games for your users, you’ll need some JavaScript logic. You can use it to remember which levels players have completed, keep scores and track the time users spend in your app. You can even add game logic like this to other kinds of apps, making them more engaging to your users.

One thread in the Forum starts to explore recording game scores for your users

Sharing Data, User Profiles & High Scores

Using online database service like Parse.com are an easy way to make your apps communicate with the outside world. You could allow users to share comments with each other, keep track of the locations they’ve visited, or create high score tables to get them in the competitive spirit.

Here’s an example from the Forums about how to store data from your apps

Why aren’t these included as “Drag-and-Drop” features in AppFurnace?

The reason some of these things aren’t possible within AppFurnace without having to do some JavaScript yourself, is that many developers want to use them differently. Even something quite straight forward, like a database connection, can get complicated when you start to prototype your app. Thinking about when to save data, and what happens if the phone can’t connect to the internet. These design problems have many different solutions, and each app may need a combination of solutions to make it work for that app. In these cases, we give designers the freedom to write their own scripts and make their own decisions and innovations.

All in all, JavaScript is a scripting language that’s immensely powerful and easy to pick-up with Code Academy. Why not get in now, and start taking more control over your apps.

Technology has made it possible to interact with our environment by scanning codes, moving around, and in some cases, by applying augmented reality to our surroundings, but these interactions are reliant on people using mobile devices (usually phones). However, there are artists that have been experimenting with different ways to engage their audience with the environment without even knowing that there was a phone doing any work at all.

AppFurnace isn’t just used by organisations, but by artists too, who are thinking about the platform as a tool for accessing the technology without necessarily delivering it via a phone.

For Circumstance’s Vicinity Songs performances, they asked audience members to each carry a purpose-made wooden cube around with them in the group, as they followed actors around a town centre. Each box contained a speaker, it was also location-aware and played a different musical score depending on where it was carried, so that each time the performance was given, the audience would create a unique melody created by the combinations of which boxes were carried together, along which routes of the performance.

The speakers were controlled by smartphones running AppFurnace apps, with the wooden box concealing the technology from audience members. But by giving them an object that had no other use than playing music, and without any controls, the audience was free to focus on the performance and experiment with how they could change the music, or add their own by tapping the wood like drums.

But, Vicinity Songs is just one example of exploring this use of AppFurnace.

The REACT Hub’s Ghosts in the Garden is another project attempting to take the phone out of site-specific experiences by hiding devices in a beautiful ornate box, hung around users necks, as they walked through the Georgian pleasure garden in Bath. The audience were told the colourful history of the gardens from a crackling speaker, and encouraged to choose a path through the garden that would affect their experience. By adding the physical dynamic of props, the audience were allowed that extra element of fantasy, turning a walk around a park into an adventure through history.

If you’re put-off using smartphones for your performance pieces, due to them being too distracting from your aesthetic or your narrative, this kind of abstraction can be the solution – especially when the technology is as small and readily available as a smartphone.

Photo by Sophie Wainwright

While I have been enjoying teaching AppFurnace to a class of Digital Media Students at the University of the West of England, in other parts of the world AppFurnace expert users have been teaching impromptu AppFurnace classes to artists and students. Here are just some that we are aware of:

• Over in Hong Kong Sound artist Duncan Speakman gave a  workshop  to artists and students of the Hong Kong design institute as part of Microwave festival in Hong Kong
• In Bergen, Norway, Ben Dalton has been teaching AppFurnace to design students at the National Academy of Art and Design
• And finally, all the way down under, Fran Panetta gave a workshop in Sydney at the ABC where they produced a walk around Sydney’s China Town.

If you are running AppFurnace workshops please let us know and we’ll add you to our list.

Please note: these instructions are written for Mac users, as the Apple publishing process requires you to have access to a Mac computer. If you’re publishing an app through AppFurnace, but don’t have access to a Mac computer, contact us through support@appfurnace.com and we’ll see if we can help you.

