Idea to App in a Week – Round 2: iPad App

Tuesday October 11, 2011

I’m back for another prototyping challenge, this time creating an iPad application. It’s the same guidelines as before, developing a digital prototype within a week, and I chose to build upon the iPhone app idea: the AptFinder.

 

Although it helped to already have the idea decided and some design elements figured out, it still took time to plan and design. Working on the iPad meant having more screen real estate to work with (obviously), so naturally, some of the flow and functionality was going to be a little different than the iPhone app. I wanted the main screen to cover the primary content, and have additional information and tools shown via the side panes.

Some points to note on building the prototype in iRise:

1. Choose an orientation -  I wasn’t able to get the prototype to respond from switching between landscape and portrait view, which meant that I had to design for one (in my case, landscape view). I may need to do more research to find a work-a-round, but would suggest building for one particular view beforehand.

 

2. Subtract 20px from the height - Whether you’re building the page in landscape view or portrait view, you need to account for the Apple header bar which is 20px tall. If you’re looking to create in landscape view, the page dimensions will be 1024px by 748px. For portrait view: 1004px by 768px.

3. No drag & drop – I didn’t need drag & drop functionality for this particular demo, but when I was working on another project, I didn’t realize that drag & drop doesn’t work when being viewed on the iPad. A real bummer considering that’s a pretty common interaction on this device, so plan for a work-around when building your own prototype.

 

Here’s the final result: