The Awesome Giant Blog

Mobile Monday: Discovr App Review

 

Ever sit around and think "what new music should I listen to?" Well Discovr Apps has a great mobile solution for you to do so. Though Discovr also has an app for movies, we'll explore the experience of the music app.

As you launch the app, the user interface is very simple; a search function with a few tabs below with favorites, recommendations and trending music. The favorites are artists pulled from the music you have on your iPhone. As you tap on each artist, more circles will appear with related artist. You can tap on subsequent circles to open up even more artist. As you can see, you can explore pretty far:

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Five websites you need to bookmark for User Interface GUI Kits

I User Interface (UI) Designer's most important job is to visualize the product as best and accurately as possible. This means clients have to understand the vision, but developers need to understand how to build it. Mockups of UIs must be pixel perfect and true. UI Designers often use Graphical User Interface (GUI) Kits to speed up the process.

We at Awesome Giant compiled a list of great sites that have amazing resources for designers to use to help them accomplish their tasks. I suggest you especially go to Teehan + Lax and download every GUI kit they have.

Teehan + Lax

Specky Boy

Smashing Magazine

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Make my app free? The push to in app purchasing

We've been working with iOS app design and development for some time, and the question we often get asked by our clients is "should I make my app free or paid?" The natural response might be to make a paid app to profit. However, the way app experience is moving, this might not be the case. There are three popular methods of profitting for an app: premium paid app, in-app advertising, and in-app purchasing. Let's explore all three options.

Premium Paid App

Premium app is pretty straight forward—you pay for the app before you start using it. Alternatively, some developers like to create a free and premium version (which is what we did initially for Animal Hide & Seek Adventure).  This is the more traditional way of monetizing. Though you can make money right away, there are some cons to ding so.

  • The reach of your audience can be pretty limited. A lot of users may simply search for free apps and...
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The Wireframing Tools of the Trade

Wireframing is one of the core components of User Experience Design. It is the blueprint in which the product is conceptualized and provides direction on the execution of it—similar to the blueprints for an architect that gets handed off to an engineer. Wireframing usually requires many iterations and refinements, and there are multiple methods of wireframing. Each UX Designer has his or her own preference, so it boils down to what you are comfortable with and which method works best for you. Let's look at a few differen wireframing approaches:

Sketchbook

My rule is "pencils before pixels." Before I even do anything on the computer, I draw ideas out, whether they are quick wireframes or figuring out workflows. A few reasons why I like wireframing with pencil and paper:

  • The iterations are quick and simple.
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The New Path Update: Did a UI Redesign Cultivate New Users?

I've been on the Path app since the startup launched the iPhone app about 10 months ago. All of the sudden, I received email notifications from my people requesting to be my friend. I was curious what happened.

The mobile app released a new update with a competely redesigned User Interface. Could this be the reason Path was able to cultivate thousands of new users? The conensus seems to be "yes" that it did play a factor. Here is what Matt, an avid social networker and iPhone owner said about it.

"I initially signed up last year when they initially released the app. It was a poor user experience and had no incentive to use it on a regular basis, so I forgot about it quickly. After the update was released, I downloaded it and remembered that I had an account. I don't use it as often as Twitter and Facebook, but the UI and UX in...

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