Create an App ID

First, we’ll need to create an App ID for our app:

1. Log on to https://developer.apple.com/
2. Navigate to the “iOS Provisioning Portal”, if you’re not already there
3. Click “App IDs” from the left-hand panel
4. Click the “New App ID” button
   
   
   NOTE: Once you’ve created a new App ID in this screen, it can never be changed or deleted, so make sure you enter the correct information before clicking “Submit”

5. For Description, enter: Any <MyCompanyName> App
   (replace <MyCompanyName> with your own company name)
6. For Bundle Seed ID: Select “Use Team ID”
7. For bundle identifier, enter: com.mycompanyname.*
   (Replace com.mycompanyname with your own domain name, but with the parts reversed. For example, if you have a .co.uk address, use uk.co.mycompanyname.*)
8. Double check the entries, as this App ID can never be changed or deleted once it’s created
9. Click Submit

Creating the AppStore Mobile Provisioning File

The AppStore mobileprovisioning file is a file that will be embedded into your app and is required – along with your p12 details – for your app to be accepted onto the Apple App Store.

1. Log on to https://developer.apple.com/
2. Navigate to the “iOS Provisioning Portal”, if you’re not already there
3. Click Provisioning from the left-hand panel
4. Click the Distribution Tab
5. Click New Profile
   
6. For distribution method: select App Store
7. For profile name: use MyCompanyName App Store
8. For App ID: choose the App ID you just created (e.g. Any MyCompanyName App)
9. Hit Submit
10. You should now see the item listed under Development Provisioning Profiles
    

11. Click Download next to your profile (e.g. MyCompanyName App Store)
12. Keep this file somewhere safe as you’ll need to upload it to AppFurnace, along with your .p12 file from earlier

Once you have these files, you can upload them to the Publishing Interface in AppFurnace.

Please note: these instructions are written for Mac users, as the Apple publishing process requires you to have access to a Mac computer. If you’re publishing an app through AppFurnace, but don’t have access to a Mac computer, contact us through support@appfurnace.com and we’ll see if we can help you.

Creating the .p12 file

The .p12 file includes the certificates that Apple software needs to build apps, which can be uploaded to your Apple Developer account. Once you’ve created this file, you can use it to create an executable version of your app for use on your phone – but more crucially, you’ll need it to publish your app on the Apple AppStore.

1. Open the Keychain Access program on your computer (found in Applications/Utilities)
2. Open Keychain Access > Preferences, and open the Certificates tab
3. For “Online Certificate Status Protocol” and “Certificate Revocation List”, select “Off”
   
4. Open Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant > Request a Certificate From a Certificate Authority
   Note: In the main Keychain Access window, make sure that you don’t have a private key selected, otherwise this process will not work correctly.
5. Enter the email address and name that  you used to register in the iOS Developer Program for the email address and common name fields.
   You don’t need to enter a CA Email Address
   
   
6. Select “Saved to Disk”
7. Select “Let me specify key pair information”
8. Click Continue
9. Enter a filename and choose a destination (e.g. “certificate.certSigningRequest”)
10. Click Save
11. For “Key Size” choose “2048 bits”
12. For “Algorithm” choose “RSA”
13. Click Continue and the certificate request file will be saved to the destination you chose in step 9
14. This will create a private key in Keychain Access with the Common Name you entered earlier. This will appear in Keychain Access as a key icon with your name written next to it (e.g. John Smith)
    
    
15. Log on to https://developer.apple.com/ using the Team Agent account (the main user account for your iOS developer profile)
16. Navigate to the “iOS Provisioning Portal” if you’re not already there
    
    
17. Click “Certificates” from the left-hand panel
18. Click the “Distribution” tab
19. Click “Request Certificate”
20. Click “Choose File” & choose the certificate request file you’ve just made from the list
21. Click Submit
22. Click the ‘Accept Certificate Signing Request’ button
23. Your distribution certificate should now be listed under Current Distribution Certificate. If it doesn’t appear automatically, you may need to refresh the page.
    
