Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App | Hacker News Reader

Design Mistakes We Made in Our iPhone App

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82 pointsjggube14 comments

Great article, thanks for posting. I find the 'Mistakes we made with X' posts to be the most useful thing I read on HN.

I particularly liked the approach they took with the "first run" experience, or rather the second approach after they learnt their mistakes.

I can't count the number of times I've downloaded an app and have been smacked in the face with the exact same screen of two text boxes (username, password) and two buttons (log in, sign up).

I instantly forwarded this link to our lead designer for the insights like "Recognizing that no design is sacred". Really reinforces the idea that reiteration based on actual user feedback is important. We're about to launch an app so this was helpful! Thanks

Most iPhone apps UIs are a mess because they include multitudes of interactions (tap to open a panel, slide up to open a panel, slide to the side to open a menu), and layers upon layers of panels without an easy to navigate back and forth. It's hell.

One UI that solved navigation in a satisfactory way is Windows Phone. Sliding sideways to navigate back and forth, and expanding details in place on tap just makes sense.

Not sure what your point is, since the mode of interaction wasn't the problem with this app. Trying to start a WinMo vs iOS war, perhaps?

> We neglected to consider the importance of other categories of tasks, such as [viewing, updating]

These kinds of tasks were actually more common than creation — especially on mobile...

Sounds like a business analysis problem, then. Don't build for what you think your users will do or what they tell you they'll do, build for what they actually do.

I'm not sure this was a "design" problem per se.

What a user will do at their computer will often be different than what they do on a mobile application for the same application. It can be hard to predict even if you do ask your users what they think they would use on a mobile application.

Maybe, but a massive change in interaction in this case seems like an odd logical leap to me.

You have a website that does a specific thing. You, presumably, have analytics that show what users do on that site. In the case of Freshbooks you'd come up with some kind of ratio about invoices -- say, for every 1 invoice created, 10 are viewed (that seems probably like it's close to the truth, if anything the ratio of views would be higher).

To then turn around and make creation of invoices the main interaction point on the app, despite everything you know about your site's visitors, seems like a logical misstep.

I hope I don't come off needlessly critical. My point is that you should have data to support changing interaction paradigms.

Another thought is maybe the Freshbooks folks thought the app would be an avenue for customer acquisition, in which case creating an invoice would certainly be the first thing they do (because new customers have no old invoices to view).

Very insightful. Each point seems obvious after the fact, but it's good to get some validation on this 'obviousness'.

How do you handle the reports after login? Is it just a webview presenting the same content as the web app? I assume it's not too js heavy, so you don't run into performance issues?

Avrum from FreshBooks here (one of the authors of the post).

After login, the 'Create Account' and 'Login' buttons are replaced with two links: 'Email me a link to Reports' and 'View Reports in Safari'.

The primary call-to-action is the email because we recognize that the viewing experience for a traditional accounting report is still best on a computer (we actually say that in the copy). That said, if you need access immediately we provide it in a webview that shows the same content as the webapp (as you guessed).

Performance is fine on these pages but ultimately not as good native.

I like the thinking with the emailed link. So you basically have three buttons, one for email, one for view in safari, one for the webview? wouldn't it be more direct to show the webview immediately and give the other two options through some contextual menu?

Nice writeup, I'm a fan of FreshBooks on the web. You guys should add better keywords for your app so your customers can find you:

vat,gst,bill,receipt,budget,report,finance,income,customer,profit,business,money,crm,ocr,pdf,bookkeeping,estimate

I'd generated these keyword suggestions with a tool we'd built for my startup at https://appstorerankings.net

As good as your tool may be, HN generally frowns on linkspam and SEO "hacking", and you happen to have placed yourself in the worst possible intersection of both.

I think you have misunderstood, as the post is specifically app store oriented. Still, I'm sure the app's authors would be delighted to see this post in an email form in their inbox.

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