Day 10 - What I know about my app

After finishing the Lynda.com tutorials, I have returned to the Stanford podcast on SDK. It provides interesting stuff on memory allocation and management and it reinforced what Simon stressed in the Lynda.com tutorials about memory issues. However, the two tutorials don’t use the same templates. The Stanford people use the Windows-based template, while Simon uses the View Based template. Simon deliberately sidesteps the Game-based template, which is the one that I need.

That leads me to the focus of today’s blog entry; describing what I know about my app. Apple identifies three different application formats that all apps fall under; productivity, utility, and immersive. It’s important that you identify the type of app that you are building from the beginning stage.

For me, I am building an immersive app. It will only be an iPhone app and not a web based or a hybrid of iPhone app with web based content. My target audience is health conscious and seeks health related information. I’ll have some features like customizable scenarios, music choices, and text prompts within the app.

I will be incorporating the accelerometer for my app, which I believe adds additional complexity. Furthermore, I plan to bring the user into a virtual world, which means I will need to create a world outside the immediate space they manipulate. I need to create the horizon.

I think of this similar to the sound stage of “The Wizard of Oz”, where the stage was the real space the actors performed on, but the backdrop set created the illusion of Z space out to the horizon where the City of Oz was located, but it was just a wall. This principle seems most fitting for how I envision my app and its design. But that’s just it, I don’t know how to work with the Game-based template, accelerometer, or the inter-workings of the graphics.

The process of building an app isn’t restricted to the learning curve of coding using C++, Objective C and Cocoa. It also deals with the graphic construction and Flash animation. But most importantly, building an app is about problem solving. How do you build what you can see in your mind’s eye? I can see it perfectly, but how do I get there?

Furthermore, I have to decide how the program saves when the users cuts out instantly. I want my app to automatically save where the user left off and not reset itself. A consolidation of some of the things discussed so far can be found in the tips from Apple.

“As you design the flow of your application and its user interface, follow these guidelines to build in simplicity and ease of use:

• Make it obvious how to use your application.
• Concentrate frequently used, high-level information near the top of screen.
• Minimize text input. (typing)
• Express essential information succinctly.
• Provide a fingertip-size target area for all tappable elements.” – Apple Human interface Guildelines