Mobile Design with Alli Dryer – Podcast S03 E03

Capptivate and raywenderlich.com

Mic: Yeah, we actually use it a lot on the websites when we’re putting the tutorials and the video series together. If we’re looking for inspiration and that’s exactly how I use the site. I go through the, I can’t remember exactly what the menus called, the drop down menu where you’ve got all those listed.

You can go through and you can click and it’ll bring back just those where they apply. We use that if we want to. If for instance a recent video series we did on collection views we were looking for particular animations about how to move the cells around.

First port of call is Capptivate; let’s have a look at how other apps do that. Also, it helps us as well because we can relate or rather our audience can relate what we’re teaching them to an app that’s in production. It’s not just something that we can say that we’ve done this, but also we were inspired by such and such an app. Therefore they’ve got that one to one correlation between what they’re learning and then they can go and play with it. It helps us on all sorts of different levels.

Alli: I’m really glad to hear that.

Learning Design

Jake: As I mentioned earlier I feel comfortable with some elements of design, but when it comes right down to actually picking out a color palette and starting to put assets together I’m pretty weak. If I want to improve my, if I want to become a great iOS designer, how would I do that? What would you recommend?

Alli: I think there are a couple of sources I would probably direct you to. There are websites that can help a lot with color palettes like Cooler and things like that. Also, if you just take some time to hone your observation skills.

When you see something that’s working take a hard look at it and think how many colors are there in this screen. What is the relationship? Are they warm colors, are they cool colors? If you want to really nerd out, which can be very fun sometimes, but I can understand that’s going pretty deep, is read a book on color theory because you can learn pretty quickly that there are some principals that designers are applying when they’re picking colors, for example, that anyone can learn.

Another really great resource that’s out now is a book called “Design Plus Code” and I think it does a very good job of giving an overview of how to take that design driven approach towards your project and gives really concrete examples of a highly productive design and code workflow. I would check that out as well.

Mic [18:00]: Many of our listeners are in perhaps a similar position to Jake and I where we have got some visual design skills, but we want to improve them. If we were looking to say spend a couple of hours a day for a few months to do that what would you recommend was the best way to start? Obviously you’ve just mentioned reading a couple of books, but is there anything else that we can do and do repeatedly to improve those skills?

Alli: One of the things that, an exercise that I did when I was first starting out in architecture school, was to literally trace elevation drawings of buildings that other architects had created. I remember very distinctly sitting down in from of a Xerox copy of a drawing of the front of Monticello in virginia, Thomas Jefferson’s house, and just taking out my ruler and my pencil and just tracing it.

I think that if you wanted to spend a little time trying to recreate screens that you see that you think are particularly well done it might be an interesting discipline to do. Okay, I’m going to sit down and recreate this affect and see what does it take? How is this design layered? What affects are being applied? Just try to make it because I think you can learn so much by pulling apart the work of other people and analyzing the component parts. Once you get comfortable with those components then you’re in a position to attempt to recombine them in brand new ways that are uniquely yours.

Mic: I think now that’s really good advice because I think for a lot of people that don’t quite understand design, I’ve learned through working with good people, much of what you explained there, Alli. When I was a little more naïve you would look at a screen and you would try and recreate that screen from start to finish, top to bottom in one go.

Breaking that screen down into smaller chunks and looking at an animation or how a particular view is formed and how everything stacks on top of each other. I’m pulling it apart. I’m looking at each part individually is a much better way to understand what’s happening. I definitely think that there’s value in that and that’s helped me personally from working with designers.

Alli [20:00]: Yeah, I think just that process of tearing it down and trying to build it back up again you really understand why certain things are happening. I also think you start to understand the relationships that happen between elements on a screen and some things about the information hierarchy. Why is this type larger? Why is the designer trying to draw your attention here and what’s the effect of that? Why does it move in this way?

Hiring Designers

Jake: One thing I’ve noticed in the communities that I run in, I attend my local Cocoa Heads meeting for example, is that it doesn’t seem like the us coders and the designers, even who are both working on mobile apps, tend to mix very much.

I know some professionals just from working on different projects, but sometimes these are people that are working at firms and can’t actually afford to hire them as designers. Do you have any advice on where I can go to find good design for affordable prices?

Alli: I think that there are a lot of people who are posting on Dribble that you can reach out to if you like their work. I also know that a lot of the designers at these big companies sometimes do freelance projects on the side. If they’re really interested in what you’re doing sometimes you can get them involved in their spare time.

Yeah, I think the best way to find a designer like that is just to get familiar with their work and contact them. If you have a compelling problem to solve I think sometimes there’s a designer just can’t resist that.

Jake: Yeah, that makes sense. I feel sometimes the exact same way as a programmer. If somebody brings you a project that’s just really cool you’re like I want to work on this. I’ll do whatever it takes.

Alli: Yeah.

Jake: I know there’s some auction sites where it’s like a bidding war where, do you recommend those or do those have pitfalls?

Alli [22:00]: I can’t personally say I’ve ever gotten involved with that type of work, so I’m not sure what you’d be getting when you bid in that auction environment. What I can say is that I think any project where the parameters aren’t well designed and the communication between team members isn’t really good, you’re just going to run into problems and frustrations.

When I’m talking to people who are interested in working with me, I always spend a lot of time trying to figure out if they are making an ask that they really understand. That sounds kind of strange, but sometimes people will say I want an app, but they don’t have a nuanced understanding of what they’re asking for.

Those are the type of clients or partners that generally steer a little clear of just because it’s hard enough to come up with a really good idea and to realize it and to build an app. The undertaking is very difficult, but if you’re going to be changing your mind midstream or things come up and the team doesn’t work well together it can just be so much harder.

I think with some of those sites of auctions, I’m not sure you have that deep level of communication prior to singing up with those people. I think that you might potentially be a little more at risk that way.