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knowledge games: games designed to help you get more innovative, creative results in your work. We’ll show you not only how to play knowledge games but how to design them so they fit your own specific work goals.
As I’ve been working with the iPad I’ve been intrigued by some of the UI differences between it and the iPhone. One of the first things you notice when playing with the iPad is the popovers that display in context of the element you’ve interacted with. On an iPhone, the same interaction would take you to a new view.
This got me thinking about how popovers might be used outside of applications and in the homescreens where your app icons live. Specifically, I was thinking of how I could use popovers to peek at specific content from an app instead of launching the entire application. For example, peek at recent emails, see what AIM buddies are online, etc.
Sure I could fire up the application and navigate to the information I’m interested in, but I’m lazy and am not interested in doing that. So, here’s some mockups of what I’m thinking. The popover could be displayed by double-tapping the app icon.
Peeking at Twitterific to see only recent tweets
Peek at AIM to see who's online
See what the current weather is like
The person who creates the app can dictate what shows up in the Peek functionality of the app, but the goal would be to have a minimal amount of interactivity. Otherwise, what’s the point? The user could just launch the application.
It would also be important to keep content to a minimum. For example, don’t show an entire Twitter stream, just show the most recent tweets. Maybe even limit it and have the option to see more tweets that launches the app.
Customization of each Peek view might be interesting, but it may not be necessary. For example, setting Twitterific to show recent replies versus recent tweets.
When you think about it, this feature mimics in some ways the Dashboard in OS X. So, if these views are already created, why not have a Dashboard app on the iPad?
To add these Peek views as widgets to the Dashboard app you could drag the icons onto the Dashboard app icon similar to the way folders work in iPhone OS 4. The only difference would be that the Peek views appear in the Dashboard now and the actual apps themselves don’t leave the homescreen.
Like any quickly executed idea I’m sure there’s flaws in this, but I thought it’d be fun to mock up. You can see the full resolution mockups on my Flickr page.
Here’s a portion of my presentation from yesterday at Mobile Monday Colorado. Thanks to everyone who came out and for all the great questions.
Communicating thoughts and ideas can be one of the biggest challenges in an industry that relies so heavily on visual interpretation and recognition. If you’re working on an idea by yourself, with a colleague or a client, it’s one thing to see an idea in your mind and another to get it out for others to evaluate. As a UX designer, sketching is a daily necessity. It’s one of the most valuable tools you can wield.
At EffectiveUI, we recognized just how important sketching is that we made custom EffectiveUI sketchbooks. They’ve evolved over the years in design and purpose. These sketchbooks were extremely popular within the company and beyond. When we’d visit clients they’d come to meeting with their EffectiveUI sketchbook in hand.
Then, along came the iPad. Everyone at EffectiveUI was excited about this new magical device. In fact, the concept for Ideate was born when Jonathan Branam gave me a call out of the blue exclaiming, “I want to build an iPad application”. After some brainstorming we decided to bring all the usefulness of our EffectiveUI sketchbooks to the iPad. We named the app “Ideate”.
Why take something so simply splendid and make it digital? Well, we wrestled with that a bit. Believe me, I love the smell of Sharpies as much as the next person. Give me a black pen and a highlighter and I can share ideas with the best of them. However, there are limitations that I kept experiencing when using good ol’ pen and paper. Those were the things we were looking to eliminate with Ideate. We weren’t looking to replace the sketching experience, but enhance it.
Every time I want to share a sketch I go to our copier/scanner, scan my sketch and email it to myself. I then email that on to someone. Or, I use my iPhone to snap a picture, but if lighting is bad, my sketch looks bad and that’s not good. It was this experience that drew us to making sharing sketches easy. The thought of sharing sketches right from my iPad to Flickr or via email really excites me.
Another thing I would do is draw out a template as a base for what I would be sketching and then make multiple copies to sketch on. For example, to accurately represent an idea for multiple states of a web application I would draw out a web browser, make copies of that and then sketch over those copies. The custom EffectiveUI sketchbooks alleviated some of this, but we thought it could be even better. As a result, we incorporated a wide variety of Templates you can load as backgrounds and sketch right over them. Bye, bye copy machine.
For every design, there are always sources of inspiration. I always bookmark sites, take screenshots, clip magazines and maintain my own little inspiration library. We wanted to bring this idea into Ideate as well. The web is an infinite source of inspiration, so why ignore that? You can clip images from the web via Safari, bring in images from your Photo Library or access Clips that come with the application to use as reference, provide inspiration or add to your sketch.
Designing and building an iPad application was particularly interesting, especially because we didn’t have access to the device. To get over this hump, Jonathan fashioned a prototype of wood, paper and boxing tape. Lo-fi, yes, but also incredibly helpful. He also made it so you could slide different printed Templates in and out. This prototype helped us make some valuable decisions, like the placement of the pen tray. It’s placed there so you can quickly switch between pens with your thumb (if you’re right-handed) as your sketching, but expect customization soon.
The process of bringing this application together was completely agile and while we cut features we made sure the application was still useful. One of the things that really helped make progress was relying on the user interface elements and guidelines Apple gives you to work with. They put a lot of thought into the interface behind the iPad, so we leveraged that as much as possible.
Hand Template
One thing we found and didn’t really expect was how useful Ideate is for other industries. As we were working on the application people in the company mentioned the idea to their doctors, architect friends and teachers. What we found is that the same ideas around Templates, sharing and drawing as a communication tool resonated with so many people. This pushed us to make more custom Templates to support these use cases we came across.
The way this app came together was quite the experience and a real testament to the kind of talent I get to work with at EffectiveUI. It was amazing to see a short phone call turn in to a finished application so quickly. We had an in-house concept artist create the Templates and Clips, development happening in-between client work and design changing on-the-fly as user feedback rolled in. It was fun.
Thinking through an iPad application and seeing it built has done wonders to help me understand what it takes to make something for this new device. Will Ideate replace the familiar pen and paper? No. The application is another tool that can be used to support your own thought process. For myself, it’s something I’ve been waiting for.
Ideate is available in the App Store for $3.99. You can learn more about Ideate on the website or follow @ideateapp on Twitter.