Apple’s official method to design an iOS app 📱
Hi 👋
A couple weeks ago I discovered a real hidden gem: a Keynote file called App Design Workbook.
And what I found inside this file got me quite surprised: it contained an entire methodology, published by Apple, on how to design an iOS app!
It’s quite rare for Apple to share with developers their insights on how to maximize the chances of creating a successful app, so this document really caught my attention!
I actually covered the entire document during a livestream last week, but in this email I want to share with you an overview of what this method looks like, to convince you that it’s really a must read!
Let’s start with the most important: this is not a technical methodology.
It doesn’t talk about how to implement features or architecture the code of your future app.
There are some technical slides, but they’re aimed at people who are just getting started with programming, so an experienced developer won’t learn anything new from them.
This method actually focuses on what comes before the implementation:
how do you decide which app to build?
which features you will include?
how do you test and validate your ideas?
To help answer these questions, and many others, the method defines 5 steps: Define, Prototype, Test, Validate and Iterate.
And inside each of these steps, you find small exercises like this one:
Each of these small exercise is a way for you to reflect upon your app idea and confront to real world users, with the goal of ultimately defining the features that you app will offer:
Later, you’ll also discover some really cool tricks: such as implementing a simple interactive prototype of your app directly inside Keynote!
And near the end you’ll also get a crash course for a very valuable skill: being able to conduct user testing and deducing actionable feedback:
When I covered this method in detail during my livestream, it took me a bit more than 2 hours to go over everything.
So as you can imagine, what I’ve shared here is nothing but a short teaser to pique your interest!
I really recommend that you take the time to go over the full method, either by reading the slides or listening to my livestream: designing an app is a skill that we often overlook as developers, but it’s a very essential skill to possess.
So any knowledge that we can gain will pay dividends sooner or later 😌
That’s all for this email, thanks for reading it!
If you’ve enjoyed it, feel free to forward it
to your friends and colleagues 🙌
I wish you an amazing week!
❤️