    

24. Click the “Download” button, and you’ll get a distribution.cer file. Once it’s downloaded, click it and it will open in the Keychain Access program we used earlier.
    NOTE: You don’t need to upload this file to AppFurnace.

25. If you see a popup saying ‘Do you want to add the certificate to a keychain?’ choose ‘login’ and hit Add
    
    

Now we need to export both the certificate file you just created, and the private key that we created earlier, to a single .p12 file that we’ll then upload to AppFurnace.

1. Back in the Keychain Access program, select the login keychain from the top-left panel
2. Select “Keys” from the “Category” menu in the left panel
3. Find the private key associated with your iPhone Distribution Certificate. This private key is called <First Name> <Last Name> (e.g. John Smith)
4. Expand this item, and inside you should see the Certificate (iPhone Distribution: <First Name> <Last Name> )
5. Select BOTH the key and the certificate (Hold CMD and click both items)
   
6. Right click and select Export 2 Items…
7. Save your key in the Personal Information Exchange (.p12) file format, and call the file “Certificates.p12”
8. You will be prompted to create a password that is used when you attempt to import this key on another computer
9. Set the password to blank in both cases

This is the final p12 file you’ll need, so keep it in a safe place.

Next time, we’ll be covering how to create mobile provisioning files in the Developer interface.

• Added iPhone 5 support to AppFurnace Preview. Use the same process to make your app lay out properly on the new taller screen that you can use for Android apps. See the tutorial here: https://appfurnace.zendesk.com/entries/20781202-making-your-pages-lay-out-properly-on-phones-with-different-sized-screens
  • Note that AppFurnace Player is not yet iPhone 5 compatible. However, Packaged Apps will appear full-screen on iPhone 5 devices.
• New Publishing System, making the app publishing process more accessible (see the Support Forums for more information)
• Updated Dashboard interface
• Scaled down display of Retina apps in AppFurnace Preview to 50%.
• Modified event checking on geo features so that all features exited by the user will fire their moveout functions before any features now entered fire their movein events. Crossing handlers on lines are always fired last.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug that prevented default map layers being loaded if custom maps are enabled but not present
• Buttons are now multi-touch capable on iOS and most new Android phones.
• Fix for error message shown when using data URI images.

In previous posts, we’ve talked about Prototyping designs in AppFurnace near the end of a design cycle, as a way to test the interfaces and interaction that users have with your app. But prototyping can be used right at the start of your project lifespan, as a way to show people what you’re talking about in a relatable way. This can help you gain feedback give you a platform to explore what kind of potential your app idea may have.

Rapid Prototyping is basically, making rough examples of your app that can be tested, shared, expanded on, or just thrown away – without having to spend weeks designing and developing them. Until recently, these kinds of explorations were done on paper, or using HTML pages that allow you to click through the interface on a computer, and although these can still be good methods to explaining an idea visually, they don’t offer the tactility that a phone-based prototype does.

In some of the App Development Workshops we ran recently, we asked participants to collaboratively prototype ideas for apps in small teams, using AppFurnace. In only a few hours, we had several examples of some really interesting ideas, downloaded on our phones, so that we could test and explore the concepts ourselves.

This kind of exercise allows your audience to have a much deeper understanding of your concept than if you just showed them some paper mock-ups, because they can see and feel how your app might work in their hands, on their own devices.

If you’re pitching an app concept to clients, or internally, spending a few hours creating a rapid prototype could help you explain your thoughts in a more tangible way, and draw your audience straight into the project life cycle by connecting them to it on their own devices, and not just an abstract idea on a white board. The benefits of this don’t just end in these meetings either, because your prototype will be sitting on your audience’s mobile devices once you’ve left the pitch, ready to be explored further.

Rapid prototypes also have the added benefit of showing your audience a working example of your thoughts, not just static images. So, if you’re getting ready to share your ideas for an app, you could consider making a prototype, and giving your audience a fuller understanding of your concepts.