Apps are looking better and better!
I’m currently in the middle of putting the final touches on my first BIG mobile app. By BIG I mean it’s for a big, recognizable company, not a personal project. The sheer amount of brainstorming that went into that, along with ever-changing mockups and UX drafts led me to a conclusion that live app testing is crucial to have something stable and production-ready without too much hassle with updates. From platform UI paradigms to general aestethics mobile app design is no easy task. Sure the canvas is smaller and supposedly easier to do than say a web page, but there’s a lot more that can go wrong.
Maybe that’s because we’re a little used to things going wrong on the web and can look the other way, but we tend to criticize apps that don’t work as advertised. Exciting times ahead, since the mobile space has evolved with apps being able to do more and look better, even using platform specific components (if used creatively and with some twist).
If you want examples try Path and Foursquare for iOS – each uses the basic styles and elements, but with a twist that makes it both original and pretty.